Nature’s Involvement in Women’s Self-Completion: An Eco-feminist and Psychoanalytic Criticism on Selected Indonesian Folktales
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v8i2.1683Keywords:
Feminist ecocriticism, Psychoanalysis, Indonesian Folktales, Self-CompletionAbstract
Human beings unavoidably have an innate need to conjugate with other living creatures such as plants and animals. This fundamentally indicates that human builds a sense of connection to nature, that even sometimes they involve nature as one of the symbols in their process of self-completion. They make use of nature in such a way to define themselves as if they possess competencies in accordance with the titles. This paper seeks to find out the depiction of nature in several Indonesian folktales and to disclose how women in those tales are naturally connected with nature and engage it in their self-completion process. Psychological and feminist eco-critical approaches are utilized to answer those problem formulations. Meanwhile, the reason why the researchers only analyze female characters is that they are told in the tales to have an intimate relationship with nature and become the representation of ‘Mother Earth’. The analysis results show that nature in the selected folktales is depicted as pretty chummy to oppressed women. They are so connected that even those women establish nature as their medium to reveal their self-concept as strong, consistent, and honest women
References
Atwater, E. (1995). Psychology of Living: Adjustment, Growth, and Behavior Today. New Delhi: Prentice Hall Pvt. Ltd.
Barry, P. (2009). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literature and Cultural Theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bowins, B. (2004). Psychological Defense Mechanisms: A New Perspective. The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64(1), pp. 1-26.
Bruner, J.S. (1991). The Narrative Construction of Reality. Critical Inquirt 18(1), pp.1-21. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343711.
Clark, T. (2010). The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dewi, N. (2016). Of People and Nature: Eco Education in Young Adult Literature from Asia, Proceeding of the 4th Literary Studies Conference 2016, 254-259
Finzer, E. (2005). Mother Earth, Earth Mother: Gabriela Mistral as an Early Ecofeminist,. Retrieved November 7th, 2020 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24368285
Fitts, W.H. (1971). The Self Concept and Self Actualization (1 st ed). Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services.
Glotfelty, C. (1994). What is Ecocriticism?.Retrieved November 6th, 2020 from www.asle.org/wp-content/uploads/ASLE_Primer_DefiningEcocrit.pdf
Harmon-Jones, C., Schmeichel, B.J., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2009). Symbolic Self-completion in Academia: Evidence from Department Web Pages and Email Signature Files. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, pp. 311-316.
Mambrol, N. (2017). Ecocriticism: An Essay. Retrieved November 6th, 2020 from https://literariness.org/2016/11/27/ecocriticism/
Mawere, M., Mubaya, T.R., Reisen, M.V., Stam, G.V. n.d. (2019) Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation and its Deep Roots in Individualism: Interrogating Maslow’s Applicability in Africa. RetrivedNovember 7th, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302516151_Maslow's_Theory_of_Human_Motivation_and_its_Deep_Roots_in_Individualism_Interrogating_Maslow's_Applicability_in_Africa
McLeod, S. (2019). Defense Mechanism. Retrieved November 8th, 2020 from https://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html#:~:text=Regression,when%20the%20person%20felt%20safer.
Morley, K. (2019). Symbolism of Stones and Meanings. Retrieved November 7th, 2020 from https://www.sunsigns.org/stones-meanings-symbolism/#:~:text=The%20symbolism%20of%20stones%20centers,%2C%20versatile%2C%20and%20easily%20accessible
Nassaji, H. (2015). Qualitative and Descriptive Research: Data Type Versus Data Analysis. Language Teaching Research, 19(2), pp. 129-132.
Putri, C.A. (2018). The Opression of Women Characters in Selected Indonesian Folklore. Paper presented at The 6th Literary Studies Conference: Re-imagining Difference and Extremism: Regional and Global Perspective, Yogyakarta, 11-12 October 2018, pp. 158-162.
Sandilands, C. (1997). Mother Earth, the Cyborg, and the Queer: Ecofeminism and (More) Questions of Identity. NWSA Journal 9.3, pp. 18–40.
Subanti, G. (2018). ‘Locating the Human and Environmental Conflict in the Mermaid Using the Perspective of Feminism and Ecocriticism’. Paper presented at The 6th Literary Studies Conference: Re-imagining Difference and Extremism: Regional and Global Perspective, Yogyakarta, 11-12 October 2018, pp. 158-162.
Taflinger, R.F. (1996). Taking advantage; The Sociological Basis of Greed. Retrieved November 5th, 2020 from https://public.wsu.edu/~taflinge/socgreed.html
Ulrich, R.S.(1993_, ‘Biophilia, biophobia, and natural landscapes’, in S.R. Kellert and E.O. Wilson (eds.), The Biophilia Hypothesis (Island Press, Washington DC), pp. 73–137.
The Royal Australian & New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. (2009). Self-Harm. Melbourne: Australia.
Wicklund, R.A. & Gollwitzer, P.M. (1981). Symbolic Self-Completion, Attempted Influence, and Self-Deprecation. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 2(2), pp. 89-114.
Wilson, E.O. (1984). Biophilia. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Yusuf, F., & Susilo, M. (2020). Existentialist Feminism of Woman’s Struggle in Cigarette Girl Novel. IDEAS: Journal on English Language Teaching and Learning, Linguistics and Literature, 8(1). doi:https://doi.org/10.24256/ideas.v8i1.1275
Zein, L.F. & Setiawan, A.R. (2017). General Overview of Ecofeminism. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335441481_General_Overview_of_Ecofeminism
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
Citation Check
License
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See the Effect of Open Access)
