The Female Image Of Higuchi Ichiyo In "Thirteen Nights"

The Meiji restoration brought great changes to Japan,which led to the trans formation of Japanese society into a capitalist society.Ideological aspect: the introduction of the European and American countries' natural human rights,equality for all,freedom and liberation and other advanced ideas has caused a great impact on the traditional Japanese society.The Japanese government advocated the absorption and acceptance of western culture,and vigorously carried out reform and improvement in the fields of society,economy and education.On the surface,Japanese society presents an unprecedented and new social fashion.But in fact,the feudal ideology was still prevailing in the society,the implementation of thousands of years of family system and rigid hierarchy still existed.Ordinary people living in the lower classes still adhered to the old customs and feudal ideology.This was the complex social environment of the early Meiji period.Ichiyo Higuchi lived in this special period between the old and the new.To get out of poverty,Ichiyo Higuchi took to the road of literary creation.With her unique growth experience and tortuous emotional experience,she projected her "female head of household" experience and complex emotional changes into the characters of the novel.She depicted the miserable life of women living in the lower class from the perspective of women.Ichiyo Higuchi expressed her sympathy for women from the lower classes in novels such as "Jyusanya","Takekur abe","Nigorie" and "Omisoka".This paper is divided into three chapters.The first part of the first chapter introduces Ichiyo Higuchi's family background and emotional experience,and analyzes the relationship between her personal experience and her literary creation.The second part introduces the relevant situation of the novel "Jyusanya",and analyzes the important position of "Jyusanya" in its literary activities by comparing it with its initial work "Yokinohi".The second chapter makes a detailed analysis of the female images of Oseki,the protagonist of "Jyusanya".Starting from the three identities of Oseki as a daughter,a wife and a mother,combined with the reality of the Meiji society,this paper expounds the oppression and bondage caused by the society on Oseki from the three aspects of patriarchy,husband power and society,especially the new oppression on women caused by women's education.The third chapter analyzes the characters of the heroines in Ichiyo Higuchi's later works "Takekurabe","Nigorie" and "Omisoka".They are respectively a young girl named Mitori who lived in the flower street as a child,a prostitute named Orikiwho is brave enough to resist the reality,and an ordinary worker named Omine who lives on her own ability.They have different identities,the attitude of their own destiny and life circumstances,no matter whether they resist their own destiny,the final result is into misfortune.It shows that the root cause of women's misfortune in the Meiji period lies in social restriction and oppression.The author,Ichiyo Higuchi,had always aimed to achieve a goal of literary creation and becoming a professional novelist,in her own way to fight against the unjust fate and unequal society.Although she died young,she left behind a masterpiece.The plot of leaving home in Jyusanya shows that the author's female consciousness had been awakened,due to the constraints of family and traditional education,the female consciousness had not been fully formed.But it also setted an example for the development of women's literature and the awakening of women's consciousness.