The Representation of Misogyny as a Gender Stereotype in Caroline Kepnes' You

Abstract

This study examines the issue of misogyny as a form of gender stereotyping in mystery and suspense novels. The purpose of this research is to reveal how misogyny is presented in the novel and also find the connection with the contextual conditions in social life in the United States, and then find the author's critical position related to misogyny. This research method is qualitative research because it uses data in the form of text and cannot be counted by numbers. The data comes from the novel, the author's social life conditions, the contextual conditions in which the novel was written, and other validated sources namely: journals, articles, and official news pages. Hall's representation theory becomes the main tool to uncover the issues of this study supported by de Beauvoir's theory to reveal the relationship between misogyny and a gender stereotype. Then the data of misogynistic utterances and behaviors of the characters as gender stereotypes will be found in two types: originated and were influenced by the emotional conditions and social life of the characters in the novel.