Read the Passage and Answer the Questions:-

Women

After he was married, Chang the Third no longer wanted to go to work. He sat at home the
whole day and played with his wife. He gazed endlessly at her beautiful face, and the longer
he looked the less he wanted to go out. Finally he gave up his job and remained night and day
with his wife. He went on this way for six months, and then for a year; but even the largest
fortune is soon exhausted if one does nothing, and Chang had merely lived on his earnings. In
two years all his wife’s jewels, the chairs, the tables, the linen, the clothes, in fact everything
they had, was pawned or sold, and they were left without a penny.

His wife was really unusually beautiful, but she thought to herself, ‘Since his marriage my
husband has never left the house. Day and night he sits around nothing but eat. In a short
while we shall no longer have the wherewithal to live.’ So she upbraided him, saying, ‘You
really can’t stay at home all day. All men must go to work.’ But Chang saw her beauty and he
thought anxiously, ‘If I went out another man could come and make love to her.’ And instead
of listening to her words he remained at home, preferring to eat the most miserable food.

But eventually their poverty became unbearable. They could no longer live if he did not
work. Finally, one morning, he said good-bye to his wife and decided to go to a village. On
his way he met a fine-looking man of about fifty years, who said to him, ‘Which is the way to
such and such a village?’ Chang answered, ‘I am going there myself, so we can go together.’
During their walk Chang told the stranger his story. ‘I am so unhappy at leaving my wife,’ he
said. ‘But I must look for work to enable us to live.’

The stranger replied, ‘The simplest thing is to bottle up your wife. I will give you the bottle,
and every day, when you leave, you will only need to look at your wife and blow into the
bottle, and she will vanish inside at once. As you can always take it with you, you will never
need to lose your wife. I must now take another road, so farewell.’ Then he handed Chang a
large three-inch bottle from h is bag and disappeared. Chang dropped the bottle into his bag,
noting what the man had said, and set off gaily for the village. The next day he tried the gift.
As his wife was combing her hair before the mirror he secretly blew into the bottle. The
woman saw in the mirror the reflection of her husband blowing into a bottle, but hen she lost
consciousness and woke up to find herself inside the bottle. Chang put the bottle in his pocket
and went off to his work in the village. He was quite contented, for no other man could flirt
with his wife. In the evening he tipped the bottle, and his beautiful wife stood before him as
before.

One day, however, he was forced to leave his wife at home to do the washing. He begged her
not to leave the house when the washing was finished, and then set off to the village,
forgetting to take the bottle with him.

After he husband’s departure the wife went down to the river to wash the clothes. While she
was rinsing a shirt she suddenly felt a long, hard thing between her fingers. She took it out
and looked at it carefully. ‘It’s a bottle,’ she said to herself. ‘Every morning my husband
blows into it and I vanish inside. Why has he forgotten it today?’ While she was pondering
over the matter, a handsome young man passed by on the other bank. She looked up at him,
and without thinking what she was doing blew into the bottle, whereupon the young man
disappeared. When she had finished the washing she replaced the bottle in her husband’s
clothes.

When the man arrived home he immediately asked for the bottle he had left behind, and his
wife handed it to him without a work. The next day when he went out he blew into the bottle
as usual, and his wife disappeared and again he flattered himself that she was safe from the
caresses of other men.

That evening on his return he tipped the bottle, but this time two people appeared, his wife
and a handsome young man. He was very much surprised and said to himself. ‘How strange!
I thought my wife was quite safe shut up in a bottle, but now she has got a man with her!
How odd it is! And how impossible it is to keep a beautiful wife to oneself.’

Questions

1. Describe the relationship between Chang and his wife. How does it change in the
course of the story? In what ways does Chang try to control his wife?
2. What type of marriage does the bottle symbolize? What does the mirror symbolize?
What role do symbols play in the text of folk tales?
3. What seems to be the point of this tale? (Consider that it was the husband himself who
bottled up his wife with a potential lover.) Folk tales are supposed to impart wisdom
to the community. Why would the wisdom, or lesson, of this story be an important
one?
4. Do you think the title works? Why or why not? Would an equally good title be
‘Men’? Could you argue that the story exposes male nature? How could this text be
rewritten for the present day?
 
Applications
1. As president of the students’ union, write a formal letter to your principal, drawing
her attention to the various forms of sexual harassment in your college.
2. Write an intra-personal monologue in which the woman speaks to herself about this
entire incident. Note: she will retell the story from her point of view.