Thoughts on The Mistress and The Resolution Tales

1. As far as confusing aspects and questions go, I thought The Mistress of the House's Tale was pretty easy to understand and read. I was able to tell who was telling to story and follow along pretty well. However, as others have pointed out, I definitely found The Resolution of the Porter and the Three Ladies to be harder to understand. I think it was a mixture of the story being disjointed with the other parts of the book we've read and just not knowing immediately who was telling the story. It was also so short that the reader didn't have a lot of time to ease into that transition.

2. I don't think that The Mistress of the House's Tale completely matches how we think of tales today. It's the opposite of the “happy ending filled with true love and a happily ever after” tale that we're accustom to hearing these days. Which I personally liked. To me, there's something about a story that doesn't end on a happy note that just makes it seem more realistic (despite the obvious addition of genies and other stuff.) In a world filled with all these amazing powers, it seems like there would be more misery and heartache than bliss.

3. The role of body is present in these stories. The Mistress of the House does a complete 180 when she see's how beautiful the genie is. At the same time, the genie is willing to make a huge sacrifice by giving up his family to be with her. He wants to spend every moment with her and even spends the night instead of going with their original plan. The Mistress compares kissing him to being in heaven. There's definitely a lot of physical influence to their decisions.

4. I think this story tells us that despite finding a great person that your both physically and emotionally attached to there are forces that can tear you apart. In this story it was family but there are certainly other forces which could create an equal amount of strain on an otherwise ideal relationship. The stories continued the idea of a “never ending story” which I really liked. I think it makes the stories seem more natural and allows you to feel like the storyteller is telling these stories to save all the women. It makes it seem more realistic to me.