The Taboos of Family Romances: In Search of the Distorted Feminine Image

By Esther Jane Ben Ami, University of Rochester

            The feminine image is a broad conceptualization of feminine identity and behavior and is thus based in archetypical femininity. Archetypical femininity includes the nurturing quality associated with maternity, the chaotic element of nature and transformation, and the display of physical beauty and sexual appeal. Archetypal femininity, though expansive and necessary to the substance of life, becomes an oppressive tool when rigid expectations for gendered behavior arise from it. Oppressive archetypal femininity demonizes women’s behaviors that deviate from the ideal. Additionally, elements of archetypical femininity that challenge the opposing masculine archetype are scrutinized. For example, considering the traditional conceptions of masculinity and femininity, where femininity was conceptualized as chaotic, naturally disruptive, and in need of sorting out by, masculine order, the demonization of the transformation associated with female bodies is rooted in its element of natural and uncontrollable change (such as sexual development and maternity). Archetypical feminine chaos also plays a part in defining uncontrollable sexuality as a feminine attribute. In cultural traditions known for their adherence to order, established norms, and discipline, such as the Japanese, rigid expectations distort the feminine image. The distorted feminine describes both the distortion of individual identity in conformity with the archetype and the perceived distortion of those who deviate from the archetype. The distorted feminine image unfolds in a connective fabric [1] across three separate texts: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino (2003), Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa (1996), and An Extraterrestrial by Yumiko Kurahashi (1998). Each text has its different approach to expressing the distorted feminine image and its consequences on individuals, relationships, and the larger society. Moreover, the distorted feminine image engenders a longing for the original source -- a pre-societal space before archetypal femininity enforced gendered expectations of behavior. 

"womanofthedesert"byrickreddsis marked withCCBY-NC-SA2.0.

CHILDHOOD LOVE DENIED

            Grotesque explores the distortion of feminine identity through dysfunctional familial and romantic intimacy. The dysfunctions mapped throughout the novel also illustrates the private and domestic power structures of gender relations and patriarchy, reflect, and enforce larger issues such as the power imbalances and conflicts within Japanese society and cross-culturally. For example, the protagonist’s mother’s subservience within her family results in her loss of her sense of self – her subservience also embodies the marginalized side of cross-cultural conflict reflected within a singular home. Other female characters endure dysfunctional relationships with their sexuality and family that manifests an incestuous subtext within several of these relationships. The dysfunction within the domestic sphere also results in a paradox of extremes between an obsession with superficiality and physicality on one end, and a profound lack of emotional sincerity on another, both of which are conveyed through the complex identities and sexualities of Grotesque’s female characters.  

            Regarding the dysfunctional familial intimacy centering the protagonist’s mother, this family partially portrays the dissolving Japanese family structure. In other words, its description of marital dysfunction reflects a contemporary sociological issue in Japan: the incompatibility between Japanese culture and outside cultures. The marriage between the protagonist’s Japanese mother and European father has endured years of strain due to cultural differences. The protagonist recounts both the father’s disapproval of Japanese customs within the household throughout the text and the mother’s severe sense of alienation in Switzerland.[1] Thus, the protagonist’s family represents a breakdown of Japanese family values, incited by a clash between Japanese and Western cultures occurring within the nucleus of the family. Therefore, xenophobic hostilities and anxieties of cultural erasure, is reflected in the private domestic sphere, distorting individual identity in its most intimate interpersonal context, familial relationships.

            The protagonist’s mother’s oppression by her Western husband conveys the impact of patriarchal control on individual cultural identity. Therefore, this may be understood as a commentary on the cultural erasure of Japan by Western influences through a gendered lens. Portraying cultural conflict through family dysfunction, effectively gendering the conflict, illuminates one aspect of the distorted feminine image: the distortion of individual identity in conforming to the archetypal quality of subservience, which is invented in the domestic sphere and projects outwards to influence cross-cultural conflict and loss.  

            Grotesque also uses the family structure to reflect the sociocultural problems within Japanese society overall. By comparing the protagonist’s family to her schoolmate Kazue Sato’s ethnically Japanese family, it’s clear the emotional corruption of Japanese society is reflected within the domestic sphere, which results in the distortion of several female characters’ identities. The following paragraph will closely reflect on a scene with the Sato family to prove this point.

