1. The Captive Woman
2. Her Dream
3. Psyche's Beauty
4. The Oracle of Apollo
5. The Magical Palace
6. The Mysterious Husband
7. The Jealousy of Psyche's Sisters
8. Psyche's Husband Warns Her
9. Fears and Doubts
10. Psyche's Husband Revealed
11. Psyche's Despair
The writing uses high-level vocabulary. Sentence structure is very long, kind of like how epic poems usually are. There are also lots of colorful, descriptive language that lays out the setting and character actions. The story is told from the point of view of a character who observes what is happening.
The story is told from the point of view of a man that has been turned into a donkey. He is currently a pack mule for a group of bandits that have kidnapped a wealthy young mistress and are holding her for ransom. Since the girl is so distressed, they send an old lady to console her. It was odd that the old woman was supposed to console the girl, but she ended up getting angry and yelling at her for crying. Then, she decides to cheer the girl up with a story. The transition was a little weird in terms of the old woman's actions. So the young mistress was to be betrothed the day of her kidnapping, which prompted the old woman to tell her a love story.
Thus begins the story...
In a kingdom, there was 3 daughters, with the youngest daughter being the most beautiful in the land and her name was Psyche. Her beauty angered the goddess Venus. In this story, Cupid was wicked and not an advocate of love. Rather, he enjoyed breaking up relationships and committing shameful acts. Although Psyche was beautiful, she didn't have any suitors. Psyche was very accepting of her fate to be wed to a beast (which isn't too weird for back then, but now, women are less subservient). Once Psyche leaves home to meet her husband, she finds herself in an extravagant house where she is treated with utmost respect as the wife. She is soon pregnant with his child. Her unknown husband was able to have a relationship with her without her seeing his face. The characters speak of fortune as if she was a real person. Psyche's sisters are actually very jealous of her and want to punish her for her so-called arrogance. Psyche's husband is aware of her sisters' plans and warns her of impending misfortune due to their actions, likening them to harpies or sirens, but Psyche naively listens to their false tales. She then intends to kill her husband. But as she is about to kill him, she sees that he is the beautiful god Cupid himself and gets caught up on his bow and arrow, pricking herself and falling even further in love with him. She accidentally spills oils onto his shoulder, waking him, and he punishes her by leaving her, vowing to punish her sisters for their sins. She met her sisters and told them of what happened. The sisters then tried to take themselves to Cupid and ended up dying because Zephyr did not take them with his wind.
For my own story, I want to add a suitor for Psyche as well as make her less subservient.
A statue of Psyche and Cupid.
"Psyche and Cupid" by gadgetdude, September 2009. Source: Flickr.
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