Murasaki and Medea

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Murasaki and Medea

Although The Tale of Genji, by Murasaki Shikibu, is set in late tenth-century Japan, the plights of the characters are universal. In Chapter 12, Genji leaves his wife, who is named after the author, and goes into exile. Desperately in love with Genji, Muraskai is similar to Euripides' Medea in the play of the same name. She suffers because her husband, Jason, abandons her for a princess. Shikibu and Euripides seem to have shared the same worldviews about women's emotional dependence on their mates.

Women often rely on men to whisk them away from their old lives and to take the place of their father. Genji brings Murasak at age ten from a convent to his world at the Japanese court and raises her as the perfect wife. As an adopted daughter, Murasaki gradually becomes "closer to Genji than her own father" (2143). As for Medea, she kills her father and replaces him with Jason, who then takes her away to Corinth (474-475). The main difference is that Murasaki, since she was only a child, does not choose Genji as a replacement, but rather is forced...

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