In Revolutionary Girl Utena, what is the metaphor of Nanami's egg?


Ikuhara had said it would be better if we didn't know, but I want to know.
What is the meaning behind Nanami's egg? Especially when she wakes up from an
apparent dream, and finds a smashed egg in her bedsheets.




Touga says to Nanami, towards the end of the episode:

> Do you know why we've been able to live together so happily? It's because
> you aren't the type of girl who lays eggs. I pity the family of a girl who
> would betray them like that.

So it can't be that the egg is _simply_ an indication of the beginning of
Nanami's menstrual cycles: there's nothing socially unacceptable per se about
girls having periods. Rather, Touga's comments suggest "deviant" behaviour.
Presumably this is something sexual: Nanami produces an _egg_ , and Anthy
"wonders who the father is", after she says that Nanami might have laid an
egg.

Thus, it's _possible_ that the egg takes on the meaning of an undesirable
pregnancy: Nanami feels forced to abandon it, and the egg is found shattered
one morning.

However, the concerns Nanami picks up _before_ she talks to Touga _can_ evoke
anxiety over puberty.

  * She wakes up in bed one day and notices an egg---similar to how a girl might notice her menstrual blood out of the blue. (This could perhaps be similar to the discovery of a pregnancy, but it wasn't an immediate connection for me.)

  * Nanami also doesn't know what is going on and is as a result scared. I'm not sure if ignorance about menstruation was common in the 1990's though.

  * Nanami becomes convinced that it's _normal_ for girls to produce eggs. She then worries that she'll be mocked for not laying an egg earlier. When Nanami mishears Juri's words and believes Juri has produced eggs since the age of seven, she thinks Juri is very "mature". This parallels the linkage of puberty to a desirable sort of maturity and anxieties about the normalcy of one's body.

However, this could just as easily be about sex (rather than puberty). (Having
sex can be associated with maturity; one might feel abnormal for not having
had any.)

**I would avoid trying to impart too much meaning to the egg (since there's
nothing that entirely fits), but we can thus at least safely say that it is
_linked_ to sex (and being initiated into it) and _possibly_ puberty. (Note
that sex and puberty can be linked. For instance, one is "mature" not just for
having a developed body, but also for having sex.)**

