"The Hunger and Thirst of Love"
Man has the ultimate desire for love, and if this love can proceed slowly and slowly, then everything is normal, but when this desire is oppressed, it becomes distorted and extreme.
From Etsuko's perspective, the book portrays a woman who is not chaotic and pursues love in an extreme way. What this woman longs for is not normal love, but a twisted love mixed with jealousy, grief, and so on.
His husband Ryosuke married her only because he saw Etsuko as a descendant of a famous warlord of the Warring States and could use Etsuko to gain a lot of convenience. And these conveniences have become worthless after the war. Ryosuke has an affair outside, the number of strange ties in the family is increasing, and the woman's handkerchief is deliberately revealed in the desk, and he deliberately incites Etsuko's jealousy and takes pleasure in it. He never let Etsuko touch his body, even dressed himself, and he had no substantial love for Etsuko. However, he suffered from typhoid fever, was bedridden, and died not long after. The book spends a chapter of ink and ink to write about the scene three days before Ryosuke's death, which is particularly wonderful, reflecting the author's technique of portraying complex psychology, and this chapter can be said to stimulate Etsuko's desire for love.
During the time that Etsuko took care of her husband, Etsuko got the love she wanted. She does not want her husband to get better, she thinks that only if Ryosuke is sick in bed, she will not leave her, she is even enjoying, she is just in the name of taking care of her husband to firmly tie him to herself, she is extremely happy to look at his condition. The identities of Ryosuke and Etsuko change at this moment, before they are sick, it is Ryosuke who gives Etsuko pain, after the illness, Etsuko can unscrupulously tell Ryosuke on the bed that she does not know whether to love or hate feelings, and when Ryosuke is seriously ill, Etsuko wins and successfully possesses everything he has.
Mishima photos
There is a sentence in the text that describes it like this:
"The life of the isolated island, the ideal form of life that Etsuko has longed for for a long time, is about to begin, and no one will be able to catch up with it again." No one can come in. Only people who resist germs as the only reason for existence live. ”
Etsuko lives greedily in the death of her husband. When Etsuko follows the hearse to burn her husband's body, she tells herself, "I am not going to burn her husband's body, but to burn my jealousy."
After Ryosuke's death, Etsuko's father-in-law, Miyoshi, invited Etsuko to the Rice Temple. The old man is desperate for Etsuko's body, but the depiction of sexual scenes in the book is only a passing mention, focusing on the transformation of the character's heart. When Mikichi's hands touched Etsuko, Etsuko didn't resist either, she just wanted to satisfy her own balance of love in this act. And this balance was broken in Sanlang.
Etsuko gave Sanro socks and tried to test him, but later found the socks that had been sent out in the garbage can, and even discovered the relationship between Sanro and the maid Miyo, and even more unexpectedly, Miyo was pregnant with Sanro's child, which made Etsuko jealous. Does Etsuko really love Saburo? I don't think so.
Etsuko is a clear brewer and appreciator of self-suffering, and the source of all this suffering is the twisted love in her heart.
Sending socks to Saburo to test him, or expelling the pregnant Miyo, this seems to be some kind of need for Etsuko's survival, she must have an object that can torture her, Miki can't satisfy her, Miyoshi's old body is unable to smooth Etsuko's twisted love. Etsuko must have an object to pursue, and that object is Saburo.
When Etsuko asked Saburo out and Saburo forcibly pressed Etsuko under her, Etsuko's body was resisting, and when she was about to get the knot she expected, she was so enchanted that she resisted, so much so that Etsuko grabbed the hoe from Mikichi who had rushed in and killed Saburo. Mikichi asks Etsuko why she killed Saburo, but Etsuko says, "Because he tortured me."
She didn't want his desires to be fulfilled.
And when her next desire was ignited, she could sleep peacefully.