ULTURE Vol.2 No.1 Mei 2015

ULTURE Vol.2 No.1 Mei 2015

Region Complex Distinctions of Class, Gender and Race in Tite Poulitte by George Washington Cable and The Convent Girl by Grace King (Yustin Sartika) Region Complex Distinctions of Class, Gender and Race in Tite Poulitte by George Washington Cable and The Convent Girl by Grace King Yustin Sartika Fakultas Bahasa dan Sastra, Universitas AKI Semarang Jl. Imam Bonjol 15-17 Semarang Email: yustinsartika@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Writers, female and male, black and white all wrote about the hardship of being the culture that wasn’t liked. Regional writers emphasized characteristics of specific geographic settings—the culture, speech (dialect), customs, and landscape. As they recorded and commented on the distinctive culture, speech and customs that distinguished specific geographical areas, these authors also struggled with the role of class, race and gender in local life. Keywords: regional writers, class, race, gender 1. Introduction aesthetic; in other words, if writers are to American literature is shaped to be accurate in representing their world, represent American life accurately with a they must include the peculiarities of their new ―realist‖ aesthetic during the second- world. For the past decade or so, half of nineteenth century. Realist regionalism has been making a triumphant literature differs from Romantic literature return in American literature, enabling because it attempts to depict life readers to get a sense of place as well as a accurately. Romantic literature is based on sense of time and humanity. the conviction that intuition, emotion and Louisiana emerged in the second imagination are superior to reason. On the half of the nineteenth century as the most other hand, realism, as the name implies, is complex and vibrant geographic area in rooted in reality. the country. Louisiana authors played Realism is a manner and method of important roles for the development of composition by which the author describes regional or local literature. Regionalist normal, average life, in an accurate, authors portray the specific traits of truthful way‖ (Lars Ahnebrink, 1950:269). particular regions or areas. Grace King and Realism is related to regionalism. George Washington Cable are also defined Regionalism is an expression of the realist as ―local color‖ or ―regionalist fiction‖. 118 CULTURE Vol.2 No.1 Mei 2015 George Washington Cable was born in portraits, scraps of silk and brocade‖ as in 1844 in New Orleans. His mother was a historical archives and the like. puritan family from New England and his mother was a German from a Virginian 2. Underlying Theory slaveholding family. He started his carrier A commitment to capturing by writing columns for New Orleans accurately the realities and peculiarities of Picayune. Even he didn‘t go to school but regional culture distinguishes all of the he spent his time most for reading and regionalist writers by carefully embedding writing. He learnt much about the old New life narratives into the very plots and Orleans records; it supported his practices that their characters take up, knowledge for many of his writings that regionalist writers transform their would garner his national recognition then storytelling characters into producers and he crafted them into stories about the consumers of such life narratives. Those different regional culture. thrive across many media sources; the Grace King (1852-1932) was born term is especially adaptable to the visual in New Orleans, but her family fled to vocabularies of regionalism. ―Mother‖, their plantation after the outbreak of Civil ―Black‖ and ―White‖ are some words that War (1861) and the occupation of New can be used to represent regionalist works. Orleans. After they returned to New On meeting the needs in Orleans, King attended Catholic convent multicultural society, people sometimes school. King wrote a lot about women, need to face some cultural obstacles like both white and Creole, and their race, social class and gender. In experiences in impoverished Louisiana. multicultural society, race can be a sign She cited her mother‘s storytelling as an which has been labeled, racial prejudice. inspiration for her writing and often wrote Since it engages someone or a group‘s about how things like marriage, education, attitude to another then racial prejudice and motherhood affected women can be very sensitive. Physically race is specifically. In her nonfiction works King different to another, skin color; hair, focused on women in history and the dialect and behavior, and those can be feminine side in historical studies. In potential problems on communicating with Creole Families of New Orleans, she says others. history lays just as much ―bits of old The prejudice is strengthen furniture, jewelry, glass, old miniatures, socially, stereotype which is built time by time in which racial groups have their own 119 Region Complex Distinctions of Class, Gender and Race in Tite Poulitte by George Washington Cable and The Convent Girl by Grace King (Yustin Sartika) interpretation based on racial and As a way of life, racism has a personality