Reading Notes: Native American Marriage Tales, Part A

The Fox-Woman
from Tales of the North American Indians by Stith Thompson

The fox-woman. Source: Animals.

This week I'm going to read Native American marriage tales. The one from this unit that I really liked reading was this story called The Fox-Woman.

This story is about a hunter who comes home after a few days to find his house had been cleaned up and everything was put into place. It kept happening again and again when he left the house that one day he decided that he was going to stay back and watch to find out who was doing this.

He pretended like he was going on a hunt but instead hid somewhere so he could see who was going to enter the house. 

He sees a fox enter and thinks the fox is probably after food. When he goes inside his house, he sees a  beautiful woman and the skin of a fox hung up nearby.

When he asks her if she was the one who did all of these things, she says yes because she is his wife and it's her duty to do all of these things. They decide to live together from that point.

After a while of living together, the husband started to smell something and asked about it. The wife says that it is her and if he doesn't like it, then she'll leave. In the end she puts on the fox skin again and she ends up leaving him.

I thought this story was interesting. I feel like the woman should have left the husband but not because he didn't like the smell. But because he couldn't appreciate everything else she had done for him. I think if I was going to write a story about this, then I could change up the ending to where she leaves him for how rude he is being.