Page 169 [169]
MALE-FEMALE RELATIONSHIPS ACROSS CULTURES...
always come first. My own life, last. In my imagination, a woman’s head, severed
from the rest of her body — a result of excessive nodding — flew high into the air
against a backdrop of blue sky, and landed in a tree, hidden from view.**
It is the song Kap-doli, Kap-suni (about a boy and a girl who are secretly in
love with each other) which induces Mary/Yu-Rhee to stand up and announce
that she cannot marry Joon-Ho as she is in love with someone else? Then, she
turns to her own mother: “You have lied to me. [...] This was a set-up. You’ve
gone and planned a marriage without me”,” before she leaves the restaurant.
Conflict management
With regard to conflict management, both the interdependent flight approach
and the independent confront/fight approach are observable in Mary/Yu¬
Rhee’s behavior towards Mr. Allen/Will and Joon-Ho.
When she finds her relationship with Mr. Allen/Will confining, she decides
to exit it instead of fully exploring the problems with him which have led to
the tension between them:
“T couldn’t go without you,’ Will said from the kitchen. I sat on his sofa
wishing he were going to France so that we’d be forced to say goodbye. I had
planned to tell him he was better off without me, but the truth was I was
better off without him. [...] This once had been my happy refuge. Now the
place felt confining, a cell from which I needed to break free.”*° Yet, and
quite paradoxically, her, “Did it ever dawn on you that I have problems of my
own?”’ discussed in point 2 provides evidence that breaking free in this case
is realized through open confrontation with Mr. Allen/Will.
Similarly, Mary/Yu-Rhee wants to exit her relationship with Joon-Ho, when,
motivated by his impending expulsion from university, he tries to force Mary/
Yu-Rhee into marrying him. After an incident of attempted rape, bruised and
abused, she openly confronts him and threatens to share his secret with his
and her family, the ultimate punishment in his culture. She also furnishes
an explanation as to why she has not done so before: “I feared the dark side
of him, but knew it came from being born Korean, an only child and a boy,
raised to believe he was destined for greatness (and therefore allowed to
exercise authority over women).
4 Ibid., 150.
15 Ibid., 156.
16 Ibid., 249.
* Ibid., 251.
18 Ibid., 193.
* 167 +