Return to Translation Exercise: 「すぐ、女は幸せにされてしまうから」

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ごめんなさい！

 I'll start again! LIKE RIGHT NOW!

 「すぐ、女は幸せにされてしまうから」, from 『女のセリフ１２０』 by 伊藤雅子 ( 未来社, 1995)

"Women are made happy."

I heard these words more than ten years ago at a colloquium I headed. The theme was "My Issues as a Woman." The notes from that discussion were published afterward in the book "The Housewife and The Woman."

25 housewives looking deeply into themselves, delving into their problems. It was a painful, earnest kind of discussion. Truths spilled out like sighs, but among them all this utterance is one of the few that I cannot forget.  The words did not have to be pressed free - they rushed out, and the speaker seemed completely oblivious to the fact that she had said something important. 

One often hears that women are constantly deceived about the things happening right before their eyes; that women are easily pigeon-holed into the mold cast by this common idea of "a Woman's Happiness"; that women are always made happy by someone, instead of making their own lives with their own hands. The sentiment has ample occasion to be said.

During the discussion, I was often struck by the perceptive self-reflections amongst the women's innocent revelations:

"It's so easy since I had a kid. I guess because I don't have time to think about myself anymore."

"I'm alone with my child all day everyday -- I can only speak baby-talk now."

The self-portraits that the women drew with their words that day were not painted in the brightest colors, but I would like to believe that this self-reflection is the starting point for something more.