Gender stereotypes in Anton Chekov's short stories

Anggi Nurqonita, Thera Widyastuti

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

One of the social problems that appear in literature is gender stereotypes. Richmond-Abbott (1992: 6) suggests "stereotypes are oversimplified descriptions of a group of people. Gender-role stereotypes thus are beliefs that possessing certain traits and should do certain things and that women possess other traits and should do other things." Stereotypes are shown to simplify the description of people or groups. Gender stereotypes give special assumptions that men or women have to do or have not to do. Masculinity and femininity refer to values, meanings, and behaviors culturally associated with men and women, respectively. In social life, gender stereotypes against women can trigger gender forms of injustice. Fakih (2013: 12-13) stated there are five main issues causing gender inequality: marginalization, subordination, stereotyping, violence, and workload. One of the famous Russian writer is Anton Pavlovich Chekov who has works as best seller. There are two short stories written by him; D/The Darling (1899) and N/The Fiancee (1903). The problem of this research is how gender stereotypes affect the lives of Russian women in short stories D/The Darling and N/The Fiancee written by Anton Chekov. Based on the formulation of the problems outlined above, the purpose of this research is to analyze gender stereotypes in the lives of Russian women in short stories D/The Darling and N/The Fiancee by Anton Chekov. To analyzed the problem is using character and setting theory, also Feminist literary criticism, gender stereotype, and sociology of literature. Gender stereotype of Olenka is aspect of affective. Affective in the form of attitudes that are owned by Olenka are helpless attitude while the affectiven aspect that is tangible is feeling of excessive love towards men. Gender stereotypes in N/The Fiancee is aspects cognitive types. Cognitive aspects consist of perceptions, assumptions and expectations of people towards male and female sex groups. Cognitive aspects of hope are seen in the Nadya family's expectations that force her to marry a man from a noble family. Although Nadya had expressed honesty that she did not like her future husband, and chose to cancel the marriage, her mother continued to forbid it. Nadya has a perspective that is more open to the possibility of women to get education.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProblematising Representation in Popular Culture
PublisherNova Science Publishers, Inc.
Pages51-64
Number of pages14
ISBN (Print)9781536179583
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jun 2020

Keywords

  • Affective
  • Cognitive
  • Gender stereotype
  • Independent

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