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Dear Reader,
In my comparison of Lazarillo from The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and the Women from The Life of a Sensuous Women, I was hoping to show the correlations between these characters and their perspective of their society’s religion. The central thesis I had arrived at was that both authors had created a depiction of religious figures acting and being viewed very controversially in order to comment on their societies development as we can compare it to today’s time. Throughout my essay I included quotations from both texts that showed the mannerisms of these religious figures as they are shown to be acting very differently than the beliefs they are trying to uphold. In 14th century Spain, Catholicism was at the forefront and in 15th century Japan, Buddhism was becoming more prevalent. Both of these religions stress the values of living for the community and they neighbor and that is why many devout priests and monks live very abstinent lives with as little vice as possible. Contrastingly, the religious figures shown in these texts were more self-centered and the protagonists we follow even considered themselves as sinners as the religious figures were described with other connotations such as stinginess and pleasure pursuer. I started off this essay by first identifying all quotations that seem applicable to the topic of the authors perspective of their society and the parallels stood out immediately. As I revise, I may need to work on better sentence coherence as I put a lot of quotation from both texts and in addition I should emphasize the analysis of these quotes.
Draft #1
In The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, written by an anonymous author, and Life of a Sensuous Woman, by Ihara Saikaku there are characters with heralded positions however with their traits of trickeries, these figures may have been included to offer a satirical and critical perspective of their societies. In Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, Lazarillo’s second master the priest, one would think he would treat his apprentice fair, yet because of his stinginess, he left Lazarillo to starvation multiple times. In Life of a Sensuous Woman, the comments regarding the corrupt fornicating practices of the monks go against the Buddhist beliefs these figures are supposed to represent. I would not say these trickster characters were heroes but these characters were supposed to represent figures of utmost morals but controversially were depicted very satirically. In both these texts, the realist perspective shown by Lazarillo and the Sensuous women, who were treated as lower class then in conjunction with the predominant male majority. This is shown in both texts through its mannerisms of religious figures, the main characters need for conforming to unethical customs, and the way society justifies these actions.
Societal values and government establishment are directly influenced by that cultures religious beliefs. Religion was what people turned to for answers to the greater questions in one’s life but with its full implementation, the conformity allowed looked up to religious figures room for their on improvised skewed interpretations of the religion beliefs and this in effect allowed for corruption because of one’s self interest. In Life of Lazarillo, Lazarillo was left almost to the point of starvation while his new master, the priest, ate very gluttonously in front of him. With all the reparation given to the church, you would think the priest would spare Lazarillo some food but not only did he left him almost to the point of death, he would lie to the community that Lazarillo was actually the ungrateful one when he was simply greedy. “You never do anything but stuff yourself with sweetmeats.” (34) “In the end I was dying of hunger. But though he wasn’t very charitable with me, he was a bit more so when it came to himself.” (35) “You see, boy, priests are supposed to be extremely temperate in their eating and drinking. That’s why I don’t go indulging in excesses, like other people.” But he was lying, the miserable creature, because when we went to pray at meetings and wakes, where somebody else was paying, he ate like a wolf and dank more than a quack doc.” (37) The Sensuous women on the other hand, because she was a female, was able to capitalize on her sexuality. In those days, Buddhism was at its proverbial high noon, and truly, even in broad daylight would walk right into temple precincts and visit the monks there.” (600)
The types of conditions the protagonists had to undergo projected a sense of being sinful and their new masters who were religious figures completely tormented their reality to the point where they not only accepted it, but even had to adapt. Lazarillo accepted his status as a sinner and in his state of starvation, devised to steal from the priest. In a crafty way, he was able excuse his stealing of the priests bread. After he was thrown away the priests was described “making the sign of the cross against me as though I have been possessed of aa devil, he went back into the house and shut the door.” (54) The Sensuous woman on the otherhand, because she was female, was contracted to be a fake wife of a monk with whom he would have pleasure with. This was very contrary to Buddhist ways of reframing from pleasure and these practices were looked upon very leniently. The Sensuous was just used for sex and hated herself to the point of wishing death. However, she eventually adapted to the conditions and came to enjoy this very act she dreaded. She even cited how about how accustomed such ways with the monks where “to pursue their pleasures, they went all the way to Third Avenue in downtown Kyoto and visited place like the Koiya Inn. On other days, the men acted like model monks. The Buddha’s, who know all, looked on them leniently, and everything went smooth.” (600-601) It is interesting to note that both characters actually wished for the deaths of others because of their situation to benefit. In Lazarillo case he would get more food and for the Sensuous women she would be able to see the monk more.
The way society justifies these actions is shown in both texts where both characters cannot do anything about their situation but escape. The Sensuous women knew what she was getting into even though she pretended to be a male to enter as a page into the monk’s temple. “The head monk was flushed with excitement. “Just last night,” he blurted out, “I got someone to teach me how to make a herbal mixture to induce abortions. It’s something you women really need to…” Then he clapped his hand on his mouth” (600) She already knew about this corrupt system and willingly put herself in this position to get by with the times. Until she saw the byproduct of the previous fake-wife who was left to rot in a different section, she devised the plan to fake a pregnancy and got away with a lot of money. Lazarillo on the other hand basically injured his previous master in retaliation and found a master in church as a way to cope. When his new master would eat gluttonously in front of him while he was given crumbs and left over water stock, he was forced into unescapable starvation. After he cunningly stole a lot of food from the priest, he was eventually caught. He doesn’t know what exactly happened but he was basically beaten up badly and was unconscious for 3 days. When he came too, the townspeople were present to give him aid while the priest was telling them what happened. “They started recounting my trouble again and laughing over them. But I poor sinner, cried over them.” (53 The priest then disowned him justifying it by not being able to trust him anymore and Lazarillo was left in another bad situation.
These stories tell about common situations commoners had in the 14th century Spain and 15th century Japan. In regards to the religious figure encounters, these depict how corrupt their society’s foundations were. In the Life of Lazarillo and Life of a Sensuous Women, both protagonist’s relationship with these religious figures had an underlying message of not being able to escape. The only thing left to do in this circumstance was to change your situation. The Sensuous Woman devised a plan to escape with a lot of money but Lazarillo on the other hand was left without anything after just escaping death.