Tale Of Genji Critical Analysis

Female Agency in Augustine’s Confessions, The Thousand and One Nights, and The Tale of Genji For a large part of the past four millenia, women have occupied a curious space in world literature. Their allure has perplexed the male gaze across Eurasia, and this fascination has manifested in an array of texts: from the Roman Augustine’s late fourth-early fifth century classic the Confessions, written at the crux of Christianity’s institutionalization and the brink of the Roman Empire’s demise; to the Middle East’s fourteenth century’s frame tale of fantastic kings and enchanted vases, The Thousand and One Nights; and to eleventh century Heian Japan, in what is largely regarded as the first great novel, Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji. Yet

She is quickly established as one of the “certain ladies of the court whose high noble status gave them a sense of vain entitlement,” prone to ruthless gossip. As Emperor Kiritsubo’s first wife and ensnared in traditional Japanese sensibilities, she is free to not-so-politely gossip about whichever lady of the court has caught her attention, doubtlessly cultivated by the boredom forced upon her by Heian customs. The Kokiden Consort most ferociously ruins the Lady of the Paulownia-Courtyard Chambers, or the Lady Kiritsubo, a lower-class woman who “captured the heart of the Emperor and enjoyed his favor above all other imperial wives and concubines” and later gives birth to Genji, the novel’s hero (1159). She is resentful of the Emperor’s newest captivation due to his overzealous adoration and her own anxieties regarding the Emperor’s successor; her son, the Crown Prince, is the apparent heir to the throne, but this arrangement is compromised by Genji’s birth. The Emperor overwhelmingly prefers Genji over the Crown Prince, and showers him in praise, gifts, and attention. He is dismayed by Genji’s position and his social inviability as heir, for he strongly desires him to become Emperor after his death. Seized by turbulent jealousy, the Kokiden Consort vents her displeasure on the Lady Kiritsubo, ostracizing her and turning her into a social pariah. Yet it is not specifically

Women in medieval Japan were expected to be delicate and inobtrusive; they were dressed in multiple layers of clothes marking the season and particular occasion, and they were hidden behind screens in dimly lit interior rooms. Their education and pampering was not so much because Japanese society valued the female mind but rather because a daughter could be used as a set piece in her family’s progression to the imperial court, for “such polish was a way to attract the emperor’s attention and gain a competitive advantage over rivals” (1077-9). Murasaki Shikibu was a carefully cultivated product of her time, and though female characters play large roles in The Tale of Genji, their feebleness is still prized: for instance, the Kiritsubo Lady is so ensnared in traditional Japanese values that “even under these dire circumstances she was very careful to avoid any behavior that could be criticized as untoward or inappropriate.” Even on her deathbed after her cold treatment by the other ladies of the Heian court, she is described as a beautifully dying lady, for “the expression of weariness in her eyes made her all the more alluringly vulnerable as she lay there in a semiconscious state” (1167). And indeed, the Kokiden Consort exists solely to conflict with Genji and the Emperor Kiritsubo, to block their human yearning with her own icy wishes. Her agency is inexorably, inescapably intertwined with