ABSTRACT
The Chinese imperial culture closely related to patriarchal culture. The Chinese imperial culture makes the women have limited space to do everything they want even in political participation. Women are forced to obey the entire rule which is made not only by men but also the ideology and accept their fate on these two. That’s why this research focuses on Gender discrimination experienced by the main character in the Last Empress novel by Anchee Min, this novel shows that women, even the royal women in Imperial China were always in the second class, inferior, marginalized and discriminated. This study aimed to find the kinds of gender discrimination experienced by the female character in the novel, her struggle against gender discrimination and exploring the female character strategy and achievement in imperial China, especially in Qing dynasty. Then, the researcher uses appropriate theory to support the object. The theory used is feminist literary criticism. Feminist literary criticism focuses on the studies of the gender discrimination and struggles of female character in the novel. The researcher organizes the analysis into three points. First, based on the first question, gender discrimination is experienced by the female character of The Last Empress novel.
Those are gender discrimination experienced in Chinese imperial traditional cultures. It is explained that there are several discriminations to the main character in Chinese imperial traditional cultures such as royal women in imperial China cannot remarry after the death of her husband, in order to show their loyalty to their husband, the royal women should follow her husband to the death by staying on her husband tomb until her own death .They’re not allowed to meet men in ordinary situation. When royal women meet men they should follow the empire’s etiquette. Gender discrimination in politics is also experienced by the main character on the novel. The female character should face the situation that her political rivalry wants to blot out her power and existence in Qing dynasty. The next gender discrimination is educational discrimination. The female character in the novel doesn’t have much chance to get the formal education. The result of the second question shows the struggle of the main character against gender discrimination. The researcher divided the struggle of female character into three points, first, the struggle against gender discrimination in Chinese imperial traditional culture. The main character ignored some traditional cultures in imperial China make every people that men and women have the equal right to do whatever they wants and everything is possible in this life. The struggle against gender discrimination in politics can be seen from the following fact. The main character used her power and her political intelligence by stripping out her rival’s title and post, in order to make her political rivals confess her power and existence. Third, the main character’s achievement can be found that the main character is a vital figure in Qing dynasty. She has a vital influence in China’s modernization. The main character gets the legitimate power as the leader and successfully brings China to enter modernization.
