Gender Roles In Sound Of Waves

Love is an especially disputed topic throughout the world, and many have yet to figure out what love actually means to them. There are countless interpretations and beliefs of what love is and it is different for each person. The Sound Of Waves by Yukio Mishima and Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson both explore different ideas of love and how it works within one’s life by setting up certain gender roles, analyzing environment, and using the genre of the book to design their vision of a love story.

Gender roles in the Sound Of Waves has an incredibly traditional feel to the entire story, and for the characters in the book they are classic archetypes to portray. The man is the one who makes the move in the relationship, does

There are many stereotyped roles between men and women, especially those within a relationship. Shinji is expected to pursue Hatsue and win her affection. He does this in many ways, including giving her a gift of a perfect pink shell to symbolize the perfect, ideal life he could give her. Shinji also has to win Hatsue’s father 's approval. Which does not happen right away. He has to prove he is “manly” enough to take care of Hatsue and is able to support and provide for her. Shinji finally proves he is deserving to Hatsue’s father when he wins the fishing competition on the father’s boat. Hatsue represents the pure, beautiful girl who has to fulfill the gender role of caring, beautiful, and in general just be quiet. She often follows the town’s morals and her family values. Hatsue is an innocent women who has never been with a man before, neither sexually or romantically. She is kind to all the people she comes across, and rarely goes against other people’s expectations

The kind of love that is difficult and painful. One that does not always end in happy endings and can not always be attained. A bildungsroman is a genre that is about a character 's growth and understanding in life. Winterson allows the reader to go with Jeanette as she grows up and realizes how confusing and difficult love is to find and keep. Jeanette finds and loses many love interests, because sometimes even when someone wants something badly, it does not happen. At the end of the book Jeanette reflects about what she has learned about love and says, “ As it is, I can’t settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side forever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection..” (Winterson 175) Even when talking about what she wants in love Jeanette uses negative or dark language such as death or destroying each other, because Jeanette has learned how hard love is to deal with throughout her