The gap between the “good wife, wise mother” ideal and experiences of women in reality is also a crucial point to note. To begin with, while the formal attendance rates for girls at elementary schools did see a dramatic increase from 45% in 1895 (the year The Thirteenth Night was published) to 70% in 1900, girls’ education was not widespread before the First Sino-Japanese War. According to Shizuko Koyama:
“Even by the early 1890s, when modern school education in Japan was about twenty years old, girls’ education continued to stagnate…in 1892, for instance, rates of elementary school attendance were 72% for boys, but only 37% for girls – and these were the official figures, with actual attendance being lower. Also, in comparison with 16,000 boys enrolled in middle schools, there were only 2,800 enrolled in girls’ middle schools.”
From the above, it is clear that Oseki would not be the only one unable to meet the new expectations of the “good wife, wise mother” ideology – in fact, it can even be argued that most Japanese women living in the Meiji era would not have been able to. Moreover, traditional Confucian teachings still had a strong hold over the populace, and there remained a “strong preference for women equipped with purely domestic skills, the representative one being sewing, as well as feminine virtues …show more content…
Higuchi Ichiyo’s The Thirteenth Night, a story set during this period of change, reflected the social pressures exerted on them within the politicized ‘private’ sphere of the home. Caught in the flux and unable to free themselves from their marginalized positions in the new system, women like Oseki are rendered powerless and their happiness sacrificed - in the name of an abstract, constructed idea of modernizing
“Even by the early 1890s, when modern school education in Japan was about twenty years old, girls’ education continued to stagnate…in 1892, for instance, rates of elementary school attendance were 72% for boys, but only 37% for girls – and these were the official figures, with actual attendance being lower. Also, in comparison with 16,000 boys enrolled in middle schools, there were only 2,800 enrolled in girls’ middle schools.”
From the above, it is clear that Oseki would not be the only one unable to meet the new expectations of the “good wife, wise mother” ideology – in fact, it can even be argued that most Japanese women living in the Meiji era would not have been able to. Moreover, traditional Confucian teachings still had a strong hold over the populace, and there remained a “strong preference for women equipped with purely domestic skills, the representative one being sewing, as well as feminine virtues …show more content…
Higuchi Ichiyo’s The Thirteenth Night, a story set during this period of change, reflected the social pressures exerted on them within the politicized ‘private’ sphere of the home. Caught in the flux and unable to free themselves from their marginalized positions in the new system, women like Oseki are rendered powerless and their happiness sacrificed - in the name of an abstract, constructed idea of modernizing