“As long as a girl has looks and youth enough, she avoids anything that might soil her name. Even when composing a letter, she takes her time to choose her words and writes in ink faint enough to leave you bemused and longing for something clear;then, when at last you get near enough to catch her faint voice, she speaks under her breath, says next to nothing, and proves to be an expert at keeping herself hidden away. Take this for sweetly feminine wiles, and passion will lure you into playing up to her, at which point she turns coy. This, I think, is the worst flaw a girl can have.” – Chief Equerry, p 24
This quote is taken from a dialogue between Genji, the Chief, and To no Chujo. The conversation is basically the other two parading Genji with stories and personal ideas of how women should be. The excerpt is an objectification of women in which the Chief is saying the best kind of woman is young, pretty, and soft spoken. When he says “[she] proves to be an expert at keeping herself hidden away”, he literally means for the woman to be hidden away, as if to keep herself away in shame. In his last line, he says women’s worst flaw is to seduce men into doing what they want by pretending to be shy.
How would someone of the modern century react to such an individual’s ideas and beliefs?