            Upon being confronted by Mr. Sato about her intentions with Kazue, the protagonist reflects on the compromised structure within her mixed family, explaining that while her father maintained a dominating presence within the household, his position as a foreigner prevented him from expressing that authority to society. And while the protagonist’s mother represented the dominant culture of society (Japanese culture), she could not express that authority within the household because of gender expectations, which, in her culture, prescribe her to be subservient and nonautonomous. The Sato household dynamic was different:

            When I saw a person who used rigidity and the absurdity of social conventions as steadfastly as Kazue’s father did, I was impressed. Why? Because Kazue’s father did not really believe in the social values he represented, but he clearly knew that he armed himself with them more or less as a weapon of survival.[2]

            In other words, because of Mr. Sato’s ethnicity as Japanese, his position as an authoritarian father transforms his household into a place that parallels the societal sphere. Thus, Grotesque conveys that Japanese society is a patriarchal social structure, and this social hierarchy is both reflected and invented in the domestic sphere. In all, having the social hierarchy of society, which is largely built on rigid gender roles[2] , reflected in the home, allows the domestic sphere to become a space where gendered social norms cultivate children’s personalities. We see this clearly through when all the women of the Sato household cater their identities to meet Mr. Sato’s expectation of traditional gender values.

            The emotional corruption that arises from the domestic sphere’s reconstitution of traditional gender values are highlighted in Mr. Sato’s claim that the values he embodies mean “nothing to him.” Nevertheless, he imposes them on Kazue, who believes in their sincerity, and is unconcerned with the psychological damage it may inflict on her. Herein lies the point of emotional corruption of Japanese society, reflected within the domestic sphere: the fight for social survival is so severe, empowering toxicity within gendered relations that is so excessive, it disrupts the unconditional love shared between parents and their children, distorting the intimacy children yearn for in those close relationships. The Sato family becomes a symbol of stability in a society characterized by rigidity, emotional vacancy, and a lack of authenticity. Although the protagonist’s family’s dysfunction reflects Japanese patriarchy to an extent in its domestic dynamic, it does not fully reflect Japanese society’s power structure, since the protagonist’s father is unable to reproduce the society-domestic parallelism that Mr. Sato does. Instead, the patriarchal dynamic within a mixed family suggests that the distortion of intimacy and identity reflecting and enforcing society’s gendered rigidity exists outside of Japanese culture, too. 

            By suppressing and corrupting the emotional needs of the female characters, physical desire and emotional desire are forcibly disconnected. The intimacy normally expected to be found in familial and romantic bonds is absent; however, sexuality remains a dangerously uncontrollable force. Grotesque inversely suggests, through this paradox of extremes between physicality and emotion, that the body and soul are meant to be intertwined. Disrupting the bond between them results in their mutual distortion, and intimate structures are simultaneously areas of emotional emptiness and transgression. For example, Kazue and the protagonist describe Mrs. Sato, completely subservient to the father’s wishes, to be like “one of his daughters”[3], indicating that the role of wife and daughter is transgressively blurred. A more explicit portrayal of transgression and of sex being an uncontrollable force characterizes Yuriko’s – the protagonist’s younger sister – narrative. The protagonist describes Yuriko to be so stunningly beautiful that she is “monstrous”.[4] The protagonist’s hatred towards her younger sister is embedded in Yuriko’s encapsulation of society’s superficiality, in which average-looking people like the protagonist are disadvantaged. “I knew I was far more intelligent than Yuriko,” she says, “and it irked me to no end that I could never impress anyone with my brains. Yuriko, who had nothing going for her but her hauntingly beautiful face, nevertheless made a terrific impression on everyone who came into contact with her.”[5] [3] Because of her powerfully seductive beauty, the protagonist expresses resentfulness, contempt, and intimidation toward Yuriko throughout the novel.

"Alphonse Mucha - P40 Femme Parmi Les Fleurs/Woman Among The Flowers, c.1900." by K.G.23 is marked with CC0 1.0.

            However, Yuriko’s looks may cause herself the most suffering. Yuriko claims that she defines her worth solely based on her sexual appeal towards men. She explains, “my ability to meet my lover’s demands is the only way I can feel alive.”[6] Yuriko’s whole life is centered around sex: she was aware of her sexual appeal at the early age of nine and lost her virginity to her uncle at age thirteen. By high school, she became a prostitute. Moreover, her sexual relationships are characterized by an incestuous subtext, displaying how the disruption of familial intimacy leads to the distortion of romantic intimacy in terms of the boundary transgression between the two. Not only does Yuriko have sex with her uncle, her deepest and most long-term relationship is with a character named Johnson, a father figure.  “What is certain is that Johnson somehow sustains me,” Yuriko says. “It is perhaps a longing for a father figure? Maybe. Johnson is unable to stop loving me, so in a way he is like a father. My own father, of course, did not love me. Or at least his love for me was thwarted.”[7] On one end of the extreme, Yuriko suffers from the absence of parental love which causes her to become romantically and sexually infatuated with a father-figure on the other end of it. In all, Yuriko’s fulfillment through sex is a reaction to her family’s and society’s obsession with her physical appearance. Denied love as a child, she becomes obsessively preoccupied with what did give her attention in those formative years. 

