Cuisine is not enough: Transformation of women in Indonesian short stories in the 2000s

Abstract

Women’s attachment to the world of cooking is not without practical cause, but it is also an ideological process. This paper examines married women’s relationship with cooking and its ideological background in four Indonesian short stories. The stories serve as primary data, discussed through narrative textual analysis, from a feminist perspective. Married women are obligated to be good cooks, especially to earn their husbands’ loyalty and faithfulness, so their main role is in the kitchen. In the meantime, patriarchal ideology is passed on from mothers to daughters. Although not all texts describe women’s resistance to their role in the kitchen, some women resist by preparing food and marketing it with the aim of not relying on their husband’s income alone and gaining economic independence.