Similar to current male views of the perfect women, the ideals in the Heian period were various depending on the man. However, with that being said, there are still common features that each man’s “perfect woman” shares. In the tale of Genji, the author Murasaki Shikibu dedicates almost a whole chapter to a conversation between four men, including the famous Genji, about their ideal woman.
Tō no Chūjō, a Guards Captain in the tale describes that even a seemingly perfect woman could be a disappointment. That so-called promising woman would be able to “write with a flowing hand, give you back a perfectly acceptable poem, and all in all do credit enough to the rank they have to uphold”(pg. 20). The disappointment would be that even though she could do all the socially expected norms of a proper lady, she is often “all too pleased with her own accomplishments, runs others down, and so on” (pg. 20). Therefore, her physical abilities and attributes are attractive, but her personality is not, thus tainting her perfection. In the Heian period, it was not just about the looks, in fact, it was more about the skills and personality of the woman that determined whether she was ideal or not.
He then explains that a girl who is loved and sheltered by her parents has to be, in a way, sold by her parents to other men by boasting about their daughters good points. She often just does as she is told and learns “a pastime she has seen others enjoy” (pg. 20). In other words, she is not her true self and is instead a mere copy of an acceptable woman.
Overall, Tō no Chūjō declared that “when a girl is highborn, everyone pampers her and a lot about her remains hidden, so that she naturally seems a paragon. Those of middle birth are the ones amon...
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...s to serve her husband like the Chief Equerry prefers, or the middle-class, easily understandable woman like Tō no Chūjō prefers, or the lady that is well-educated, creative and rich like the majority in the Heian period preferred.
On the other hand, the perfect Heian man who is gifted in various arts such as poetry, painting, playing musical instruments is not always considered the “ideal man” in this society. In fact, most of the artists in recent times, unfortunately, are not very successful unless they really stand out among the crowd. If Genji would have lived in the twenty-first century, it would be a wonder if he would even make it very far because he would no longer be thought of as the ideal and would just fade into the massive crowds of today’s society.
Works Cited
Murasaki, Shikibu, and Royall Tyler. The Tale of Genji. New York: Penguin Group, 2001.
Yet, despite the fact that no two women in this epic are alike, each—through her vices or virtues—helps to delineate the role of the ideal woman. Below, we will show the importance of Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Clytaemestra, and Penelope in terms of the movement of the narrative and in defining social roles for the Ancient Greeks. Before we delve into the traits of individual characters, it is important to understand certain assumptions about women that prevailed in the Homeric Age. By modern standards, the Ancient Greeks would be considered a rabidly misogynistic culture. Indeed, the notoriously sour Boetian playwright Hesiod-- who wrote about fifty years before Homer-- proclaimed "Zeus who thunders on high made women to be evil to mortal men, with a nature to do evil (Theogony 600).
Based on Murasaki Shikibu’s “The Tale of Genji” the ideal man and the ideal woman of the Heian Court can easily be discerned as not truly existing, with the main character, Genji, being the nearly satirical example of what was the ideal man, and descriptions of the many women in the story as prescription of the ideal woman with the young Murasaki playing a similar role to that of Genji in the story.
When studying gender roles in history, one will find that females are often depicted in similar ways no matter the era or region of study. Even when comparing the industrialized, early, twentieth century to today’s progressive era, there are striking similarities between female roles. We can see that over the course of the twentieth century, the qualities of loyalty and honesty have decreased in marriages due to the treatment of the two main female roles as depicted literature. The first was the role of the wife. The wife was often portrayed as a housekeeper and a nanny. Dull in appearance, there was no aesthetic beauty to this typical female. The other main role was the “other woman.” The more mysterious and promiscuous character, this woman portrayed the other part of the female population. Both of these types of characters are composites that portrayed the average, disposable female while how they were treated conveyed the general handling of females in the early, twentieth century.
The speaker repeats herself and states, many times, that all females should always have to behave and act like classy women and not “sluts”; here is an example, “this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they wont recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to watch every day, even if it with your own spit; don’t squat to play marbles – you are not a boy”(Kincaid 33). Kincaid points out specific actions that determine how a lady should act and must undergo to be “classy” in her own perfect world. Kincaid’s narrator puts female teens through a different perspective and environment where they should even be thinking of boys or men, instead, they should be learning how to sew or cook, iron and clean the house. In our generation, society plays a big role where females are subjected and labeled as “house slaves”. They are viewed as workers that must maintain the house impeccable, always have the food ready for the husband and take care of the children.
Once Orlando returns to the world of civility, boarding a ship to London in her new dress, she reflects upon the duties of a woman. She remembers that, as a man, she thought women were to be “exquisitely apparelled” but also “chaste year in and year out” (251). This upsets her as she is overwhelmed by the large effort she will have to put into her appearance only to get no reward. Orlando’s dilemma has been one that women have always faced: the balance of sexuality and modesty. Her society places heavy emphasis on marriage, wherein daughters vainly alter their appearance in hopes that they will use their beauty to attract a man of status. Consequently, they must also show modesty, not making a man want them too much, in order to preserve their image of purity. After losing her ability to be sexual, Orlando realizes that she faces many problems that she didn’t have as a man. In coming home after a long trip, Orlando returns to countless lawsuits because her sons are fighting for a property she can no longer own. Although Orlando “remained precisely as [she] had been” (220), her memories and ability the exact same, society deems her incapable of owning property. Orlando’s society would rather take everything from her than admit that her sex changed very little else about her ability and personality.
