Olympic gold medalist, world record holder in multiple sports, and founder of the Ladies Pro Golf Association, “Babe” was the ultimate athlete of the early 19th century.
Babe was born on June 26th, 1911 in Port Arthur, Texas. Her nickname was modeled after another “great”: Babe Ruth. She grew up playing baseball in her neighborhood and earned the nickname by being a fierce competitor and routine home-run hitter. It’s been noted that she excelled in every sport she tried. She even played basketball on the company team, The Golden Cyclones, while working as a secretary at Employers Casualty Company in Dallas, Texas for three years before setting her sights on the 1932 Olympics.
At the time, women were only allowed to compete in three events, yet Babe ended up qualifying in five. At 21-years-old, she earned a gold medal for the javelin throw (143 ft) and the 80-meter hurdle and set a new world record for both, no less. The only “downside” was that she left the Olympic games with a silver medal instead of gold in the high-jump after the judges disqualified her technique. Pretty good for a first Olympics, huh? As it stands, Babe is the only track and field athlete to win individual Olympic medals in running, throwing, and jumping events – male or female.
She’s well-known for these feats, but the most major of her achievements is her career in golf. Throughout her life, she won 82 tournaments and was considered a professional golfer because of her endorsements. At one point or another throughout her career, she was endorsed by Wilson, Wheaties, and Timex. P. Goldsmith Sons Inc. also created branded Babe golf clubs and balls and her most lucrative deal came from Chrysler. Chrysler paid Babe to play the harmonica and stand next to a red Dodge coupe at the Detroit Auto Show. How cool is that?
She met her husband because of golf, too. George Zaharais was a professional wrestler and actor from Colorado and they met at the 1938 Los Angeles Open when they were paired together at the tournament. She was competing as the first woman in the tournament ever. No other woman competed in this tournament until almost six decades later.
Eleven months after meeting Goerge and Babe got married and George became Babe’s manager. They settled down in Tampa, Florida and bought a golf course of their own. As Babe became more well-known, she received amateur status and this allowed her to play in a more competitive league of tournaments. Between 1943 and 1947, she won 17 amateur golf tournaments in a row.
“That little white ball won’t move until you hit it, and there’s nothing you can do after it has gone.”
Um, wow. How profound of you, Babe.
During this period, there were limited options for female golf competitors, so Babe co-founded the Ladies Professional Golf Association with fellow golfer Patty Berg. Babe held status as the president of this organization for the rest of her life. As a professional athlete, she achieved a major feat for women everywhere and in her final years, she reportedly earned close to $100,000 annually from endorsements and tournaments she competed in. $100,000 in the 1940s is akin to 1 million dollars today in 2021.
She was one cool girl and a truly fierce competitor.
The New York Times columnist Charles McGrath has written of Babe, “Except perhaps for Arnold Palmer, no golfer has ever been more beloved by the gallery.”
More cool facts about Babe:
She didn’t excel in school. She had to repeat 8th grade.
Babe was an excellent seamstress and made most of her clothes, including her golf ‘fits.
Although only 5’7” and 115 lbs, she was deemed “manly” by many critics and physically very strong.
She sang and played harmonica. She recorded songs like “I Felt a Little Teardrop” and “Detour” with Mercury Records.
In 1976, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
In 1981, The U.S. Postal Service put her on an 18 cent stamp!
The Associated Press declared Babe Woman Athlete of the 20th Century in 1999.
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón was born July 6th, 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico.
She was an artist known for her painted works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico and of her many portraits. Most notably, her self-portraits. If you haven’t seen Frida’s face at this point in your life, you’re lying. This might spark your memory: her unibrow. In all of her self-portraits, she sports a kempt unibrow that eyebrow aficionados of the 21st century couldn’t hold a candle to. Even Glossier Boy Brow couldn’t achieve her all natural look.
