By comparing the narrator’s description of her several relationships with different men, I find that her way to deal with the relationship with the head monk of a temple is quite different from others. As for other men, her relationships with them are either “lovers”, such as the young samurai she fell in love with at 11 years old and those two in she met in licensed quarter, or “master and servant”, like the domain lord she serves at her early age. However, none of these kinds of relationship are bounded by marriage, which is the traditional social contract for lovers. While dealing with the relationship with the monk, the narrator described her as a “temporary wife”, and they did have a contract which serves to bind(p.600). Unlike her feeling for other lovers she had, the narrator didn’t like the monk at the beginning, and she even felt that nothing gives her pleasure any more(p.601). Later on, like most husbands and wives, the narrator got used to this “marriage” and started to truly regard herself as a wife. Her opinions on everything in the temple begun to change, and she even said:” the more deaths there were, well, the happier I was.”(p.601) Although in the end she went away and this relationship also came to an end, this relationship is still important and, special to her. This is the first and only time she shared her experience of marriage.
Zeyu Kang.
You have raised a really good point Kang. However, I will have to disagree with you. The narrators “marriage” with the monk was of equal importance as that of the other men that the narrator has been with. The narrator’s relationship with the monk remained the same all throughout; what changed was the narrator’s decision to accept her situation then. I believe she fell in love with the idea of being loved, which was the opposite of what real life as the monk’s wife was. She confesses that she would even wait up for the monk which shows the urge to give attention and love, where it does not come natural.
Hi Zeyu!
I agree with your post! Especially when you pointed out the narrators position on marriage, and how the relationship with the monk was the only time the term ‘wife’ really came up. I personally think it was because of the circumstances. She was living with them cooking and cleaning and taking care of their every need. She did not have a life outside of that temple for a while. Therefore, she was basically a wife in that sense. She leaned on them for survival and they leaned on her. Like you stated, I also think she grew to like the situation as well. I think she was very comfortable and almost gave me the feeling that she was in an arranged marriage for a little. Only because she not only settled for the monk but she was also very enthusiastic and started to enjoy her duty and cared for the men.
***I’m in the same group as Zeyu but I didn’t get the chance to post so it will be here.***
In Life of a Sensuous Woman, the narrator starts from the end when she is old and two men come to her to ask for advice for love. She begins to tell them stories. Her first love was with a low-class samurai, they get caught together and she gets thrown off towards the road while the samurai dies. She gets over his death quickly and says this “I just followed my desires wherever they went – and I ruined myself. The water will never be clear again.” (596). This pretty much foreshadows that she is going to have bad experiences with men. She mainly has a bad time with men but on certain occasions, she would have good ones. For example, on page 601 she said “Later I got used to the situation, and I even came to enjoy it” she would then go on to the priest like the smell of incense that she would remember him by. But in the end, it is always a bad time for her. During the temple arc, there was an older woman who pretty much was in the same position as the narrator but she came first. The older woman was forgotten and became jealous so she wanted to take revenge on the narrator by biting her, which I would assume meant to kill her. Terrified, she pretended to be pregnant making the priest dismiss her. The other stories that she tell follow a similar concept, she goes somewhere, is happy for a bit, then leaves for some reason which gives her a bad experience overall.
The comment above is written by Denny Huang. (I forgot to add it in the end)
I believe, similarly to Roshelle, that this “marriage” did not necessarily differ significantly from the narrator’s past relationships. Ultimately, she fell back into a similar pattern of powerlessness, and resigned herself to the fact that she may never participate in a functional relationship. Her desire to be loved eventually outweighed her reality, and she accepted her relationship with the monk for what it was. However, I did find your point about how this relationship is not entirely dissimilar from “most husbands and wives” to be both comical and insightful, and must concede that this relationship was the one that eventually looked the most like a real marriage.