Examples of women overcoming male supremacy and achieving power can be found in Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Márquez and Yasunari Kawabata's A Thousand Cranes, both of which include strong women in a male-dominated society. However, while Márquez's Maria Alejandrina Cervantes derives her power from her sexuality, Kawabata's Chikako Kurimoto obtains it through her asexual nature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Although Maria Alejandrina Cervantes is a woman, she is one of the most powerful and influential members of her city. Cervantes fascinates, almost enchants the men of the community. Santiago describes her as enchanting and elegant and says that men were dazzled by her (Márquez 64). This magical diction connects it to the idea of ​​this mystical and hypnotic charm that it seems to cast on its companions. A few lines later, Santiago states that Cervantes was “the most helpful in bed, but she was also the most severe” (Márquez 64). After luring men into her bed, she demands power and respect. The narrator describes this cycle with his fable-like statement: “A hawk chasing a warrior crane can only hope for a life of pain” (Márquez 65). The image of the warrior crane embodies Cervantes perfectly, as it is beautiful and elegant like a crane, but commands power in a bellicose manner. Men, like Santiago and the narrator himself, fervently “pursue” her but cannot truly hold her back, because she lives in “a house with open doors” (Márquez 64). This fruitless search consequently leaves them dissatisfied in a “life of pain.” The divine images associated with Cervantes also contribute to his powerful status. The narrator describes that after the city's wedding festivities, he was recovering "in the apolistic womb of [Cervantes]" (Márquez 5). This, along with the name “Mary” which perhaps links her to Mary Magdalene, another woman of “open doors,” links her to Christianity and a biblical status. Santiago later also describes her in his grieving process as a “Turkish houri” (Márquez 77), an Arabian paradise goddess. With this biblical and divine status comes a sense of power over others. Thus, through her enchanting charm, warrior severity and divine status, she gains power over her male counterparts. Similar to Cervantes, Chikako Kurimoto is also a woman of power in a male-dominated society. The ferocious, animalistic diction associated with Kurimoto suggests a great deal of power and control. It is associated with words such as wandered (Kawabata 14) and clawed (Kawabata 16), suggesting the image of a ferocious cat. She is also linked to the motifs of poison and venom throughout the novel, linking her to a snake. Both animal images include strong, dangerous language and give the reader a sense of power. This power can perhaps be best seen in his relationship with Kikuji Mitani. As a boy, Mitani was marked by the image of Kurimoto's horrible birthmark. He states that “sometimes he could even imagine that his destinies were involved in it” (Kawabata 8). Mitani's entire life, at least in her eyes, has been controlled by a single disturbing image of this woman. Kurimoto gained control of his destiny and thus power over him through an accidental glimpse of his deformed body. She not only takes control of her life psychologically through birthmark, but also in a physical sense, taking on the role of her mother. Mitani describes that "[Kurimoto] rather than her mother had taken care of the cottage while her father was alive" (Kawabata 40). Also a few pages later he describes Kurimoto wearing his mother's old apron, as if he had it by now.