Throughout her life, it seemed that Frida was fearless. After surviving polio as a child and being hit by a bus as a young adult, she experienced pain and suffering practically her entire life. In fact, it was her bus accident that sparked her passion for painting. She was confined to her bed after the accident for three months. Her mother lovingly crafted an easel, her father lent her some of his oil paints, and the rest is history. Frida had a mirror placed above her easel so that she could see herself – and what better model than yourself, right?
“I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best.”
When Frida was 20, she met her future husband, Diego Rivera through her involvement in the Mexican Communist Party. They married just two years later in 1929 and spent the early years of their marriage traveling throughout Mexico and the U.S. where Frida developed her artistic niche: Mexican folk culture. Her parents weren’t exactly thrilled about Diego marrying their daughter, referring to it a a “marriage between an elephant and a dove.” He was also 21 years her senior. Regardless of their dissimilarities, Diego was wealthy and could support Frida (and her many ailments) financially. Her father had no choice but to approve of their union.
Frida and Diego later lived in San Francisco and after that they moved to Detroit. Diego was an artist, too, and in Frida’s first exhibition she still only publicly presented herself as Rivera’s spouse rather than an artist herself. In Detroit, Frida experienced health problems related to a failed pregnancy. She had never wanted to have children and she had more than one abortion in her lifetime.
Her distaste for Detroit was double fold since she didn’t particularly care for the United States’ capitalist culture, either. Albeit, her time in Michigan was beneficial for her artistic expression. After all, art is pain, isn’t it? She started experimenting with her techniques and was focusing more on themes of terror, anguish, suffering, and pain.
Their relationship was tumultuous, but there was surely love there. If not love, perhaps it was adoration. They had a mutual respect for one another. They appreciated each other’s craft and artistic souls and were bound by their pride in Mexico and their political beliefs. Diego said of her work, “She breaks all the taboos of the women’s body and of female sexuality.”
She and Diego divorced and then reconciled. Throughout their marriage, they were both unfaithful and had affairs with many different people throughout their lifetime. Frida was bi-sexual, but is said to have favored men. Diego had an affair with Frida’s younger sister which crippled their relationship and she was hurt deeply by. We see this anguish in some of her works. Frida was not only in emotional pain from these affairs, but physical as well. She contracted syphilis at one point, adding to her many health issues.
Frieda’s first solo exhibition was held at Julien Levy’s gallery on East 57th Street in Manhattan. Frida wore a traditional colorful Mexican dress that caused a sensation and was described as “the height of exotica”. She wore traditional indigenous Mexican peasant clothing to emphasize her mestiza ancestry. This included long, colorful skirts, elaborate headdresses and masses of jewelry.
Other artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Clare Boothe Luce attended the exhibition and Frida received rave reviews in the press. Some of the reviews weren’t as good-natured. They were written quite condescendingly. Time described her work as childish and discounted her work by using descriptors such as “little, dainty, playful,” and “unsentimental” to name a few.
Despite these reviews, and despite the Great Depression, Frida sold half of the 25 paintings presented in the exhibition. She didn’t paint much while in New York, but she did engage in a few love affairs in the city that never sleeps. Most notably, these three men were captivated by Frida: Nicolas Muray, Levy Kaufmann and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. At this time, Frieda was also tied to notable figures like A. Conger Goodyear, president of the MoMA and socialite Dorothy Hale, who had famously committed suicide by jumping from her apartment building.
After New York, she sailed to Paris. The Louvre purchased her work The Frame and she became the first Mexican artist to be featured in their collection. She was also warmly received by other Parisian artists, the most notable being Pablo Picasso. Vogue Paris also featured her on its pages in 1937. Although Paris was fond of Frida, she wasn’t too fond of the “dirty” Paris scene. In a letter to a friend, she called Surrealists “a bunch of coocoo lunatics and very stupid surrealists” who “are so crazy ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t even stand them anymore.” Frida’s time in Paris wasn’t all bad. Picasso gave her a pair of earrings in the shape of ivory hands and Elsa Schiaparelli created a dress in her honor which she named the “Madame Rivera”. Not too shabby, huh?
