A GENETIC STRUCTURALISM ANALYSIS OF TRANSEX IN ROBERTA COWELL’S STORY; AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY NOVEL

Abstract

Roberta Cowell's Story is the autobiographical novel that tells about long journey of Robert as an ex pilot in World War 2 who had undergone an advanced female sex surgery. Roberta, as she was happy to be called now, is a British citizen living in social conflict. This novel offers a lot of class conflict in the story that makes the power of classes revealed in world view and active dialectical construction. Conflicts faced by Roberta are described in the main structure happened during in post-war 2. The notion occurs as military schools become important to construct images of ideal male. Literary in terms of sociological approach brings the concept of structuralism as genetically distinctive principle to manifest a particular world view decided by dominant opinion by the dominant structure. This research further uses qualitative research to apply the text of the novel in the story as the main data. The data are analyzed to show the underlying structure as the emergence of dominant power. Then, this problem causes Roberta is not accepted or her presence in every class structure. As a result, later in the analysis it is found that world view is not always dominated by the military but it can also shift dialectically when science and media give space to more acceptable transex within the last period. This novel also illustrates how far the opinion is formed by the class interests that fall on class imbalance.