Story, Week 5: The Character of a Husband

The Character of a Husband

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There were three young suitors who had each been told of the great beauty of Coral, the daughter of a merchant.  She was extremely pretty, but Coral also held kindness and grace.  Her three suitors all fell for the gorgeous woman, but she could not choose between the three.

Her indecision leads to great anxiety until Coral would no longer eat or sleep.  It was not long before she began to wither away.  For many days, the three lovers mourned.  They were devastated by the loss of Coral’s beauty and her gentle heart.  With broken hearts, they each took a different path of mourning.

One suitor remained in the cemetery.  He was unable to move on, the grief of Coral’s death haunting him at all moments of the day.  Each night, he would lie down beside her ashes and each morning he would remain seated at her grave with hollow eyes.  The pain of Coral’s death was simply too much for him.

The other two suitors managed to move forward.  One of them decided to take Coral’s bones to the river Ganges.  He would dip her bones in the sacred waters, in the preservation of her life and honor the beautiful woman.  The second chose to become a monk and wonder the countries in search of answers and wisdom.  He could not understand the fragility of life but sought to gain a deeper knowledge.

The monk stumbled upon the house of a man, who lived with his family of a wife and a son.  He is astonished to witness the child’s mother throw her son into the flames of the fire.  However, the monk is even more surprised at the man brings the child back to life with the use of his magic book.  The monk is immediately very interested in the magical properties of the man’s book and soon realizes its potential.  He knows that he can use it to bring his beloved Coral back to life.

Informing the other suitors of his plan, they take the book and attempt to recreate the spell to bring Coral back to life.  However, when the monk tries to resurrect Coral, the thing her ashes and bones rejoin into was not the beauteous woman they had all loved.

The monk is horrified and retreats to a seminary to ask for forgiveness.  The man who had kept her bones is stunned and he is unable to remain with Coral for her ugliness reminded him to well of a monster.  The third man, however, sat beside her with a smile.  He loved her for the heart inside her chest, as a husband should.

Author’s Note:  I stuck to the main plot of The Three Lovers who brought the Dead Girl to Life from Twenty-Two Goblins.  The major changes that I added were in the ending and I left out the bit about the Goblin and the King.  Instead, I made the story a sort of moral about how a husband should love his wife for her heart as opposed to marrying someone for their beauty.

Bibliography:

Twenty-Two Goblins, translated by Arthur W. Ryder, with illustrations by Perham W. Nahl (1917).