Soon after, she became even more popular in the United States and was featured in a plethora of exhibitions in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia such as Twentieth-Century Portraits at the MoMA and Women Artists at Peggy Guggenheim’s The Art of This Century gallery.
In the last stage of her life, an attempted surgery to support her spine failed and art from this period include the aptly named Broken Column, Without Hope, Tree of Hope, Stand Fast, and TheWounded Deer. During her last years, she was confined to her home, the Casa Azul, where she painted and devoted her artistic energy around her political convictions.
“I have a great deal of restlessness about my paintings. Mainly because I want to make it useful to the revolutionary communist movement… until now I have managed simply an honest expression of my own self. I must struggle with all my strength to ensure that the little positive my health allows me to do also benefits the Revolution, the only real reason to live.”
Her painting technique also changed during this time. Her brushstrokes were no longer delicate and careful. They were now hastier, colors were more audacious, and the overall style was more intense. Her style changed not only due to the little energy she had, but perhaps also because of the intensity she felt for the cause.
Frida’s first solo exhibition in Mexico was at the Galería Arte Contemporaneo in April 1953. Because she was prescribed bed rest, she ordered her bed to be moved from her home to the gallery. She arrived in an ambulance and was carried on a stretcher to the bed, where she stayed for the duration of the party.
Frida was always an advocate for social change. In a letter to a friend, she wrote, “Although I am very interested in all the industrial and mechanical development of the United States”, that she felt, “a bit of rage against all the rich guys here, since I have seen thousands of people in the most terrible misery without anything to eat and with no place to sleep, that is what has most impressed me here, it is terrifying to see the rich having parties day and night while thousands and thousands of people are dying of hunger.” She disliked capitalists such as Henry and Edsel Ford and was outraged at the hotels in Detroit that refused Jewish guests. In a lot of ways, she was an incredible progressive feminist figure and way ahead of her time.
Frida’s Works
I paint my reality.
Kahlo’s paintings often feature root imagery and trees.
Some of her most famous works:
(Insert Frieda and Diego Rivera – double portrait based on their wedding photograph).
(Insert The Portrait of Luther Burbank – eponymous horticulturist as hybrid between human and plant).
Rita Moreno is Miss Puerto Rico: Triple Threat. Singer, dancer, actress, and EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony) recipient. Her resume is extensive in the entertainment industry; most notably for capturing roles in musical films Singin’ in the Rain (1952), The King and I (1956), West Side Story (1961).
Speaking about Singin’ in the Rain, Moreno has said that Gene Kelly wanted her in the movie and she seemed to fit the role he had in mind for her: silent film star Zelda Zanders. “He (Kelly) never said ‘Oh, she’s too Latina,’ he just thought I’d be fine for it.” Her most notable role? Anita in the original West Side Story. “What was important about Anita to me — and still is — is that Anita, believe it or not, was the only part I ever remember where I represented Hispanics in a dignified and positive way.”
She almost didn’t take the role that made her a huge star after hearing the original lyrics she’d have to sing in “America”: “Puerto Rico. You ugly island, island of tropic diseases.” She threatened to turn down the role, but Stephen Sondheim ended up changing the lyric to: “Puerto Rico, my heart’s devotion, let it sink back in the ocean.”
West Side Story is making a comeback on the silver screen December 10th, 2021 and a role was written specifically with Rita Moreno in mind. She’s also an executive producer. After all, she did win the Oscar for her portrayal of Anita in the 1961 movie. The day before the movie premieres, December 9th 2021, Moreno will turn 90 years old.
After her Oscar win, Moreno thought more was to come for her. She thought she’d be met with offers to play more big roles or even roles written with her in mind. I mean, this happens for actresses that typically win Oscars, right? An Oscar usually propels an actresses’ career, right? Unfortunately, not for Rita Moreno.
After the thrill was gone, Moreno’s life slowly returned to her reality: as a Latina actress. She was offered stereotyped roles as housewives of gang members and of the like. She cites this time as “the heartbreak of her life”. She turned these offers down, and rightfully so, since they were often offensive or insignificant. She didn’t make another movie for seven years after winning her Oscar.