     Yuriko’s sexual obsession is motivated by childhood neglect. Likewise, Mari’s precocious sexuality and transgressive describes young woman who uses sexual relationship to map out psychological damages. Like Yuriko, not only does the text describe Mari as beautiful, she also becomes sexually active at an early age, with a man more than twice her age, who is known as “the translator.” The distortion presented in Hotel Iris concerns feminine and masculine archetypes — on an individual scale. Mari and the translator’s interactions display how gendered archetypes, when imposed on the individual, distorts the individual.

            Before exploring the archetypal significance of Mari’s self-fulfilling sexuality, I will describe the neglect and abuse Mari experienced because of her gender. Mari’s mother’s superficial compliments on Mari’s beauty while fixing up her hair — a daily ritual — cause Mari to reflect on her history of objectification that is endorsed by her mother. She states how her mother enjoys gloating about the many times when others have complimented Mari’s beauty. A sculptor, for example, tried to make a statue of her when she was a child. However, the sculptor had almost molested Mari. After it is over, Mari says, “I feel as though she’s hurt me in a way that will never heal”[8], referring to how, her mother’s objectification of her beauty conditioned her to become an object of sexual desire and violence. Therefore, Mari experiences an inverse reaction to perceptions of beauty: judgements of her attractiveness are distorted and inverted into feelings of ugliness because she understands that attractive women suffer in her society. Indeed, Mari describes her discomfort while her hair is being done: “the more she tells me how pretty I am, the uglier I feel”.[9] Thus, the hair-styling ritual becomes symbolic of the distorted feminine image passed on from mother to daughter, where Mari’s mother nurtures Mari’s identity fixate on the ideal of beauty, at the expense of her psychological and physical security.

            The wounded emotion behind the statement, “she’s hurt me in a way that will never heal” illustrates how the dynamics of the child-parent relationship persists into adult relationships and how the domestic sphere influences the societal sphere and vice versa. When Mari’s mother ritually arranges her daughter’s hair, she also passes down archetypal feminine chaos, which manifests in sexual appeal, a byproduct of conforming to the ideal of beauty. In fixing her hair, Mari’s mother communicates both the overweening importance of beauty, and the instruction to harness the feminine chaos the coincides with its cultivation. Ironically, it is because she is overwhelmed by feminine chaos that Mari seeks to be organized by masculinity, and she specifically seeks this out through her sexuality. Therefore, because of this matrilineal heritage of archetypal conformity and shame, Mari’s relationship with the translator constitutes her embodiment of chaotic femininity regulated by masculine order.

"the other woman" by Chiara Stevani is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

            Mari’s first sexual encounter with the translator depicts the regulation of femininity by masculinity. “I was an affront to order,” Mari narrates. In the scene, Mari expresses a deep yearning to be forgiven – for what is left unanswered in the novel, allowing the archetypal framework to set in. She relates this desire to the dynamic between her and her mother that she’s experienced since childhood, “‘I’m sorry, forgive me.’ They were words I had said over and over to my mother since childhood. Though I’d had no idea what forgiveness meant, I had cried for it nonetheless. But now, finally, I understood. From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to be forgiven.”[10] In other words, Mari portrays the prototypical woman who has, perhaps due to her physical appeal, internalized the distorted feminine image. She is no longer an autonomous individual — her entire identity centers around the feminine chaos she’s internalized and the forgiveness it requires when exercised to its expected potential. Indeed, she is continuously punished (through hair rituals, objectification, etc.) for the archetypal feminine chaos she conditioned to represent. 

            Thus, Mari seeks the sexual space to act out primal gendered shame, where she embodies the feminine archetype and her partner, the masculine. Mari’s sexual encounter constitutes this space. Taking on these roles allows Mari to be forgiven for her femininity through sexual debasement. This may be why Mari falls more in love with the translator the more he humiliates and punishes her — through the sexual violence she endures she is redeemed.

THE ORIGINAL SOURCE

            Overall, the internalization of the distorted feminine image – typically conveyed through the embodiment of a self-denying gender expectation or gender archetype – is cultivated in the childhood and/or domestic space and characterizes these fictional women’s dysfunctional adult relationships. This leads to a longing for the original source — a pre-societal place void of gendered shame and social expectations. The original source is an imaginary space where one can express desires spontaneously and without inhibition. It is characterized by feminine constructs targeted for misogynic debasement, such as the life-giving and transformational aspects of female bodies, which establishes them as a direct antidote to the distortion by the feminine image. Grotesque’s protagonist’s daydreams describe the characters around her, along with the imaginary children conceived in her mind, swimming in a prenatal and pre-societal space. Considering the novel’s hierarchical social environment, the relative freedom of this imaginative space may alleviate the protagonist from social judgment. The original pre-societal and prenatal aspect imbues it with a (biologically) feminine construct. Therefore, we can interpret the envisioning of a prenatal and pre-societal space as a yearning for the original source.

