About respecting your own needs

[cjsmith]

“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve’s gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/07/16/the-crane-wife/

Comments

[siliconshaman]

In the version of this story I know, the husband eventually discovers she's a crane, and when she tries to flee fearing his rejection, he holds onto her tight and tells her he loves her for who she is, not what. (I paraphrase, in the actual story he lists her many good qualities as a wife, and composes a poem to her beauty and grace. Needless to say, she's still skeptical but stays.)

He tells her to get some sleep, and sits with her while she sleeps until sunset the next day. Then scolds her (gently) for ruining her beautiful feathers which grew back in while she slept. At that point she believes he's for real, and says that if she could she'd marry him again.

I think I prefer that version, even if it's probably not authentic.

[cjsmith]

That sounds lovely! If it is not authentic, I wish it were; it would speak of a society trying to teach “valuing the right things” (if that phrasing makes any sense).

[labelleizzy]

Thank you for sharing that version, that's the one I thought I remembered.

[hitchhiker]

a much better version, for sure. and who knows, it may well be authentic, since "accept magical beings for who they are" is not an uncommon theme in folktales.