Page 168 [168]
JUDIT NAGY
Dispositionism vs. situationism
One striking example of Mary/Yu-Rhee’s situationism is how she is dating
both Joon-Ho and Mr. Allen/Will at the same time: “I spent Saturday nights
with Joon-ho, Sunday afternoons with Will.”*? Her endeavors to please both
men result from a quest to find real love rather than some carnal desire to
fool around with them. Mr. Allen/Will, her good-looking Canadian high
school teacher appreciates her talent for writing and serves as an intellectual
companion. On the other hand, Joon-Ho features as “a boy who'd given me my
first kiss, who’s whispered my lost name. I remembered the origami swan he’d
made me, and his comments about swans mating for life.”*°
The following sentences provide evidence for Mary/Yu-Rhee’s situational
drive to please Mr. Allen/Will and Joon-Ho, respectively. Moreover, the last
sentence in the second quotation also furnishes evidence of Mary/Yu-Rhee’s
perception of the conflicting situational and dispositional stance.”
(1) “I felt conspirational. It was only a matter of time before he realized
what I had already known that I could make him happy in a way Ms
Nakamura never could. Unlike her, with her grand plans to control his
life through marriage and babies, I simply wanted him to be who he
wanted to be — a writer, like me.””
(2) “I’d agreed to play his game by sleeping with him and fighting for him
to stay at the university. It was easy now to pass judgement upon myself,
but did I need to feel bad for making choices I thought were right at the
time?”
At the same time, when it comes to the dinner for the marriage arrangement
between Mary/Yu-Rhee and Joon-Ho, first she tries to adhere to the
situationally appropriate behavior but then — inspired by a song — she decides
to act according to her own principles, bearing testimony to dispositionism:
In [Joon-Ho’s mother’s] eyes, I was a Canadian bride being trained as a Korean
wife. My mother had warned me to be agreeable. Did I know that Joon-Ho ate only
Korean food? Did I know that Joon-Ho ate only Korean food? Did I know how to
cook Korean food? Was I a good cook? Better than his own mother? I nodded and
kept nodding. Yes, I would bear a grandson. Two. Three. Family — his — would
39 Ibid., 143.
10 Tbid., 193.
* In the case of the interdependent self-construal, behavior of the same person will vary from
situation to situation, and from one time to another.
2 Choi, Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety, 142-143.
13 Ibid., 248.
* 166 +