The Female Image Of Tai Zaizhi's Late Works

You can never skip the female characters from Osamu Dazai’s works when doing research about Dazai’s literature.During his later years,also the most productive time of his writing career,3 representative works-Villon’s Wife,The Setting Sun and No Longer Human-came into public eyes and stirred extensive attention.Readers may,from time to time,find inconsistent women images in the three novels,meaning that descriptive words used to create female roles are inconsistent with the real impression left in readers’ mind.Through a detailed analysis of main female characters in Villon’s Wife,The Setting Sun and No Longer Human,we will dive into the books and unveil the reasons for “inconsistent” women images.6 parts in total are included.The intro part will explain the causes of the problem,previous study,and methodology;meanwhile it illustrates that women’s critical role in Osamu Dazai’s life has greatly affected his writing career.Previous study laid more emphasis on women’s traits instead of the special “inconsistent” women images intentionally built by the author.In Chapter One,we will analyze "Sachiko",the wife in Villon’s Wife,where her role as a thoughtful wife and mother pictured between the lines mismatches with her real image "Tubakiya’s Sacchann" in readers’ mind.In Chapter Two,by analyzing "the mother" and "Kazuko" from the book The Setting Sun,it’s obvious to see the inconsistent images of the elegant mother as well as the tough Kazuko’s inconsistent images in terms of her personality and ways of fighting.In Chapter Three,we will go through female characters like "Tsuneko","Shizuko" and "Yoshiko" from No Longer Human.Tsuneko is pretty and carefree but she has her dark side;Shizuko is reliable and respectable while she is sometimes like a "40-year-old man";Yoshiko changes from a pure sweet angel to a horrible devil.Chapter Four is going to shed light on the causes of "inconsistent" phenomenon from the perspective of inside the texts and outside the texts.Two aspects are to be considered concerning inside-the-text reasons: one is that Osamu Dazai’s different writing purposes for the three distinct books have shown significant influence on the image building of female characters;the other is the author’s special way of storytelling.Namely readers’ feeling towards women in the book will either deviate from positive images or mix with some negative impression in one way or another despite positive words are used in the descriptions,which proves to be a kind of narrating method adopted by Osamu Dazai.When it comes to the reasons beyond the texts,three aspects worth our attention: The fact that the author’s love-hate relationship with several women in his real life is influencing his works;the second reason is the standpoint of Osamu Dazai as a male writer.Besides,classical female images have taken root in traditional Japanese literature from long ago.The last part intends to make a summary of the whole thesis,leading to a conclusion that it’s inevitable to have this “inconsistent” phenomenon occurred in Osamu Dazai’s works due to the deep causes we discussed above.A number of inconsistent female images also imply the author’s contradictory opinions towards women,which in turn has become the highlight of Osamu Dazai literature by fuelling more vitality into his female characters as well as his novels.