Patriarchy and Aggressive Industrialization in “Reeling for the Empire” Analysis

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Patriarchy and Aggressive Industrialization in “Reeling for the Empire”
Karen Russell employs creative details and animated writing style to explore serious themes. Vampire in the Lemon Grove is a collection of bizarre, evocative, and beautiful short stories. This paper will conduct a literary analysis of “Reeling for the Empire”, one of the stories in the collection which analyzes freedom and exploitation in the context of patriarchy and industrialization. This literary analysis will cover various aspects of the story including character, setting, plot, and style. This paper posits that Russell’s “Reeling for the Empire” is a work of fiction that effectively demonstrates the upsetting effects of patriarchy and aggressive industrialization in today’s society.
“Reeling for the Empire” is the second story in the Vampire in the Lemon Grove short story collection by Russell. The story is set in Japan where several girls are duped into slavery by the assurance of prosperity and a better life for their family. In support for the Empire, the young women are sold to a mill’s agent to reel silk but are not informed that this will involve them metamorphosing into human-silkworm hybrids. Rather than work as laborers, they produce silk with their bodies, each girl producing a unique color that is reeled away by machines. The women are steadily fed on mulberry leaves and become less human the longer they stay in the silk mill. Unlike the other women in the factory who were sold by their relatives for a small advance, Kitsune forged her father’s name in her contract and readily swallowed the tea responsible for transforming them into silkworms. She decided to work in the mills to help her family but she soon regrets this sacrifice when she discovers how the Agent imprisons the workers. It is only after Kitsune interacts with Dai that she stops obsessing over her imprudent choice and decides to reclaim control of her life and those of the other women in the factory. “Reeling for the Empire” is a story of finding the inner strength to fight back against an oppressive system that has no regard for the underclass and treats them like disposable parts of a machine. It figuratively talks about women empowerment and the cost of industry as the author illuminates the dehumanizing characteristics of the industrialized age.
The story is structured in the classic U-shape where events start off badly and get worse before getting better by the end. Russell starts the story in medias res where the narrative begins in the middle of an already existing milieu. She goes back to clarifying the events of the story in the middle, especially how the narrator, Kitsune, came to be a slave. The beginning of the story is quite nebulous but as the author continues, she provides more information. This structure is very efficient at keeping the reader engaged and allows for the logical breakdown of segments. Russell often groups sequence of events together before beginning a new segment when her considerations shift course. She also employs poetry-prose fusion in her story especially when introducing new content. Overall, the structure of the story is ...