Feminist Sacrifices: A Comparative Analysis of Gender, Agency, and Transformation in Princess Mandalika and The Little Mermaid
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1508.16Keywords:
The Little Mermaid, Princess Mandalika, folktales, feminist theory, sacrifice and transformationAbstract
This study provides a comparative feminist analysis of two folktales from two cultures: Princess Mandalika from Lombok, Indonesia, and The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. Both stories depict a female protagonist who sacrifices for their communities based on different motivations and cultural contexts. This study aims to explore how gender, agency, and transformation are seen from the perspective of feminism by analyzing how the two narratives negotiate about the role of women in patriarchal structures. The importance of this study lies in its contribution to the cross-cultural feminist literature by highlighting women's agency in both Eastern and Western traditions. The study found that Princess Mandalika embodies selfless collective sacrifice for the harmony of society. At the same time, The Little Mermaid emphasizes individual desire, suffering, and the search for autonomy within a limited framework. The feminist analysis gap of these two folktales lies in the lack of comparative studies, which this study seeks to meet. This study uses feminist theory to offer a new view of how cultural narratives affect the perception of women's empowerment and its associated costs. The comparative approach offers novelty by embracing Eastern and Western femininity in studying folklore.
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