Representasi Perempuan Bali pada Buku Kumpulan Cerita Pendek Akar Pule (Analisis Semiotika Roland Bhartes)

Abstrak

This study analyze Akar Pule, a collection of short stories by Oka Rusmini. It portrays the lives of Balinese women who negotiate cultural traditions, caste systems, family expectations, marriage, and social stigma attached to the female body. This study aims to analyze the representation of Balinese women in selected short stories from Akar Pule using Roland Barthes' semiotic theory. This research employed a qualitative descriptive approach. The research object consisted of selected short stories from Akar Pule that explicitly depict issues related to tradition, caste, family, marriage, and body stigma. Data were collected through library research by identifying dialogues, narratives, and symbolic expressions relevant to the research objectives. The data were subsequently analyzed using Barthes' three levels of signification, namely denotation, connotation, and myth. The findings reveal that, at the denotative level, the selected short stories portray Balinese women confronting various socio-cultural expectations, including the obligation to marry, bear male offspring, preserve family honor, and comply with traditional customs. At the connotative level, these representations symbolize women's struggles within patriarchal social structures that shape their identities and life choices. At the mythological level, the study identifies several dominant cultural myths, including the belief that women achieve completeness only through marriage, that a woman's worth is determined by her ability to produce a male heir, that women are expected to endure suffering for the sake of family harmony, and that the female body functions primarily as a means of fulfilling cultural and familial obligations.