Suppressed Anger and Restraint

    One of the very first things that I noticed in the short story “The Little Green Monster” was how the protagonist’s rage stayed mostly inside her mind instead of physically until later on. At first, she does not actually attack the monster right away, instead, violence begins to unfold in her imagination, where she thinks in extreme and cruel detail about hurting the monster. 

    From a woman’s perspective, this felt important. Women are often expected to be polite, calm, gentle and nurturing. And because women are also frequently stereotyped as overly emotional in comparison to men, many feel pressured to keep their emotions tightly controlled so they are not dismissed as irrational or unstable. The story starts off by introducing the narrator as an ordinary woman sitting alone at home, looking out onto the garden. Nothing about her seemed to suggest her as aggressive or cruel, that is, until the green monster entered her space and kept approaching her. Her inner thoughts became a stark contrast to her external appearance, suggesting how female rage can be hidden beneath or even restrained by societal pressure and expectations regarding women. 

    This story doesn’t present her anger as irrational or random. The monster invades her space, ignores her fear and discomfort, and then keeps persisting in pursuing her under the context of “love.” Her rage can thus be understood as a response to intrusion and pressure, which I thought was really interesting. At some point, I also wondered if the green monster could represent other pressures in many women's lives, such as unwanted male attention, romantic entitlement or the constant expectations that women should respond gently even when their boundaries are being violated. I believe Murakami was trying to show that female anger isn’t absent but often just forced into silence, where it then becomes private, intense and psychologically powerful.

- Shurun Li