One of most arguable and observable social phenomena is gender inequality which is based on feminism thoughts. Considering how literature may portray human’s life along with its values, this study is purposed to elaborate and compare how feminism thoughts and gender inequality take place in various literary works. Based on the importance of feminism thoughts and gender inequality in cross cultural literature, then there is a necessity to conduct a comparative literature study which focused on feminism thoughts. This study took four kinds of literary works, namely drama, prose (short-story), movie, and poetry. Feminism approach as sociological approach was applied in this study altogether with comparative criticism and content analysis method. This study discussed how feminism thoughts got more supports and encouragement as the century progressed. By comparing literary works from 20th and 21st century, several important findings can be drawn, namely (a) feminism thoughts are getting stronger along with the progression of century, (b) feminism thoughts always oppose gender inequality as both are always found as binary oppositions in literary work, (c) both feminism and gender-inequality live through human’s values and repetitive actions, (d) personal and familial values are crucial in order to develop feminism thoughts and gender-inequality in an individual, and (e) the change of values, especially social and cultural values can bring changes in both feminism and gender inequality phenomena.

Foreign language teachers need to motivate their students to learn English. Literature can be a good means to achieve motivation in literature classes. There has recently been a revival of interest in literature as a practical, motivating and an effective resource available for language learning. Therefore, we can assume that literature and authentic literary materials, especially short stories can enhance students’ motivations. This study focuses on how students’ motivation can be lifted through the use of group discussion as class activities and contemporary literature as learning material. This study is a descriptive qualitative which used questionnaire as main instrument to find out how college students rate English Literature Course and how students can be motivated with certain group activities with certain learning material. The result of this study shows that students rated 82 out of 100 for English Literature Course using group discussion as class activity and contemporary literature as learning material. From this study, there is an obvious implication that college students may enjoy learning English Literature through the utilization of contemporary literature and group discussion. This study found that instead of reading short extracts presented in course books, or any classical short stories, contemporary literature were more suitable complete texts for students to become fluent and competent language users. By learning English through literature, the students’ knowledge and competence are enhanced not only through formal English lessons, but rather through informal cognitive ways, in where the students are invited to examine and analyze how human’s life are portrayed through vocabularies, grammatical structures, and sociocultural dimensions of language.

Literature represents and portrays variation of society and all human life’s aspects. This includes common happenings. On behalf of this matter, there is an importance to study the literature as a model of real life and society, followed by certain phenomena happened in certain time. For ages, oppression and depression are one of frequents phenomena. Oppressions are often found in women, especially in housewives. This may lead to implication that housewives may undergo psychological problem, such as depression. In literary work, both woman-oppression and depression are often found in many kinds of works, such as movie and short-story. This research focused on two short-stories written by Thomas Hardy “An Imaginative Woman” (1893) and Jhumpa Lahiri “Interpreter of Maladies” (1999). Both were analyzed using feminism and psychoanalysis approach in terms of proving the hypothesis that woman-oppression can become source of depression in housewives’ lives. The findings showed that domestic women, especially those who only work as housewives experienced depression because of their lack of social-connection. In both short-stories, the depressed housewives would lead her life into troublesome habits, such as having delusions, having affair beyond marriage, being ignorant toward her family, being in destructive behaviors, and even wishing her own death. This findings surely became an implication that women-oppression will indeed lead women into self-destructing behaviors.