ASPEK LESBIANISME TOKOH CELIE PADA NOVEL “THE COLOR PURPLE” KARYA ALICE WALKER

Abstract

Lesbianism is a strong relationship among woman emotionally and sexually. It grows slowly and sublime at the beginning of its development, but it recently becomes widely known as a movement. For the radical feminists, who claimed that woman oppression is a result of patriarchal system, lesbianism is a way to set a woman free from patriarchal oppression. However, some societies consider that lesbianism is improper or even abnormal so that lesbians are often treated discriminatively. Lesbianism makes effort by struggling for equal rights as men without ignoring their nature. Lesbianism concept has been widely spread but is still debatable. It means that common people still do not really understand about lesbianism, its attitudes, and its aspects. This research aims to reveal lesbianism aspects of Celie, the main character of novel The Color Purple written by a black woman, Alice Walker. The novel tells about Celie‟s life as a black woman in the 1910‟s -1940‟s when black people were still considered as the second class society and women as the second sex. As the second class, black woman got more suffering because they were oppressed not only by men (black and white) but also by the white woman. In the novel, Celie got oppression in two ways: racism and sexism. This situation gives her personal traumatic, which in turn, shapes her sexual orientation as a lesbian. The methods of this research are literary review and feminism approach. Literary review was applied by using materials from literatures, whereas feminism approach was used to see the oppressions toward women caused by patriarchal system. The analysis shows that lesbianism of the Celie character can be seen from her special attitudes toward Shug due to her love feeling. There are two among three lesbianism aspects that Ann Ferguson suggests. The two aspects are the aspect of clinical description about lesbian, and the aspect of trans-historical traditions that link the lesbians.