Women are not seen as inferior and other negative stereotypes anymore. This was shown by Mery Balango in her dissertation entitled “Tough Women Image in Detective Story Hard-Boiled by Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton with Post-feminism Approach”. By bringing this topic up, Mery wanted to show that through this novel, women’s image is not weak but smart, tough, attractive, successful at work but still feminine.
According to Mery, after entering the 20th century, the women’s league has broadened, shown by many of man’s works that were successfully handled by women. The woman awareness during the 20th century increased in career department. This phenomenon was expressed by woman author in the novel called “Hard Boiled”.
The way woman entering work place is constructed by the image of New Woman, all ideas about woman and their conditions in a previous era had cornered women on a domestic side of the world,” Mery said on her defense at Faculty of Cultural Sciences UGM, Tuesday (11/25).
Mery offers a new understanding through the “Hard Boiled”, woman are, in fact, supported by logic so that they have the capability to do few things at once. Besides, Mery revealed that through this novel, Paretsky and Sue Grafton were trying to give new perspective on woman’s way against scheme that could lead to social injustice.
In front of the assessor team, Merry explained a new problem solving alternative expressed by the author through woman detective story outside conventional gender identity and go beyond world’s limit on woman. It caused the decreasing negative stereotype towards woman.
“Negative image towards woman is answered through dissertation, because it tried to reveal the tough side of woman on a woman detective story written by women on a post-feminism perspective,” she concluded.