The Wife's Story : Plot summary, Interpretation Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wife's Story

Short story by Ursula K. Le Guin

"The Wife's Story"

Short story by Ursula K. Le Guin

Country

United States

Language

English

Publication

Published in

The Compass Rose

Publication type

Collection

Publisher

Pendragon Press

Media type

Hardback

Publication date

1982

Chronology

Jake

Julian

"The Wife's Story" is a short story written by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Plot summary

Written in a vernacular first-person narrative, the title character (who is eventually revealed to be a wolf) describes her beloved spouse and their idyllic family life in the past tense, except during the new moon, when he mysteriously disappeared. She then relates the night she witnessed his metamorphosis into a human and screamed in horror, resulting in her family and neighbors chasing and killing him.

Interpretation

The story is unusual for its point-of-view: Of the many books and stories on werewolves, few are written from the perspective of wolves. Le Guin goes to great lengths to conceal the nature of the narrator, fully exploiting the reader's assumptions to purposefully heighten the plot twist at the story's denouement.

References

Notes

Bibliography

Cadden, Mike (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (1st ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-99527-2.
Bourgault du Coudray, Chantal (2006). The Curse of the Werewolf: Fantasy, Horror and the Beast Within (1st ed.). New York, NY: I. B. Tauris. ISBN 978-1845111571.
Freedman, Carl (2008). Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin (Literary Conversations Series) (1st ed.). University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1604730937.
Gelfante, Blanche H. (2004). The Columbia Companion to the Twentieth-Century American Short Story (1st ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231110990.

External links

"Changing Lives Through Literature" entry about the story

Works by Ursula K. Le Guin

Bibliography

Earthsea

Novels	A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) The Tombs of Atuan (1971) The Farthest Shore (1972) Tehanu (1990) The Other Wind (2001)
Short stories	"The Word of Unbinding" (1964) "The Rule of Names" (1964) "Dragonfly" (1997) "Darkrose and Diamond" (1999) "The Daughter of Odren" (2014) "Firelight" (2018)
Collections	Tales from Earthsea (2001) The Books of Earthsea (2018)
Adaptations	Earthsea (miniseries) (2004) Tales from Earthsea (film) (2006)
Related	Universe Characters Ged Earthsea Revisioned (1993)

Hainish
Cycle

Novels	Rocannon's World (1966) Planet of Exile (1966) City of Illusions (1967) The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) The Dispossessed (1974) The Word for World Is Forest (1976) Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) The Telling (2000)
Short stories	"The Dowry of Angyar" (1964) "Winter's King" (1969) "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" (1971) "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974) The Shobies' Story (1990) "The Matter of Seggri" (1994) "A Man of the People" "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995) "Mountain Ways" (1996) "Old Music and the Slave Women" (1999)
Related	Ansible

Annals of the Western Shore

Novels	Gifts (2004) Voices (2006) Powers (2007)

Other
fiction

Novels	The Lathe of Heaven (1971) Very Far Away from Anywhere Else (1976) The Eye of the Heron (1978) Malafrena (1979) The Beginning Place (1980) Always Coming Home (1985) Lavinia (2008)
Short stories	"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (1973) "The Diary of the Rose" (1976) "The Wife's Story" (1982) "Paradises Lost" (2002)
Collections	The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) Orsinian Tales (1976) The Compass Rose (1982) Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987) A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996) The Birthday of the World (2002) Changing Planes (2003)
Children's books	Catwings (series) (1988–1999) Cat Dreams