This week’s readings touched on love and marriage through a woman’s lens (besides perhaps “Picnic”), particularly in marriages in which there was no love or there were struggles. I found these readings much harder to read than those of the past weeks because of the difficult subject matter, however I still enjoyed them.
I appreciated that they all had very distinctly different tones to them, despite the similar subjects. “Tomochan’s Happiness” leaves readers with an air of hope, that even though Tomo-chan went through something horrific, she was still able to live life "unafraid of men". The violence inflicted against her still had lasting consequences and impact on the way she socialized, but the readers get a sense that she could find contentment with Misawa-san, perhaps making plans to go to Hokkaido. I thought the approach the author took to break the fourth wall was also quite interesting, as an open invitation to not assume the best or the worst of a situation, but to just look at the proceedings at face value. In "Dissecting Misogyny", the tone of the story is that of humor, to make light of a serious topic and discussion.
"Seahorse" uses fantasy realism to tell another tragic story of a woman in marriage (or countless marriages, as it seems). It appears that only after she if able to talk to and raise her daughter in her likeness, that the main character is able to reclaim her sense of self and pride and return to the ocean. All of the men of her past have treated her poorly, and only in seeing her daughter reject a future similar to hers, is she able to break free and swim away from the things that were keeping her tethered to land.
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