background than the cultural belief that some groups have higher framework. On the other words, racial position than others so those who are tendency emerges larger in someone‘s inferior are deserved to be slaved, be mind than the culture itself. Someone or destroyed and treated inhumanely (Darma, group‘s feeling of being superior is the 2009: 127). Belief about superiority and initial of discrimination. Discrimination inferiority has been used as social leads to racism, treating people differently justification for discrimination, based on race and social characteristics. segregation, and slavery. Racism become a problem since it doesn‘t Live of women have always been only treat people differently but also used interesting for regionalism‘s readers and to insist a group‘s superiority to others. writers. The phrase ―women‘s lives‖ has According to Jusuf and Srivanto appeared in and influenced nearly all the (2001: 13-15), there are two contradictive recent studies of women‘s regionalism. It perspective of racism. The first is scientific reminding us not to take for granted that perspective, it is used to identify and the lives featured in women‘s regionalism classify human based on physic had often gone overlooked in earlier ethnologically and anthropologically. traditions of American literary history, Racism is also understood unscientifically those provide a central and anchoring as prejudice. In this concept, racism is as a term. belief that human can be classified into Reaching its peak in popularity several races which the member of each between 1865 and 1914—in both race is inferior compared to another race. magazines and novels—American literary According to George M. regionalism has been both praised and Fredrickson (2005: 13), racism has two admonished for its attention to smaller components: difference and power. locations on maps and lives that we would Racism comes from the mental attitude not expect to read in memoirs, it is time to which looks at ―them‖ different to ―us‖ acknowledge just how invested this genre permanently. This different feeling has been in granting women writers a provides some reasons to use superiority place for interrogating and assembling and power for treating ―others‖ miserly women‘s lives: not just in featuring and unfairly compared to the member of women characters more prominently and our groups. consistently, but in plotting the lengthier processes through which other characters 120 CULTURE Vol.2 No.1 Mei 2015 gather, report on and sometimes even approach regionalism as a genre for silence the lives of women. When thinking through life writing, without Elizabeth Hampsten studies the life writing turning only to their own lives as an of Midwest women, she acknowledges example. that, to her surprise, writing easily Regionalism defines the materials classified as regional does not read for creating life narratives collaboratively regionally: ―These women‘s writings do and discusses authorship collectively, as a not do that; their ‗place‘ is not where we cultural project of portraying life writing had expected to find them. In much of this in, rather than as a single, finished product. writing, for all its particularity, it is hard to At a moment when more women than ever tell (if the postmark is missing) where the were putting their lives in print, writers are, for they do not bother to tell us regionalism records an array of approaches in words we are used to.‖ Regionalism into a written tableau, archiving the visual does not always behave regionally; often, vocabularies that present lives to be seen, other things are taking place. As Cecelia as well as read. Acknowledging the ―we‖ Tichi has put it, ―They were regionalists— behind the ―I‖, as Larcom encourages, but not solely in the ways critics have means reading these portrayals of conventionally thought. The geography of authorship taking place among others, America formed an important part of their since one person‘s life must be told work, but essentially they charted the through many life narratives. While we regions of women‘s lives, regions both can turn to autobiographies and without and within the self.‖ biographies to study nineteenth-century Reading across regionalism lives, regionalism features the invaluable through its life narratives preserves the processes and discussions surrounding specificity of cultural differences and writers who seek to convey such lives: the challenges us to understand the genre as a conversations they have, the silences they location for writers to portray life encounter and strive to represent. By narratives as constructed, circulated and considering regionalism less as a fixed contested. Because critical conversations label—either a writer is or is not—and about regionalism are being had across more as an adaptive engagement with regions, as well as within them, comparing portraits of both lives and places, we can the formations and possibilities of life evaluate regionalism as a changing genre narratives offers an especially productive for writers, a landscape of visual method for considering how writers vocabularies.

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