ANALYSIS OF THE SILENT COUPLE

The Silent Couple is a story about a newly wed couple who because of their stubbornness and ego ruined their house. The stubbornness and unwillingness to admit others affects the relationship and in this story husband and wife do not want to hear one another thus resulting in ruining their own house. This story can be categorized as a folktale as it begins withOnce upon a timewhich is a key characteristics of folktale.The folktales,also,have moral lesson and this story gives the lesson of how to establish a strong relation. The story can be interpreted in two levels:Superficial level and deeper level.At superficial level the story`s interpretation is the stupidity of a couple who in order to win,superiority over one another,lost all their material wealth.The relationships are based on ar on mutuality and compromise but both the couple lacks understanding and are not agree to do compromise due to their ego. On the deeper level,this story has the streaks of feminism.The wife called herself as beautiful creaturethus presenting herself as an object of beauty not as a rational or i ntellectual human being.The emotional side of woman is very much evident in the story as the bride forgets her bet and sreamed to save her husband.And male chauvinism is presented through bridegrooms character who said that its not his work to close the door so the bride should do that.Thus the story talks about men`s superiority over women in an implicit way. The images of silent,wax dummiesand the opened doorsuggest the weak basis of a relationship.The silence suggests lack of communication which affects a relationship in a negative way ,giving birth to misunderstanding.And wax dummies represent the bodies without mind,having no sense of reason and intellect.The bride and groom were mistaken to be the wax dummies who would not say or feel anything when the thieves were plundering their house robbing them of their valuables.The opened door suggests that anyone can interfere in their personal matters which is really a drawback in a relationship. At the end bridegroom dialogue shows his extreme superiority even when he lost everything,he was only concerned about his victory which shows his manly pride. The narrator in the story is Effaced or third person objective,such narrator gives margin to the reader to interpret the story in his own way and only explains the physical description of character not their feelings,emotions and thinking.The plot of the story is linear and the events are well connected and are in sequence. The whole story concludes that because of the stupidity,stubbornness and ego of the couple leads them to lose all their material wealth.In the end the kindness of bride is shown by the act of breaking silence while the manly pride of bridegroom that even after losing all his wealth,he was only concerned about his victory.