The husband
An unnamed honeymooner who turns travel and marriage into a contest of jealousy.
To prove that he controls the honeymoon and commands his wife’s attention, even if the proof requires hurting her.
The book
At a glance
- Call at Corazón
- The Delicate Prey and Other Stories
- Mid-twentieth century
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeThe husband travels through Central America with the woman he has just married. The honeymoon quickly reveals that both spouses use attention as something to withhold or weaponize.
His purchase of a monkey against his wife’s wishes is petty rather than grandly cruel. That small assertion is enough to invite retaliation and turn the trip into an escalating argument.
He watches local men and sailors as possible rivals and uses jealousy to measure whether he still matters. Bowles refuses to give either spouse the moral high ground.
How The husband Is Portrayed
- Place in the storyHe enters the story as a new husband already fighting for dominance.
- How power worksMoney and freedom to buy the monkey let him ignore his wife’s objections.
- What Bowles showsHis jealousy turns strangers into pieces in the couple’s argument.
- What remains uncertainThe story never explains whether the marriage was always this hostile or travel merely exposes it.
- The monkey on the dockAmong the baskets and snakeskins he sees a tiny furry monkey sitting in the shadow of a crate, hands folded, forehead wrinkled in sad apprehensiveness, and buys it.
- A recipe for hideousnessIn a bar at Pedernales he had written in his notebook: fix the attention upon the ugly object until its familiar elements regroup. Frightfulness is never more than an unfamiliar pattern.
- Reading face-downImagining her alone on deck cuts into the pleasure of his book. He forces himself to lie still for a few minutes with it open across his chest.
The honeymoon remains a cycle of provocation rather than becoming a beginning of intimacy; neither spouse wins anything durable.
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