The results of analysis of transitivity choice in Fifty Shades of Grey show that Anastasia Steele is represented as character who is physically less active, less affecting, and easily affected by her sexual partner, Christian Grey. In contrasting manner, she is portrayed as a highly conscious, rational, and impassive entity who is less emotional and aware of what happens to her. These results illustrate and simultaneously reflect the story in the novel, which portrays Ana as a paradoxical character.
She embodies ambivalence between the state of being physically subordinated and mentally powerful. The fact that she is not an emotional person conceives impression that she deliberately subjugates her position. Contradictions between thought and expression identify that personal choice decisively takes part in constructing individual characterization. Ana represents a rational individual who chooses to let herself being subordinated. She denies her consciousness that she is being oppressed; rather she makes rational calculation to derive power from her oppression.
Feminist politics suggests that the idea of constraining rationality and being in a state that makes a woman deny her mind are disastrous entanglement (Friedan, 1963 in Genz and Brabon, 2009). An ideal construction according to feminists is one which is thoughtfully rational and concurrently evincing the spirit of women emancipation. Yet, Ana eloquently represents antithetical trait of feminist fundamental value by embracing retro-femininity as a rational choice of female individual. She constructs an identity which defines femininity as political assertion of freedom of individual choice and self-rule to the extent of postfeminist notion.
The ways she rejects her cognitive consciousness and chooses to let herself being dominated suggest that self-motivation gives influences to make decision; a decision to be physically subjugated. It promotes the idea that women have access to developing autonomy and achieve the image of femininity by actively objectifying themselves. Ana sees herself not as the object of Christian domination, rather she believes that through pretending to be “the submissive” she can control Christian narcissistic personality, express her desire and longing feeling, and simultaneously gain power.
The objectification here is not “something done to women by men, but as the freely choose wish of active… female subjects” (Gill, 2003: 104). It challenges discussion about paradox of contemporary postfeminist femininity which addresses traditional values of femininity and at the same time convinces female passivity as away to reaffirm feminist preference. Going along with her paradoxical manner, Anastasia’s self-objectification raise discussions whether this self-choice will gain power or even maintain her in regression.
Focusing on her effort in attaining power through these paradox and ambiguity, it will give such justification for her ideological beliefs if her self-objectification successfully deceives Christian’s arrogance and hypocritically controls Christian narcissistic domination. However, when this self-objectification gives no significance or even maintains Ana in regression, the idea of self-objectification is no more than compulsive mirage of unattained power. Instead of authority, she will only get exploited in more broadly terms and in more extreme ways.
Feminist framework on sexual subjecthood criticizes that the state of being pro-sexual exploration is no more than reinforcement of old patriarchal objectification (Levy, 2006: 81). Even though Ana articulates her sexual objectification as a rational choice of her sexual desire, Gill asserts that this socalled sexual subjectification is reincarnation of the old objectification, which leads to a newly more sophisticated exploitation (2007:258). Despite being corporeally subordinated and subjugated in her relationship with Christian Grey, Anastasia are represented to be equal to Christian in socializing and making personal efforts.
The use of transitivity choice in the narrative represents them to have the same quality in affecting other characters and their own body parts. What makes them distinctive from one to each other is the way they perform personal relationship, in which Anastasia presents herself to be less active and an easily controlled one. Yet, it does not simply mean that Ana represents herself as a second-rated subiect nor even being object, rather it shows how she negotiates and reconstructs dialectical resistance in entangling with Christian imperious ego and arrogance of power.
However, among all the way she constructs multivalent identities, it raise ambiguous interpretation whether she is intentionally being pro sex to control Christian and attain freedom of power or being disoriented in employing her sexual properties. As represented in the use of transitivity choice in the narrative, Anastasia is not only described as a character who is cognitively thoughtful. In contrasting way, she is also represented as a person who is psychologically delicate, physiologically reflexive, and physically out of control.
It gives imprecision that her mental cognitive does not represent internal power, more exactly this state of being highly conscious is no more than frivolous thought. Thus, it straights up that all of her considerations to be less active, to subjugate herself, and to address self-objectification are non compos mentis wish which leads her to legitimate Christian domination and controlling power. The idea of reaching authority therefore is only another form of false consciousness.
