Themes
Nagai Kafu’s Rivalry tells the tale of a geisha walking the fine line between companionship and love. Throughout the novel, it becomes evident that a geisha should never fall in love, for she will surely be taken advantage of if she does. Nagai Kafu stresses that men are unreliable and that their intentions are never as they seem. It is hard for a geisha who is so dependent on men not to eventually fall in love but it is this detachment in itself that will ultimately lead to a geisha’s independence. She must use her power over men to get what she wants and keep her emotions in check. Rivalry shows a woman’s struggle to balance this geisha life with her desire for independence.
Read more about this topic: Geisha In Rivalry
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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