In 1975, she won a Tony for her role in The Ritz. For most of the 70’s, Moreno was a cast member of the children’s show The Electric Company for which she earned a Grammy award for the show’s album. Cue the phrase: Hey, you guys! She also snagged a role in The Muppet Show, another children’s program, and earned an Emmy. Thus, in 1977, she was then an EGOT recipient.
In more recent history, she’s been featured in series like The Golden Girls, Miami Vice, Murphy Brown, Ugly Betty, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and Oz. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004.
A new PBS documentary based upon her memoir, Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It, narrates her life and career. Coming up in the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, she experienced her fair share of sexism, racism, and sexual assault.
She described Buddy Adler, former Fox Studio Chief and extremely powerful in Moreno’s professional world at the time, as someone she would try desperately not to be alone with. She added her experience in light of the Me Too movement sparked by the disgusting actions of Harvey Weinstein. Unfortunately, men like this exist, and Moreno wanted to shed light on her experience as a woman being hounded for over a year by a man who had the power to sidetrack her career.
Love Life
As for her love life, Moreno has caught quite a few big fish in her lifetime. She dated big names like Marlon Brando and “The King” himself, Elvis Presley.
“I dated Elvis to make Marlon jealous. So for a short while there, I had the two kings of different things, show business royalty.”
She and Brando had a tumultuous relationship that caused her to attempt suicide. After the attempt, Brando sent her a letter giving her closure, an apology, and a final goodbye. Six months later, he called her up and they became friends.
Moreno married Leonard Gordon in 1965. They had one child together, a girl named Fernanda. Gordon died in 2010. Despite being together for 45 years, Moreno describes herself as “blossoming” after Gordon’s death. She felt like she could finally be her “raucous” self, which he often described as her “show business-self”.
“I really did love him, but what happened was … sometimes people make contracts with each other that are never verbalized or spoken. In my case, it was, ‘I’ll be a wonderful little girl and amuse you and make you happy if you will be my daddy and my protector and take care of me.’ That’s what our contract really was, and the day that I decided I wanted to start growing up is when the marriage got into trouble, and that literally started in our seventh year. I remember talking divorce with him at that time. And of course, we didn’t, and I didn’t and that as that. But I was unhappy for a very, very, very long time.”
Maria Sibylla Merian was a naturalist, botanical illustrator, and entomologist.
Merian studied insects, or if you’re like me, you call them BUGS. I’m not a huge bug person, but I do appreciate their presence on our earth and their contributions to the circle of life. I just don’t want them nibbling on me in my bed sheets and I especially do not want them creeping and crawling and making their homes in the corner of my bathtub. Nevertheless, Merian is one of the most interesting women I’ve come across while researching influential women throughout history. Her innate curiosity and depicting the world around her through art proved to be extremely beneficial to the scientific community, even today.
She’s best known for her illustrations of plant life and insects of what is now the country of Suriname. It’s said that she discovered insects and animals previously unknown to the South American country, which isn’t entirely uncommon for the time period. Heck, we’re only now discovering previously unknown species in 2021.
Not only did she accomplish that feat, but in doing so she also recorded and illustrated the life cycles of up to 186 insect species. In turn, she uncovered the phenomenon we know today as metamorphosis.
Merian was born in 1647 in Frankfurt, Germany. At the time, this was a center for the silk trade and silk worms, (aka the domestic silk moth. I guess? Google it.), were very important to the city’s economy. At age 13, Merian began to collect insects and raise silkworms. Her stepfather, an artist himself, encouraged her to paint and so she began to paint the insects and plants of her environment.
“I spent my life investigating insects. At the beginning, I started with silk worms in my hometown of Frankfurt. I realized that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed.”
