The female character in Feng Menglong’s short story, “Du Tenth Sinks the Jewel Box in Anger,” and the narrator in Saikaku’s, Life of a Sensuous Woman could both be labeled as prostitutes. The difference are their outcomes and outlook on what love actually is. It is said that dreams and love go hand in hand; although I would say the narrator In Life of a Sensuous Woman was in a dream like state because she was unhappy with the choices she was making. We can conclude she was unhappy with her choices by this line, “It made me feel low and ashamed to go on living so long.” “My heart roared in my chest like a burning wagon in hell….suddenly I went into a sort of trance and no longer knew where I was.” (610) Saikaku’s narrator was never able to experience what love was like in comparison to Du Tenth.
Du Tenth experienced love and betrayal within a relationship. Du Tenth was upset with Li because she believed their love was strong, we can see that through her reply to Su Fu, “You with your lecherous intentions hatched a cunning plot that dissolved me and Li’s life together and destroyed the love and affections between us” (Menglong 515).Du Tenth was given up for money which is detrimental for any human being to experience. If someone can give you up for money they don’t love you with pure intentions. We can confirm that by this, “ Li Jia , who failed to recognize Du Tenth’s sincere devotion , was a vulgar person not even worth talking about.” (517). They shared great feelings among each other, but true love is concrete, it doesn’t turn fickle and lack substance such as this.
2 responses so far ↓
j.mireles // Sep 19th 2015 at 12:24 am
I Agree with your perspective on the differences between both the Du Tenth and the narrator, I guess that the narrator was unhappy and somewhat with her choices because she had no way out of that lifestyle(this must be hard for a person). Maybe there’s things in life that one can just forget and move on but after living as a prostitute the narrator now has a moral issue, this issue got in the way of love. Du tenth might have had different perspective than the narrator but I guess this is natural since their circumstances were different. Lastly I also think that love is concrete.
JMERLE // Sep 19th 2015 at 4:49 pm
Krystal
I really like your implication that for the Saikaku narrator, love is somehow dream-like, and for Du Tenth it is much more concrete. It might be quite interesting to go more deeply into this distinction for the essay!
10/10.