Exploring the marginalized voices: An analysis of woman’s powerlessness in Damar Kembang through experiential meaning

This article is aimed to reveal the powerlessness of the female characters in Muna Masyari’s Damar Kembang. As one of Muna Masyari’s works, Damar Kembang tells about the life of Madurese women by using Madurese culture as the background story. By applying Halliday’s theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics focusing on experiential meaning. Experiential meaning, alongside with logical meaning, belongs to ideational metafunction, which construes human’s experience through language. By analyzing the grammar of experiential meaning, which centers on the element of process, this research attempts to reveal how women were positioned in Madurese society. This study employs qualitative approach and text observation technique in the data collection. The data were the process types used in all clauses, both simplex and complex clauses, produced by the narrator and by the female characters in the novel. From the analysis of the types of process used in the clauses, this study reveals that women were positioned inferior. They have no power, even to determine their own marriage life.