The Tale of Genji is considered the first great novel in the history of world literature. Murasaki Shikibu’s actual name is unknown, however it was common to name women after the office held by a male relative. Her father admired her academic brilliance but wished she were born a man instead because in the Heian society, Chinese learning was only valued for men. Men and women were strictly segregated in Heian Japan. Typically, women were married around ten or eleven, and their role was to bear children. The purpose of marriage was to continue the family line and create alliances with other families. Heian women’s literature thrived in this world of gender asymmetries. As female authors, women voiced how they suffered from their dependence on their husbands.
...whereas the ideal man would be one of high rank, faithful and had a tenderness and eloquence. The main trait discussed that would still apply personally as an ideal man and woman though would be one who was faithful. Though appearance is still a factor, what is considered beautiful has changed and a social hierarchy in the United States does not exist today. All in all, a relationship between a man and woman is an important aspect of anyone’s life, regardless of the place in history, and studying these aspects from a great novel like The Tale of Genji, plays a vital role in understanding Japanese culture.
The daughters in this film struggled with traditional sex roles mainly due to the influence of their mothers. In many cases, the mothers tried desperately hard to encourage their daughters to have power over their lives, be successful, and have a strong self-esteem. This over-encouragement to lead a life that they could not, led many of the daughters to feel inferior because they could not live up to their mother's expectations. In some cases, this led to the daughters getting involved in relationships in which they relied on their husbands for power and support. So in essence, it was their mothers' extremely high hopes for their daughters that led them to feeling inferior as women when these hopes could not be fulfilled.
The society in which classical myths took place, the Greco-Roman society was a very patriarchal one. By taking a careful gander at female characters in Greco-Roman mythology one can see that the roles women played differ greatly from the roles they play today. The light that is cast upon females in classical myths shows us the views that society had about women at the time. In classical mythology women almost always play a certain type of character, that is to say the usual type of role that was always traditionally played by women in the past, the role of the domestic housewife who is in need of a man’s protection, women in myth also tended to have some unpleasant character traits such as vanity, a tendency to be deceitful, and a volatile personality. If one compares the type of roles that ladies played in the myths with the ones they play in today’s society the differences become glaringly obvious whilst the similarities seem to dwindle down. Clearly, and certainly fortunately, society’s views on women today have greatly changed.
She tells the girl to “walk like a lady” (320), “hem a dress when you see the hem coming down”, and “behave in front of boys you don’t know very well” (321), so as not to “become the slut you are so bent on becoming” (320). The repetition of the word “slut” and the multitude of rules that must be obeyed so as not to be perceived as such, indicates that the suppression of sexual desire is a particularly important aspect of being a proper woman in a patriarchal society. The young girl in this poem must deny her sexual desires, a quality intrinsic to human nature, or she will be reprimanded for being a loose woman. These restrictions do not allow her to experience the freedom that her male counterparts
Murasaki Shikibu’s Tale of Genji, set in the Heian Period, gives a good idea of what the model Heian man and Heian woman should look like. Genji himself is like a physical embodiment of male perfection, while a large portion of the Broom Tree chapter outlines the ideal of a woman—that it is men who decide what constitutes a perfect woman, and the fact that even they cannot come to decide which traits are the best, and whether anyone can realistically possess all of those traits shows that the function of women in the eyes of men of that period was largely to cater to their husbands and households. Broken down, there are similarities and differences between the standard for Heian men and women, and the Tale of Genji provides excellent examples of characters who fit into their respective gender roles.
The young girl in the story is struggling with finding her own gender identity. She would much rather work alongside her father, who was “tirelessly inventive” (Munro 328), than stay and work with her mother in the kitchen, depicted through, “As soon as I was done I ran out of the house, trying to get out of earshot before my mother thought of what to do next” (329). The girl is torn between what her duties are suppose to be as a woman, and what she would rather be doing, which is work with her father. She sees her father’s work as important and worthwhile, while she sees her mother’s work as tedious and not meaningful. Although she knows her duties as a woman and what her mother expects of her, she would like to break the mould and become more like her father. It is evident that she likes to please her father in the work she does for him when her father says to the feed salesman, “Like to have you meet my new hired man.” I turned away and raked furiously, red in the face with pleasure (328-329). Even though the young girl is fixed on what she wants, she has influences from both genders i...
...alized that “a girl was not, as [she] had supposed, simply what [she] was; it was what [she] had to become” she was starting to admit defeat, and then finally when she begins to cry, it is here that the narrator understands that there is no escape from the pre-determined duties that go along with the passage of a child into being a girl, and a girl into a woman, and that “even in her heart. Maybe it (her understanding that conforming is unstoppable) was true”
She wrote this novel to inform readers that there are differences and similarities between the genders of male and female and how each of their minds work. She says, In other words, when we are not thinking of ourselves as “male” or “female” our judgements are the same. This quote directly shows us that she is trying to tell us what life is like with each gender.