Patriarchy turned our heroine into the monster that created her. Is tragedy all that's in store for her?
--Rael is introduced as a femme fatale: Aphrodite as a vengeful goddess of beauty, the biblical Eve as a temptress, seductress, a serpent (that are mostly seen as green).
Hence why we, methaphorically, see the color green on RaEl most of the time, whether it being a dress or the eyeshadow. The green color symbolizes many things. Greed, envy, etc.
--The sharpest weapon for her scheme is her body and sexuality, her only value in this patriarchal society. Still very young, she marries a man she despises, then traps the chairman, who shames her for her “promiscuity”. Ironically, she never even kissed a boy she liked.
--The motive behind her revenge is the same as her self-harm: Some wounds need to be treated with more pain. She covers her scars with a painfully elaborate tattoo. She’s desperately trying to get out of a state of helplessness, to regain control, to undo her trauma.
--Love as she knows it is always conditional. There’s always a debt to pay. Her adoptive mother sees her as a weapon to wield, her husband as a means to increase his social standing, the chairman as an object to possess that fulfills his every desire, need and fantasy.
--Rael is gifted two contrasting symbols of femininity by two men. One is a serpent by Yoon Gyeom - in patriarchal worldview a symbol of temptation, evil responsible for the downfall of a male.
The other is a matryoshka doll by Eun Pyung- a symbol of motherhood, family and divine feminine.
--Serpents symbolize more than temptation and evil. They can shed their skin and as such are symbols of fertility, rebirth and healing like the caduceus. And Aphrodite was more than vindictive, a goddess of love and fertility connecting with the fact and meaning of her name;Rael has always belonged to the deity.
--Rael will never regain her loss. There’s no healing without accepting, yet she is unable to. She is consumed by revenge fantasies, a false sense of control. If only she pushes herself hard enough, if she punishes those who wronged her, dominates them, her pain will finally ease.
--Sora is more of a foil to Rael than she would like. Both have been failed by society, by patriarchal values of oppression and greed. And it is those values they start adhering to, turning against the feminine, becoming the monsters that created them.
--Rael's dreams are indicators of her descend to spiritual aridity. She dreams of herself lost in the dark woods, blood on her hands, knife in hand, killing Sora in a pure white dress. She’s loosing herself, her humanity and severing her connection to the feminine side
--Strikingly, all the collateral damage to her revenge scheme are female victims. The world is never kind to them. Small girls, daughters, her female guard get hurt. She looks down at her injured feminine, barely alive, dead if it wasn’t for Eunpyeong. .
--We also get to see Ra El eating with Yoon Gyeom but she almost never eats at the table with him because he always wanted a wife that makes him feel whole, feeding him food, meanwhile when she is with Eun Pyeung we get to see her sit at the table and eat with him.
We all saw Ra El's history of anorexia and other illnesses. Eun Pyeung is the only one who recognizes her condition and cares for her.
--I've also noticed this myself, the contrast between Ra El's and Han So Ra's wardrobe. Especially when they wear black(So Ra) and white (Ra El) accordingly. It reminds me of yin and yang.
In Chinese philosophy and religion there are two principles-
One negative, dark, and feminine (yin), and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang).
--It is a concept that describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary or interdependent in their world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
This thread was found on twitter by @drama_analyst which does amazing analizations of dramas.
