Lady Murasaki (Hannibal)
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Lady Murasaki Shikibu Lecter is a fictional character featured in Thomas Harris' novel Hannibal Rising. She is Hannibal Lecter's aunt, and adopted stepmother. She was portrayed by Gong Li in the film adaptation of the novel.[1][2]
[edit] Character History
After the young Lecter escapes from the men who brutally murdered and cannibalized his younger sister, Mischa, he is a ward of the Soviet state. In 1946, his uncle Robert, Count Lecter, discovers him and brings him to France to live with his family.
Robert is married to a Japanese noblewoman named Murasaki Shikibu. They had met in 1921, at an exhibition of Robert's paintings in the Tokyo Metropolitan. She was a young girl then, but Robert was smitten. In 1936, her father came to Paris as the new Japanese Ambassador to France, bringing his daughter with him, and Robert at once came to the embassy and offered to convert to Shinto. Her father said Robert's religion was not his primary concern; he understood that his real intention was to court her. Her father neither understood nor approved of their marriage, but at the intervention of her mother, they were happily married until his death in 1946, during a confrontation with a butcher, Paul Momund, who had earlier insulted Murasaki in front of her young nephew.
Lady Murasaki covers up for Lecter when he murders the butcher, although she is appalled by what he has done. She takes him with her to Paris, where she enrolls him in a boarding school. She continues to act as his guardian and his only family. Lecter, in turn, had fallen in love with her the moment he saw her, and his visits border on courting. When he begins to hunt and kill the men who had murdered his sister, she repeatedly tries to dissuade him. They almost consummate their relationship when she asks him to promise not to kill again; he replies that he had already made a promise to his sister.
Lecter's targets soon realise that they could use Lady Murasaki to get to him. They kidnap her and try to use her to lure him to his death. Lecter rescues Murasaki, but she runs from him after she witnesses him kill the leader of the gang. She visits him one last time while he is being held by the police, and sees that he is emotionally dead; after helping to secure his release, she returns to Japan, effectively disowning Lecter.
[edit] Origin
Hannibal Rising proposes that Lady Murasaki descends from two real-life Japanese historical figures. One is her namesake, Murasaki Shikibu, the poet and author of the world's first major novel, The Tale of Genji.[3] The other is Lord Date Masamune, a prominent daimyo during the Sengoku Period and a participant in the 1615 siege of Osaka. Some see this character inspired by Countess Setsuko Klossowska de Rola, the Japanese wife of Balthus, a famous Polish painter living in Switzerland.
[edit] References
- ^ Lady Murasaki (Character) from Hannibal Rising (2007)
- ^ Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris. The Guardian. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
- ^ Murasaki Shikibu (Lady Murasaki: 973-1025? C.E.)
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| Novels Red Dragon • The Silence of the Lambs |
Main Characters |
Films Manhunter • The Silence of the Lambs • Hannibal |
| Secondary Characters List of minor characters in the Hannibal series |
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