Female Body as a Commodity: A Critical Discourse Analysis in Toer’s Midah, Simanis Bergigi Emas

Abstract

This study examines the representation of women’s bodies as discursive commodities in Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s novel Midah, Simanis Bergigi Emas using Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Employing a qualitative design, it treats language as a social practice embedded in power relations and patriarchal ideology. The data consist of ten textual units, presented as nine analytical excerpts, selected through critical reading and purposive sampling and analyzed with Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework: textual analysis, discursive practice analysis, and social practice analysis. The findings show that women’s bodies are predominantly represented as visual and symbolic objects whose value is determined by male desire, religious-social status, and marriage norms. Lexical choices, participant roles, and a narrative perspective aligned with male characters normalize the commodification and subordination of women, while the text also grants Midah moments of resistance and interiority. The novel thus exposes the suffering of women within a patriarchal system while simultaneously reproducing patriarchal discourse through objectifying representations. The study concludes that literary discourse plays an ambivalent role, functioning both as a medium of social critique and as a site for the reproduction of gender inequality.