What Makes a Woman Happy? Reading Hooked by Asako Yuzuki

 

Over years, my exposure to feminist literature and theories taught me to associate confinement as a major source of women’s unhappiness. I have likely believed that the pressing need of the society -to marry and to raise a family- as a major obstacle for a woman’s fulfilment. The domestic labour, absence of finances, familial restrictions are some of the prominent hindrances. In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, there is a popular fable that answers the most sought question- “what makes a women happy?”, the answer was the freedom to choose, the freedom of making a choice and executing it in free will. However, the clear solutions of education, financial independence and greater freedom of choice did not make the dissatisfaction in women disappear (or I think so).  The modern predicament has merely changed shape.  Reading Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, I was bothered by a different question- Why do so many of us continue to imagine that happiness exists somewhere else, in another version of our lives?  What if the problem was never simply a lack of freedom, but our expectation that freedom would make us whole?

The image in the picture is a representation of  a variety of fish called Nile Perch- a fish that eats other fishes or need be its own variety to survive. The fish is a recurring image in the book to represent the destructive nature of the protagonists. 

The novel proposes that freedom produces new anxieties. If marriage and motherhood are no longer seen as the definitive sources of fulfilment, where does happiness reside? Is it found in work, friendship, creative pursuits, or love? The very freedom to choose among multiple paths can become a burden, leaving us constantly wondering whether fulfilment lies elsewhere.

 

The book focuses on the eerie and complex equation between two female characters: Eriko- the high earning career woman, with a strong family support system and Shoko- the laidback homemaker with a popular social media presence.  There is a lacuna (a sense of lack, void- feeling that something very essential is missing from their lives) in each of them and they look at each other and believe that the other person’s life has the secret ingredient to happiness and fulfilment. Eriko is attracted to the carefree attitude, impression of belonging in Shoko. While Shoko admires the freedom, glamour and independence of Eriko. But neither of them seems to be happy nor content because they are constantly comparing and are consciously aware of the endless alternatives to their choices and ways of life. Each of them becomes the embodiment of an unlived life for the other. This comparison is an extension of the longing of the self to feel complete and content.

    This resonates strongly with the contemporary age of social media, where women are told that they can have it all- a fulfilling marriage, a successful career, meaningful friendships, glowing skin, healthy body along with personal and professional freedom. This far-fetched promise is liberating but with impossible standards. If access to every forbidden path is suddenly open, dissatisfaction becomes more of a personal failure than a shortcoming of the structured society. Here the blame lays with the individual and not on the societal setup.

Hooked works on this premise: what does a woman actually do when she is free to choose?     Freedom can obviously remove certain barriers but it does not eliminate insecurity, fear, envy, loneliness and the need for recognition.  This leads Eriko and Shoko to think that by clinging on to other person, their dissatisfaction towards life can be resolved.  But the novel gradually proves otherwise- their obsession over each other becomes eerie and highly destructive.

    Hooked has offered me a new perception that for a woman freedom is essential but that doesn’t guarantee happiness.  In an age where we witness various versions of womanhood through social media, the natural urge to compare, envy and reimagine the possibilities of alternatives has intensified. I think, we mostly find it easier to  believe that happiness exists somewhere else, probably always in the road not taken.

     Hooked got me thinking – do we really learn to love or be happy with the choices we have already made? Be it the decision of marriage or the pursuit of career or the choice of begetting children, to switch jobs, to pause the career and focus on family, whatever the case is we sometimes conveniently believe solution for our problems lies in another version of ourselves. This alternative is sourced from other people’s stories and the fantasy of what life might have been.

    Perhaps the answer lies in finding contentment in the choices we have already made, rather than searching for the missing piece of ourselves in another person's life. I think my acquaintance with Eriko and Shoko made me realise Happiness lies not in aspiring to another version of ourselves, but in embracing the imperfect, limited, and uniquely possible lives we already have. 

The above and the following pictures are few of my favourite lines from the book.