Merian married and had two daughters, Johanna Helen and Dorthea Maria, with her stepfather’s apprentice, Johann Andreas Graff, who was from Nuremberg. They moved to Nuremberg where she helped her family financially by giving drawing lessons to unmarried daughters of wealthy families. This helped her social status within the community and as a result, she had access to many of the finest gardens maintained by the elite where she could continue her studies of plant life and insects. During this time in her life, she began publishing many collections of paintings of plant life and, from time to time, insects.
She was not only an artist in the typical sense. She did not only draw and paint, but Merian also started engraving her works on copperplate.
Quite a few years later, she was indoctrinated by a Labadist community, a religious cult led by radical pietists, with her mother and daughters. During that time, she learned Latin and studied the development of frogs, which she often caught and dissected.
After leaving the cult community, she lived for a brief time in Amsterdam. She made a living selling her paintings and by 1698, she was living lavishly in a house on Kerkstraat. Most notably, because of her reputation she was given the opportunity to view personal collections of wildlife from Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America, that some of the highest officials in Amsterdam had in their possession. Thus her next adventure began… Merian and her daughter Dorthea went to Suriname to study the exotic native species of the exotic destination. Their mission would last five years, and in order to fund the mission, Merian had to sell 255 of her paintings. She saw living in Suriname as the opportunity of a lifetime.
These are some of the coolest facts she uncovered:
Sphinx moths have split tongues. She wrote that the two sides of the sphinx moth combine to form one tongue while drinking nectar. This is only true for one brief stage of the sphinx moth’s life, though: immediately emerging from its pupa as an adult moth.
Tarantulas devour small birds, like the hummingbird. This fact shakes me to my very core, so I would really rather not dwell on it. I am a hummingbird fanatic, so it breaks my heart that this happens!
Leaf cutter ants exist. She wrote: “In America there are large ants which can eat whole trees bare as a broom handle in a single night.”
In 1705, at the age of 54, she published her first illustrated book of the insects of Surinam, Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, in both Dutch and Latin.
Ironically, Merian returned to Amsterdam in 1701 because she had come down with an illness thought to be malaria. HELLO! Otherwise known as the virus spread by insects, the mosquito. Can’t say those little guys are a favorite of mine!
At the age of 64, she suffered from a stroke and became paralized. Her stroke, however debilitating, did not hinder her from continuing her passions. Then in 1717, two short years later, Merian died. Her final work, Erucarum Ortus Alimentum et Paradoxa Metamorphosis, was published posthumously by her daughter.
Her works are held with great respect and shown by many prestigious collections including the Royal Collection kept at Windsor Castle in the United Kingdom.
She’s honored on the 500 Deutsche Mark banknote, the official currency of West Germany from 1948-1990.
Japanese novelist, poet, and lady-in-waiting, Murasaki Shikibu is a shining example of feminine excellence dating back to 1000AD.
First off, let’s explain her name. In Japan at this time, it was commonplace for women to take a name referring to the rank or title of a male relative. “Shikibu” refers to Shikibu-shō, the Ministry of Ceremonials where Murasaki’s father was an official. And “Murasaki” could have been derived from the color violet or lilac associated with the flowering plant wisteria.
Think it’s weird that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip sleep in different bedrooms? Imagine living in a completely different house than your spouse. While Murasaki Shikibu was growing up, husbands and wives living apart was the norm. Although her upbringing was unconventional. It’s thought that her mother may have died in childbirth, or when she and her younger brother were very young, and as a result she grew up in her father’s residence.
Growing up in her father’s residence proved to be the most influential point of her life. Chinese was taught to Murasaki’s brother, and since she lived in her father’s household, she became proficient in classical Chinese. She was likely taught other traditional subjects along with her brother such as calligraphy, music, and Japanese poetry. In her diary she wrote, “When my brother was a young boy learning the Chinese classics, I was in the habit of listening to him and I became unusually proficient at understanding those passages that he found too difficult to understand and memorize.”
‘Just my luck,’ her father would say, ‘What a pity she was not born a man!’”
It wasn’t standard for women to be educated in Japanese society at this time and women were often thought to be incapable of any real intelligence. In fact, she often hid her high IQ since it was deemed unladylike.
