Women’s Cultural Practices in Madurese Novels: A Feminist Narratology Analysis

Abstract

This study examines how contemporary Madurese novels construct women’s cultural subjectivities through narrative context, function, and technology in the following manner. Drawing on Schachtner’s Narrative Subject Theory and feminist narratology, the analysis focuses on six novels that depict women negotiating kinship obligations, ritual practices, and communal ethics within a patriarchal cultural framework. The results show that narrative contexts such as temporality, domestic and sacred spaces, and ritual cycles serve as cultural grammars through which women reinterpret inherited norms rather than merely obeying them. The narrative reveals that women’s agency emerges through reflective endurance, silence, and moral discernment, enabling them to influence family and community dynamics without directly challenging tradition. Meanwhile, narrative technologies, including symbolism, focalisation, and temporal fragmentation, foreground feminine interiority and transform endurance into moral authorship. This study contributes to narrative theory by demonstrating how subjectivity in non-Western literary contexts is shaped by communal ethics and religious values. It also enriches feminist narratology by highlighting culturally grounded forms of agency that rely on resilience and moral strength. Overall, Madurese fiction illustrates that transformation arises not from the rejection of tradition but from its reinterpretation through narrative.