Genji the cipher (through C.9)

[jonquil]

I have been skipping ahead in the book (shame!), and I've been trying to think why I find Genji himself so hard to get a grip on. Murasaki and Aoi and his poor dead wife are all clear in my head; Genji remains a mystery

Comments

[anonymous]

I think I'd have a hard time believing that the author's really that impressed with him. Especially in the later chapters, she seems to undercut him like mad.

For instance, the scene where he's about to leave for Suma (p233 in the Tyler, 224 in Seidensticker), even in the midst of his grief, he notices how handsome he's gotten from being thin and does an 'oh, poor me' for Murasaki's benefit. Tell me the author's not mocking his self-centeredness there! I know _I_ am :)

I find him a very convincing character in the way that he often genuinely means well, but like many =P people, he has a remarkable inability to get beyond himself. He may be devoted (in his own way) to all his twelve billion women, extraordinarily sensitive to their feelings etc., but he seems to only understand their emotions in terms of their effect on _him_.

I wonder if this isn't due partially to his status as the perfect man in the Heian trope of men peeking through the screens at women etc - he is so much "the ultimate gaze", able to look at and rewrite the women around him through his desire, that he becomes utterly unable to get out of that position and genuinely see things from another's perspective. Even when he thinks about the feelings of others, what he's really doing is, as someone suggested, writing a script for their feelings based on his desire to see.

This means that it gets very interesting in the points where Murasaki-author puts him in positions of being the object of someone else's gaze -how it transforms his reactions, and what it does to the meaning of The Gaze itself in the text. Er...getting a little over-theoryalicious here, I think. Sorry, I'll stop now..

Lianne