When thinking about balance in nature, and life Shunkin and Sasuke's story reflects this concept the best. We start by getting background information of Shunkin's social class. The narrator lets us know they aren't normal by previous standards. They're pale, skinny and shut inside their homes, when supposedly they should be outside.
There's no stereotypical happy endings in these stories. Shunkin and Sasuke both die, they are never formally recognized as a couple. They never feel remorse for their children. It isn't up until both of them are blind, and one of them disfigured, that they find a sort of balance. When both of them make a sacrifice, mainly, a sacrifice that lowers them in the societal hierarchy.
Shunkin only shows slivers of good temperament, she has complete control over a man. She is older, he is submissive.
Both of the characters break our western expectations, Shunkin is the complete opposite of the gothic heroine. It defied my expectations on what I was going to get from these stories. I'm not sure how to feel about it, a part of me always wanted a resolution to these endings, but it might be my western/iberian expectations of what literature should look like.
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