Memoirs Of A Geisha Essay

526 Words2 Pages

In the novel Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is based on a beautiful 9 year old girl named Chiyo. The novel tells her story of being sold to a geisha house with her elder sister due to the poverty she is living with back home. A geisha house, is a house full of young “bachelorettes” who are being prepared into becoming a wife. However, her story is a bit different. For her, she is forced into serving all others without receiving nothing back to her for her work. This is due to the house’s ruling hierarchy, which is used to determined is she has “high enough quality” to serve the clientele. These clients included men to come to the house and pay for the women’s conversation, song and dance. This requires Chiyo to have some “training”, and after years of this training, she than becomes Sayuri, a geisha of tremendous beauty and influence. In this novel an exploitation of women is vividly occurring. Geishas are always connected with sexual favours, things such as her virginity are up for sale and men who are interested in taking it, go through a ceremony and pay a lot in order to take it. …show more content…

Parents who are living in dirt poor communities must sacrifice selling their young girls to become a geisha’s. This shows the lack of value females have in this novel. Women in the house are given different jobs based on the seniority they have in the house. These range from, serving, such as Chiyo does, to being prostitutes in exchange for a handsome pay. This proves that if women aren’t being used as sexual desires, they will be stuck behind closed doors, cooking, cleaning and serving those around her, proving stereotypes

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