THE REPRESENTATION OF PROLETARIAN FRENCH WOMAN’S OPPRESSIONS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN VICTOR HUGO’S LES MISÉRABLES

Abstract

Simone de Beauvoir‟s perspective about woman‟s oppressions and the relation between literary work and the social life written in The Second Sex is employed in this research. Collecting the data, qualitative research needs documentary technique. The data come from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862) which is used as a material object. While the formal object is Simone de Beauvoir‟s The Second Sex (1953); Western Civilization: Their History and Their Culture by Edward McNaills Burns (1958); Simone de Beauvoir by Claudia Card (2003); and Simone de Beauvoir by Ursula Tidd (2004). A thesis entitled “A study of the Main Character Leading to the Social Conflict in Victor Hugo‟s Les Misérables” by Khoirudin (2005) and a dissertation by Badja Fariza (2011) entitled “The Position of Women in Thomas Hardy‟s Poetry” are also used as the previous researches. The additional data from internet which are available in the references are also used to consolidate the discussion in this research. Due to the usage of inductive method, the explanation comes from the specific to the general one. The inductive method here refers to the grouped and analyzed particular data in the novel which relate to the woman‟s oppressions in order to conclude the general one. The result of this research shows that the woman character in Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862) represents the proletarian French Woman‟s Oppressions condition in the nineteenth century. Victor Hugo describes it through Fantine, a character who lives in the miserable condition since she was child until the end of her life. The factors of her oppressed condition come from social and her own condition. Social condition forces her to be the victim and shapes society to have a perspective that woman is the Other, not the One. The surrounding people who oppress woman means the bourgeois class and even the woman proletarian class itself. Victor Hugo‟s ideology is criticizing the government about the social condition especially woman‟s oppressions. Through Les Misérables he breaks the mystery of common people life and protests the executive government about the arbitrarily government toward common people.