Love: The Difficult Path

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had where and how she wills: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes things easy: it makes us choose what is difficult. GEORGE ELIOT, Felix Holt

It's amazing how a brief chance encounter can set lives in motion. Upon meeting the Chairman as a young girl, Sayuri prays to become a geisha in hopes of being part of his social circle. While the Chairman tells Mameha to keep her eyes out for a young girl with grey eyes, and should their paths cross he would pay for her to be a geisha. Knowing that the only way their lives could interconnect was this way, they each took steps to ensure it would happen. Often typical love stories seem so one sided. It's refreshing to read a story where the couple destined for each other had to overcome struggles, bouts with loyalty and friendship and at points even had to give the other up out of what was best at the time.

Upon reading this novel, I don't view the life of a geisha so romantically anymore. And I agree with Mameha when she tells Sayuri that one becomes a geisha because they have no choice. Yes, there were other ways to make a living but I am sure they were less desirable for a girl in Sayuri's position. Just take her sister for an example. I understand that at points the life of a famous geisha was glamorous. But that lifestyle comes with a heavy cost. I couldn't fathom not being in control of my own body and not being able to love freely. Until the Chairman finally became her danna, Sayuri was viewed more as a commodity then an actual person. Her value as a person was based on the money she brought in. Her time, virginity, and her body were given numerical values. It seems so degrading to base a persons worth on monetary calculations instead of character, principles or beliefs.

But remaining true to the "water" within her, Sayuri rose and overcome each struggle. She wasn't always graceful or made the best decisions, but she never truly gave up what she wanted. She always had faith. An admirable and long lost quality in many literary heroines. Because no matter what, faith, like water, has the ability to move mountains.