The Study of Javanese Women in The Primbon Books

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-224-8_32How to use a DOI?

Keywords

women; Java; Primbon; domestic; public

Abstract

A substantial amount of aspects of the life of women are exposed in the life of Javanese people, particularly in song lyrics, literary works and other ancient writings. This demonstrates the importance of understanding the female character. The books of Primbon contain guidelines for several aspects of communal life explaining how to properly implement these in daily activities. An important aspect is the search for a spouse. The Primbon books provide instructions and guidelines for eligible bachelors on differentiating between good women and bad women, based on physical appearance, date of birth and body language. This study concerns itself with exposing the character of Javanese women in the form of a qualitative-descriptive study. The data sources used are the books of Primbon. These books thoroughly examine several perspectives about women and different characters traits, both their noble characteristics as well as their bad characteristics. Javanese women are portrayed in these books as loyal to their husbands, compliant, devout, accepting of polygamy, providing sexual gratification and satisfying other needs. Besides their main responsibility for raising and educating children and domestic chores, Javanese women are expected to provide a living in order to enlighten the financial burden of the husband. Within the Primbon books Javanese women are portrayed as predominantly active domestically rather than involved socially.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Supana Supana
AU  - Sumarlam Sumarlam
AU  - Wakit Wakit
AU  - Yohanes Suwanto
AU  - Sutarjo Sutarjo
PY  - 2024
DA  - 2024/05/20
TI  - The Study of Javanese Women in The Primbon Books
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference of Local Wisdom (Incolwis 2022)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 375
EP  - 382
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-224-8_32
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-224-8_32
ID  - Supana2024
ER  -