She felt others perceived her as pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach and prickly because of her schooling. Asian literature scholar Thomas Inge believes she had “a forceful personality that seldom won her friends.” Well, no wonder. If she wanted to have any intelligent conversation, she’d have to talk to a man – who would indubitably talk down to her. No thanks!
Heian Era
In this time in history, Japan had become more isolated from China and a stronger national culture was emerging. In the 9th and 10th centuries, Japanese gradually became a written language. Heian culture and court life reached peak early in the 11th century. The population of Kyoto grew to around 100,000 as the nobility became increasingly isolated at the Heian Palace in government posts and court service. Courtiers became insulated from reality, preoccupied with trivial court life, and ended up turning to artistic endeavors.
Emotions were commonly expressed through artistic use of textiles, fragrances, calligraphy, colored paper, poetry, and layering of clothing in pleasing color combinations – according to mood and season. It was an age of prosperity, creativity, and art.
Her Husband
Heian women lived restricted lives. They were only allowed to speak to men that were close relatives or household members. Murasaki’s diary highlights this; she had limited contact with men other than her father and brother, and she often exchanged poetry with women but never with men. Unlike many noblewomen, she didn’t marry right away. Most would marry at puberty or soon after, but she stayed under her father’s eye until her mid-twenties or early thirties.
She did end up marrying her father’s friend, Fujiwara no Nobutaka. He was actually her much older second cousin, which was not uncommon for the time period. Nobutaka had a reputation as a talented dancer, a gregarious presence, and a phenomenal dresser, so he had high status within the court. Murasaki was not his first wife and had multiple households and an unknown number of offspring. He was a bit of a playboy in this day-in-age and was known to carry on romantic relationships even outside of his marriages. Being that he was quite wealthy and successful within the court, it’s safe to say Nobutaka was probably pretty care-free.
The state of their marriage has been debated among scholars; some deem it happy, others say that her poems indicate that she resented her promiscuous husband.
Murasaki had one child with Nobutaka; a girl named Kenshi. Two years after her birth, Nobutaka died of cholera. As a wealthy, married woman who was already caring for her child herself, she was lucky enough that his death only affected her emotionally and not economically.
Fashion
What was fashion like, you ask? Floor-length hair, whitened skin and *gasp* blackened teeth was in. Blackened teeth? Yes, this practice is called ohaguro. For hundreds of years, pitch black objects were regarded as incredibly beautiful. As a way to achieve a certain standard of Japanese beauty, it became customary for girls and boys, mostly around the age of 15, to dye their teeth black for the first time as a coming-of-age tradition. They use a solution called kanemizu to dye the teeth – a mixture of ferric acetate, vinegar, and tannin from vegetables or tea.
Those who couldn’t keep up became less popular, deeming them less powerful within Heian society. Aesthetics were, and are, important in every culture but because of the ease of life at this time for courtiers, it became part of everyday life and even became a form of social currency.
Blackened teeth and all, the Heian noblewomen’s lives revolved around having love affairs, writing poetry and keeping diaries. The literature that Heian court women wrote is recognized as some of the earliest and remains among the best literature written in Japanese canon to date. Enter our protagonist: Murasaki Shikibu.
The World’s First Novelist
In Murasaki’s lifetime, men continued to write formally in Chinese, but Kana became the written language of intimacy and noblewomen, setting the foundation for unique forms of Japanese literature. In Japan, Kana refers to syllabic written text whereas Kanji refers to logographic (symbolic) written text. Hiragana, however, is the most commonly used standard form of Japanese writing.
Like other aristocratic Heian court women, Murasaki kept a diary. She wrote autobiographically about her life in the Heian court throughout her life. After her husband’s death, she wrote about loneliness.
“I felt depressed and confused. For some years I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, doing little more than registering and passing time. The thought of my continuing loneliness was quite unbearable.”
