On October 10, 2024, Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first Asian woman to receive the award. Kang was born in 1970 in Gwangju, South Korea, and moved to Seoul with her family at 9. She started writing in 1993, with her poems being published in 문학과사회 (“Literature and Society”). Known for a poetic and grotesque style that tackles themes of Eastern philosophy and ideologies, Kang’s use of this style in “The Fruit of My Woman” transforms the narratives placed on women, making it a moving critique of gender dynamics (The Nobel Prize).
In “The Fruit of My Woman,” Kang starts the narrative from the perspective of the husband, “It was late May when I first saw the bruises on my wife’s body.” It immediately gives the audience a chill and sends questions into the readers’ minds. She continues and builds this tension between the husband and wife–that they fell out of love, and the husband is seemingly uncaring about the bruises or even his wife’s body. He, seeing his wife naked in front of him, “was unable to feel even the faintest stirrings of desire.” Kang builds tension, making it even more unsettling and confusing for the readers. When the husband was examining his wife, he felt “as though it were a stranger’s body I was touching.” She gets inside this man’s mind and alludes to the metamorphosis of his wife (The Fruit of My Woman).
Initially, Kang writes that the bruises were “the size of a catalpa leaf.” Then, she has the wife feeling unsatisfied–that “I’m going to wither and die.” This trapped feeling that the wife’s “body seemed unable to adjust to a central-heated, tightly-sealed flat” continues as Kang reveals more of the metamorphosis. She plays with the ideas of freedom and trapped, these oxymorons filling the pages. This tenseness throughout the pages grips the readers, pulling them into characters, and making them feel the desperation of the husband and the depression of the wife, all while continuing the metamorphosis. The wife degrades –transforms– slowly from human to “wilted cabbage leaves” all until “her entire body was dark green” (The Fruit of My Woman).
The wife had dreamed that she wanted “to live [her] whole life without settling in a single place,” but she was forced to settle, to be stable with her husband inside the tight apartments that trapped her body and her husband that trapped her mind. After complete metamorphosis, the wife feels happy that her dreams “of being able to live on nothing but wind, sunlight, and water” are finally true. She continues trying to escape the flat; her “chest thrusts up to the sky and I strain to stretch out each branching limb.” These ideas of freedom and trapped continue to fight each other throughout the story–the wife longs for freedom but remains trapped in the pot. The husband did not appreciate his wife, help her achieve her dreams or simply offer her more home during her human state. Kang transforms this narrative, making it a powerful piece of the endless struggle for freedom and ongoing gender norms (The Fruit of My Woman).
“Han Kang’s writing gracefully portrays grief and human fragility in a metaphorical style,” Liana Bhindi (9) reflects on this author. Kang does more than just that–she turns narratives into engaging stories that rival the likes of Kafka and Dostoevsky. Like many of her others, this story depicts sadness, depression, and grief in such a manner that it is surrealist while rooted; the roots are stable while her characters break through the dirt and into the clouds. Han Kang will go down in history, not because of her awards but because of her ability to metamorphose ideas into blossoms.
