Gender Awareness and Critical Literacy through Literary Education: A Feminist Stylistic Analysis of Perempuan yang Menangis Kepada Bulan Hitam

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the construction of gender through language in Dian Purnomo’s novel Perempuan yang Menangis kepada Bulan Hitam. The study employs a descriptive qualitative method with a feminist stylistics approach. The data consist of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, dialogues, and narratives that represent naming, regulation, silencing, control over the female body, agency, and resistance. Sara Mills’s feminist stylistics serves as the primary analytical framework, supported by the perspectives of Robin Lakoff, West and Zimmerman, and Judith Butler. The findings show that language initially functions as a mechanism for constructing gender through the labeling of Magi as anak nona and anak perempuan, marriage decisions that position her as an object, and linguistic practices that regulate and evaluate the female body. However, this construction gradually shifts as Magi employs language of refusal, command, naming violence, and personal decision-making. This transformation marks Magi’s shift from object to subject, from a woman spoken about to a woman who speaks, chooses, and defines herself.