Art by Elizabeth Tillar https://pixels.com/featured/mythology-of-the-cosmic-egg-elizabeth-tillar.html

            In “An Extraterrestrial,” the original source manifests as the body of the text’s title character. Due to its lack of autonomy and its hermaphrodite features, the Alien becomes the destination for which the brother and sister can express their socially unacceptable and thus repressed, affections for one another — a bond anticipating disruption by the sister’s impending marriage – enabling the Alien to act as a pre-societal space. Furthermore, several components determine the Alien as a feminine symbol. First, its emergence into the world: the egg connotes pregnancy. The egg from which the Alien came and the Alien itself is characterized by a vast emptiness. This space allows for repressed desires to be expressed. Thus, the feminineness of the Alien’s manifestation in the narrative lends to the pre-societal potential as well. The egg’s interior holds an endless nothing, another feminine construct since it describes the paradox of the feminine vessel: the perpetual emptiness due to its status as a vessel is paradoxical to its potential to carry something significant (i.e., life).

            Thus, the Alien is used as a treasured vessel to convey the brother and sister’s taboo relationship, join their transgression, and connect their (gendered) opposition, harmonious unity: "Between me and L lay the nothingness enclosed by the fake flesh, our universe, so to speak".[11] The Alien is, for the brother and sister, their “universe” of free sexual expression. And the Alien’s defining feminine construct of birth identifies it as a site of transformation. The union of the brother and sister through the alien, along with the Alien’s hermaphrodite features, envisions the original source as a space of unity between opposites. Likewise, the relationship between Mari and the Translator in Hotel Iris represents a similarly sacred place where the contrasting archetypes and internalized shame are expressed and symbolically joined through sex. The translator's island and house exist as a sexual universe, where Mari is reborn through masculine order. In short, the vision for original unity in Hotel Iris manifests in the sexual relationship between two characters, which marks the destination where their archetypal transformation takes place. In “An Extraterrestrial,” the destination of original unity is the Alien’s body, shared between the siblings as their pre-societal, uninhibitedly expressive space that they are reborn into.    

            The story ends with the pair of siblings entering the alien’s vast and endless womb the night before the sister’s wedding. This reverse birth symbolizes the siblings’ mutual longing for the original source, which, through the Alien, represents the harmony of original unity, a pre-societal idea.

CONCLUSIONS

            All in all the taboo and/or emotionally corrupted relationships that exist across, and thus connect all three texts, distort the feminine image. Grotesque offers a view into the domestic and interpersonal dysfunction and rigidity upon which Japanese society is based, a dysfunction that affects a paradox of extremes, which calls for unity and is expressed in several ways. Yuriko is so beautiful that she becomes a monster, and interpersonal bonds are so drained of their authentic emotional quality that physical appearance and sexuality become objects of obsession. In Grotesque, the distorted feminine image is created within the domestic sphere; it projects gendered power dynamics (as seen through the protagonist’s parents) and emotional corruption (as seen through the cultivation of Yuriko’s and the Sato women’s personalities) into the societal sphere and reflects those toxicities inwards as domestic, interpersonal, and individual maladjustment.  Hotel Iris approaches the distorted feminine image more transcendentally by having Mari and the translator act out the conflict between feminine and masculine archetypes through their sexual relationship. We see that Mari’s desire to have masculine order contain her feminine chaos results from the feminine shame passed down from her mother. The act of passing down supports how the distortion of the feminine image has its roots in an inter-generational archetypal conflict that is internalized within individuals. Finally, “An Extraterrestrial”, Like Hotel Iris and Grotesque, grounds sociological and metaphysical incongruency in gender and sexuality. “An Extraterrestrial” envisions a utopia where both the paradox of extremes, and, the conflict between archetypal femininity and masculinity are resolved by unity in a perfect sensual universe.

Endnotes

[1] Kirino, Natsuo. Grotesque. Translated by Rebecca Copeland. (Peng Rand, 2008), 42-46.

[2] Kirino, 93.

[3] Kirino, 94.

[4] Kirino, 7.

[5] Kirino, 46-47.

[6] Kirino, 119.

[7] Kirino, 120.

[8] Ogawa, 16.

[9] Ogawa, Yoko. Hotel Iris. Translated by Stephen Snyder. (MAC HIGHER, 2010), 16.

[10] Ogawa, 55.

[11] Kurahashi, Yumiko and Atsuko Sakaki. “An Extraterrestrial .” Chapter. In The Woman with the Flying Head and Other Stories, (Armonk, NY: Routledge, 2015), 22