The Tale of Genji
Murasaki’s novel that is often deemed the first of its kind was titled: The Tale of Genji. It remains unknown if this brilliant literary work was one that was commissioned or if it was a personal project of Murasaki’s. Scholars believe she started the novel before her husband’s death; however, it is certainly known that she was writing after his death as she was grieving.
In many of the images included in this post, you’ll notice that Murasaki at Ishiyama Temple staring at the moon. This is the inspiration for many artworks of Murasaki because legend has it that she retreated to Lake Biwa, where she was inspired to write the Tale of Genji while looking at the moon on a warm, clear August night.
At this time, it was incredibly uncommon for women to write to this scale. Murasaki would have needed to distribute newly written chapters of Genji to friends who in turn would have re-copied them and passed them on. Thus, Murasaki: Author was born. After her husband’s death, she became a lady-in-waiting at court, likely because of her reputation as an author.
There’s speculation that Michinaga, Emperor at the time, had brought her on as his mistress, since he didn’t use the usual formal channels to introduce her as a lady-in-waiting at court. Her diary gives us a bit of proof in this theory since she did exchange poetry with Michinaga which was considered incredibly intimate in their culture. She writes to him in a poem, “You have neither read my book, nor won my love.” This, in my opinion, touches on the core of Murasaki’s being. She valued herself. She valued her work.
Her worth = more important than any man's attention, even the Emperor himself.
She was proud of her intelligence and of the power of her womanhood. She saw through Michinaga’s advances. If he couldn’t see her the way she saw herself, then their relationship was a lost cause to begin with.
It’s also possible that Michinaga wanted to have Murasaki at court simply to educate his daughter Shōshi. However, Murasaki writes about being Empress Shōshi’s secret tutor. She taught her Chinese and wrote in her diary, “Since last summer… very secretly, in odd moments when there happened to be no one about, I have been reading with Her Majesty. There has of course been no question of formal lessons. I have thought it best to say nothing about the matter to anybody.”
Murasaki continued writing the tale while at court and probably finished while still in service to Shōshi. Michinaga provided her with costly paper and ink and with calligraphers to finish the work and distribute the tale far and wide. The first written copies were probably assembled and bound by ladies in waiting.
The story of a “shining” prince Genji is split into 3 parts; spanning 1100 pages and 54 chapters. It’s likely the novel took a complete decade to finish. The plot details the tyranny of time and the inescapable sorrow of romantic love. The term, “the sorrow of human existence” is used over a thousand times alone in those 1100 pages. Prince Genji is our protagonist in this tale and Murasaki wrote him as as such — a gifted soul, refined, yet so human and flawed with thoughts, inner conflict, emotions, and woes.
Murasaki’s writing gives us a clear depiction into the Heian period. Love affairs flourished and court life was celebrated.
Perhaps Murasaki was writing to escape her own reality and wrote Prince Genji as her ideal man. Prince Genji was the stark opposite of any man she had ever been with. He recognized each of his lovers for the inner beauty they offered and the fragility of life that they brought into his world. She felt only recognized as a woman. A housekeeper, a sex object, and the mother to a man’s child.
Around fifteen women in the story had relationships with Prince Genji and their appearance and personality are varied enough to make the readers think the main characters are actually the women, and not Prince Genji.
“It transcends both its genre and age. Its basic subject matter and setting – love at Heian court – are those of romance, and its cultural assumptions are those of mid-Heian period, but Murasaki’s unique genius has made the work for many a powerful statement of human relationships, the impossibility of permanent happiness in love and the vital importance, in a world of sorrows, of sensitivity to the feelings of others.”
Helen Mccullough, american academic and “japanologist”
Wow.
Her Legacy
Murasaki’s legacy is not only that of The Tale of Genji and her diaries, but that her works were instrumental in developing Japanese into a written language. She remains regarded as a classical writer to this day and her story and works are celebrated and used as inspiration all over the world.
The design of the 2000-yen note was created in Murasaki’s honor.
You can find The Tale of Genji translated into English on Amazon here.
Cool Girl History 