Comparison of American and Indonesian Women's Notion in Cather's O'pioneer! and Hamka's Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijk

Abstract

This scientific paper is a literary study that addresses gender issues in the form of a comparison of American women's notions narrated by Alexandra in Cather’s novel O'Pioneer! with Indonesian women narrated by Hayati in Hamka's novel Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijk. Literary comparative studies are carried out in the form of an analysis of the similarities and differences of American and Indonesian women's notions in the early 20^th century as narrated in the two literary works. This research is a structural analysis of literature that emphasizes the study of the intrinsic elements of literature, especially the characterizations originating from Cather’s novel O'Pioneer! in 1913 and Hamka's novel Tenggelamnya Kapal Van Der Wijk in 1938. The data from the two novels were analyzed based on the scientific method of comparative literature which is reconstructed from the concept of de Zepetnek and Endraswara. The results of this study indicate that the similarities between American and Indonesian women in the early 20^th century were based on a traditional society that adhered to religion, accepted marriage and homemaking as natural in the process of women's lives, loyalty to true love as a symbol of belief in life, accepting differences, and forgiving. Their differences are moderate traditional versus traditional conservative, new women versus traditional women, heterogeneous versus homogeneous, repositioning tradition versus strengthening tradition, partial domestication of women versus full domestication of women, living with renewal ideas versus dying with conservative ideas, and so on.