The Waiting Years: a deconstruction of the angel in the house. In The Waiting Years, Enchi employs and deconstructs this ideal image of the perfect woman, through the consciousness and actions of Suga, Tomo and Miya. and its relevance in society

In addition in shedding light upon the figure, we read how she is the ideal female, with 'soft white texture of the skin, like handmade paper'(25). She 'is beautiful...the impresision of purity was undeniable'(25) everything qualified. Passive, she is a girl with strikingly young, fresh features but a spirit that was subdued and timid' (27) and we read how "[s]he felt quite clearly that she would never have been a devil had she not been trapped in her present surroundings(121). Perhaps the most shocking of all descriptions will be that Suga is still 'half a child' (27); the angel in the house in society is supposed to be pure, but this aspect itself proved to be an anomaly; we realize that the ideal is nothing but a 'child-woman' (138). Appearing as an adult, Enchi reveals how Suga is 'the child-wife that lurked inside the older woman' (152), effectively commenting upon the effects of appearance; thereby deconstructing the angel in the house.

An intended concubine, she was initiated into womanhood at a tender age of twelve by Yukitomo, suffering from hemorrhoids as a result which disables her ability to bear children. She undergoes an unnatural cycle of development, where instead of blossoming into a butterfly, she is likened to a caterpillar stuck in the 'coccoon'.

Being the protagonist in the Waiting Years, Tomo's experiences and thoughts are the most significant representation of the female impression and critics the angel in the house ideal. She reveals the shortcomings inherent in the domestic and conventionally defined femininity.

Tomo plays the role perfectly, serving the home and family name her entire life, the strictures of respectability having limited her behavior.

She maintains the family's accounts, she is the housekeeper.! Yet, all these are done with a strict adhering. She recalls how Yuki used to look at her w eyes he now look at Suga with. Enchi showed how Tomo have lost or feel the loss of value through aging, and describes how her internalization of the male-phallic-gaze on her own body leads her first to feelings of inadequacy and then to a sense of rage, a rage only clear when she demanded Yukitomo 'to dump [her] body into the sea'.

Miya in the representation of the invalid of the model, deconstructing the concept to bits. She is the direct opposite of the patriarchal ideal;Tomo exchanged a few words ...with some businessmen's wives of her acquintance', 'had to call at an agent's house about raising the land rent on their estate at Kodemmacho' (145)The reputation of the Shirakawa family that she had always hugged (147)-all these shows how Enchi deconstructed the angel in the house.

Hence, in the complex set of domestic relationships...Yokitomo was the absolute authority in the Shirakawa household, that Tomo was in the position of a manager with few close ties with her husband, and that Suga and the grandson Takao were the true objects of Y's affection (136). In this deconstruction, we note the flaws and shortcomings of this ideal.

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