Contradictions among contrasting paradoxical manners which are represented by Anastasia from the ways she narrates Fifty Shades of Grey do not only appear between internal and external actions, but also among each of internal and external characterizations. In this way, Anastasia attributes multivalent images which are typically opposing each other. These multiple images question whether Anastasia’s paradoxical characteristics truly manifest her ideological beliefs about the idea of attaining power and regressing male hegemony or only irresistibly express her desire and pragmatism.
What are veraciously accentuated through the way Ana represents herself with these multivalent characteristics is that she reject to focus on victimization. Rather than confronting her position as the one being controlled and subordinated, she maintains to moderate her attitudes. She rejects feminist radical attitudes of reaching power and autonomy by completely assert male hegemony and domination. Instead, she tries to rearrange traditional order of gender and traditional values of femininities to attrack and take Christian entangled in her beauty and innocence.
Anastasia instantiates the notion of well-established dichotomy between feminist power and feminine attractiveness embodied in an archetype of contemporary woman by articulating a multiple image of individual, who is self-determining, cognitively thoughtful, seeking for freedom of choice and self-expression, but simultaneously,objectifying herself and pro-sex. These depictions are completed with the state of being psychologically delicate, physiologically reflexive, and physically out of control, which maintains her in a more unidentified standing.
The multiple images that Ana represents however can be seen as imaginary freedom of neoliberal rhetoric to construct rational theory of individual femininity. In this way, the relationship between postfeminism and neoliberalism gives justification that a woman may construct their own way of being feminine. The representation of female character which represents individualism, autonomy, rational calculation, selfdetermination, and personal responsibility denotes the idea of neoliberalism (Gill and Scharff, 2011).
In this account, struggle to achieve freedom and to counter hegemony are conceptualized as personal responsibility which defined through individual values, rather than feminist collective activism. Multivalent characteristics that Ana represents through the use of transitivity choice in narrating Fifty Shades of Grey draw multiple interpretations of meaning related to the idea of achieving power and autonomy. However, the ways she rejects feminist universal meaning of emancipation and rearranges individual attitudes clearly designate her standing point.
Ana is an archetype of women in postfeminist contemporary femininity, which is complex, multivalent, and typically paradoxical. In this way, what Ana represents as feminine in her individual politics are not trajectory of certain paradigm, but rather the reflection of individual engagement with multiple discourses in embracing nowadays society. CONCLUSIONS The uses of transitivity choice show that Ana perceives Christian as a highly active and affecting person, stable in controlling himself, but at the same time lacking psychological and physiological awareness.
On the other hand, Ana tends to describe herself as a paradoxical character, who is personally and socially equal to Christian, but being subordinated and easily affected in their personal relationship. Moreover, Ana also represents herself as a person who is physically out of control of herself. These paradoxical attitudes of her externalized actions are completed with ambivalent images of her mental actions that represent her as a cognitively thoughtful and impassive person, but simultaneously being psychologically delicate and physiologically reflexive.
The ways Ana performs individual politics of femininity and self-objectification which tend to be hypocritically submissive in embracing Christian narcissistic domination affirms that she rejects to achieve power through feminist revolutionary attitudes. She tends to subjugate her position in order to express her desire and simultaneously achieve power through moderating her stance. Thus, Ana represents women in postfeminist contemporary femininity, which is complex, multivalent, and typically paradoxical.
The way narrator presents the story through the use of transitivity choice raises multiple interpretations of how power emerges in the presence of actions of characters. However, the juxtaposition of two sites of power which is linguistically signified through stylistic device of transitivity processes in Fifty Shades of Grey manifests multi-faceted discourses of feminism and femininity in nowadays society, which are multivalent, selfdependence, and dialectically entangled with the idea of emancipation and empowerment.
The results of this study suggest academia, writers of fiction prose, and critics to have understanding and awareness of transitivity choice in dealing with it in their expertise. This study provides another way of conducting critical linguistics and feminist linguistics studies in dealing with erotic prose fiction. The researcher expects improvement and revision related to this study in the future. Critiques and suggestions are welcomed to improve and challenge this research as a part of never ending process of intellectual advancement.
