![]() ![]() Fiction has the potential to be more entertaining than fact. This can be observed in the case of geisha, Japanese artists who entertained their guests with no sexual intent but instead became an object of desire and refined sexuality, an enticing exotic creature to the West due to the inaccurate representation. Orientalizing of women often implied them as a means of objectification that appealed to the Western audience. ![]() All around the world we come across many bitter stories of such exploitation experienced by women in society. This paper attempts to analyse Memoirs of a Geisha with its counterpart Geisha of Gion: The True Story of Japan's Foremost Geisha or Geisha, A Life (2002), putting forward an argument by comparing these two texts as cultural phenomena symbolizing orientalism of the East as a sexualized and eroticised object to be commodified by the West through the feminist perspective for centuries, the cases of women's exploitation have happened without any substantial solution to end it as yet. Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha (1997), is based upon the life story of Mineko Iwasaki, a renowned Geisha during the 1960s and 1970s, and reveals the darker sight of Orientalism. The representation of women in literature is one of the most important forms of 'socialisation', since it provides the role models which will portray acceptable versions of the 'feminine' and legitimate feminine goals and aspirations. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |