Student’s Gender Understanding by Reading Grimm’s Cinderella

Abstract

This study explores students understanding on gender. It starts from reading a fairy tale text (prose) entitled Cinderella by Grimm Brothers. From reading the fairy tale, the study goes to the students’ opinion on gender which they found in the text and in society. It also applies feminism ideology to reveal students’ opinion on gender. Gender differ man’s and woman’s values created by patriarchy society. It impacts on woman’s position. Woman becomes less value than man. Fairy tale as one of prose is often used by parents and teachers to teach good values and behavior to conduct live in society. Cinderella as a famous classic fairy tale is used to teach them.     This study took the data from the second semester students of Faculty of Language and Cultural Study Unisbank, academic year 2014/2015. Seventeen (17) students who are five males and twelve females attended the test. The result shows that Cinderella is known since they were children from various media; TV, movie, and book. Parents also have important role to acknowledge the story. It influenced their opinions on gender which tend to patriarchy ideology. They could not have left the dominant ideology, patriarchy.

Keywords: Cinderella, fairy tale, gender, patriarchy, feminism