44 pages • 1 hour read
Tea ObrehtThe Tiger's Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: The Butcher
This chapter tells the story of Luka, Galina’s butcher and husband to the tiger’s wife. When Luka returns from the unsuccessful tiger hunt that ended with the blacksmith’s death, he beats his wife for luring the tiger into the village using his meat, dislocating her shoulder and burning her hands on the stove. Everyone in the village knows that he batters his wife, but no one ever intervenes.
Natalia tells the story of his earlier life to explain why he batters his wife.
Born in Galina as the sixth son of the butcher Korčul, Luka trained in his father’s trade, but revered his mother’s world—one of education, travel, history, and knowledge of the wider world. When Luka fails the familial rite of passage bull slaughter, his father breaks his arm in a fit of rage, adding that injury to his broken ribs and concussion. As he recovers, Luka buys a gusla and teaches himself to play it. Soon, he is writing and singing love songs. He leaves home at sixteen to travel to the nearby city of Sarobor to become a professional musician, a guslar.
He soon gains entry into the world of musicians who gather and play each night on a bridge, challenging each other to musical duels. After a decade of earning his living by playing at weddings and writing songs, he meets the woman who destroys his life.
Amana, the beautiful, headstrong daughter of a local silk merchant, sneaks out of her house every night to watch the musicians on the bridge. Soon Luka and Amana become inseparable friends—but platonic, because Luka is gay and Amana vows to die a virgin.
Luka records music for the university, singing with Amana. His sister writes to him that all of his brothers have died, and it’s up to him to carry on the family name. He begins to plan and dream; he will return home married to Amana, using the few years waiting for his father to die writing songs. When his father dies, he plans to record and play his music in the city, using his inheritance to fund his new life. Luka convinces Amana, then gains her father’s permission, and they become engaged.
Amana changes her mind about living a life with Luka and becomes ill, nearly dying. She falls in love with the physician who heals her and runs away with him on the eve of her wedding to Luka. Luka knows nothing of this. The tiger’s wife is Amana’s sister, who helped Amana escape. Their father, seeing a chance to get rid of the deaf-mute sister, dresses his younger daughter in Amana’s wedding clothes and passes her off as Amana at the wedding. Luka raises the wedding veil to find that he has married a stranger. He does not even remember her name.
He takes her with him back to Galina. The villagers mock and distrust her. His father tells him that he will start making sons with her if Luka doesn’t. Luka finds himself trapped. Out of frustration and anger at his fate, he begins beating her, and he finds that once he starts, he cannot stop. His father dies, yet he does not continue with his plans to escape to a new life in the city. The villagers gossip about why she is there and who she is. Luka does not tell them anything, and his wife is unable to speak for herself.
Luka ties his wife up in the smokehouse, hoping that the tiger will return and kill her. Luka, however, is the one who is never seen after that night, though it takes many days for the villagers to notice that he is gone. The tiger’s wife appears in the village with a smile and a change in her manner. The villagers eventually assume that she has killed Luka; they begin calling her the tiger’s wife, as an explanation of what happened to Luka.
As it becomes clear that she is pregnant, the villagers’ distrust and fear of her increase, as they displace their fear of the tiger still roaming the mountain above their town onto her. Though she has protected them from the tiger, their fear overwhelms them as the winter continues. They begin to plot against her, saying that she is the devil’s wife—because the tiger is the devil—and that she carries the devil’s baby within her.
The grandfather, nine years old and her only friend, hears all of this superstitious talk and fears for her and for the tiger. Mother Vera, who is a midwife, helps the girl by sending the grandfather to her house with food and blankets. Only the grandfather, Mother Vera, and the apothecary see that the young pregnant girl is no threat to the village. The tiger’s wife sends the grandfather a present: hairs from the tiger.
Chapter 8 Summary: The Heart
Natalia drives back to Brejevina after retrieving her grandfather’s things. On her way, she stops to buy chocolate and to call her grandmother and report that she’s gotten her grandfather’s belongings back.
When Natalia returns to Brejevina, the whole village has gathered around the vineyard. The body has been found. Duré carefully wipes down the suitcase containing the bones of his cousin. As everyone watches, Duré and his family carefully disinter and wash the bones. Using directions written out by a wise woman in his village, they chant and pray. Fra Antun blesses the bones and waves incense. Duré symbolizes the heart using a rag and burns it, placing the ashes in a jar. The requirements to remove the curse—“wash the bones, bring the body, leave the heart behind”—are fulfilled (233).
Zóra has talked to Natalia’s grandmother, so she now knows that Natalia’s grandfather has died. Zóra tells Natalia that her grandmother insists that she not open the grandfather’s belongings until the 40 days of the soul pass.
Natalia volunteers to bury the heart at the crossroads if Duré allows her to give his wife and children medical treatment. Natalia intends to watch all night for the local mora, or spirit, which gathers souls from the crossroads, half-believing that the deathless man will arrive.
Chapter 9 Summary: The Bear
When Dariša the Bear, a formidable hunter, comes to the village on his yearly visit selling furs, the villagers give him the job of hunting down and killing the tiger.
Dariša was a great hunter in the old kingdom, and he really only enjoyed hunting because then he could work with the pelts. For him, there was joy in recreating the wild in his workroom, stuffing and mounting the animals he hunted.
Natalia retells the story of Dariša’s childhood. The son of a wealthy Austrian engineer who worked abroad for years at a time, Dariša spent his childhood taking care of his epileptic sister, Magdalena. From age eight on, Dariša dotes on her and takes his responsibility for her seriously. As witness to his sister’s attacks and constant illness, he becomes obsessed with Death, watching out for it so he can prevent his sister from dying.
A pasha’s palace in the city is turned into a museum, and Magdalena takes him there. Inside the trophy room, Dariša finds triumph over death or a “way to find life in Death” (248). The animals recreated and reanimated there give him a purpose beyond taking care of his sister. He visits the trophy room many times.
At twelve, Dariša begins an apprenticeship with a local taxidermist, and he wholeheartedly pursues his craft. His sister dies, and his father kills himself when he loses all his money. Alone and penniless, Dariša moves in with Mr. Bogan Dankov, the taxidermist, and continues honing his skills. Soon World War I arrives, followed by years of poverty and Mr. Bogan’s death. Dariša ends up running errands for a local tavern owner, Karan, who keeps a trained bear, Lola. When Lola dies, Karan is grief-stricken. Dariša stuffs her. The result is so lifelike that Karan displays her prominently in the tavern.
Visiting hunters drinking in the tavern see his work and tell him that he can make a living hunting and trapping his own animals, selling the pelts and stuffed animals. Over time, Dariša builds a reputation as a hunter, particularly of problem bears.
When he arrives in Galina, the villagers ask him to hunt the tiger. At first, he refuses, until the apothecary explains the situation, with the tiger liking to visit the recently-widowed, pregnant woman. Out of sympathy for her, and perhaps a little in love with her, Dariša agrees to hunt the tiger. He begins by setting traps all over the woods. Every morning, Dariša finds his traps sabotaged.
The grandfather hangs around Dariša each day, asking questions about his plans and how he lays his traps. Then, he explains it all to the tiger’s wife by drawing pictures for her. She goes every night and disarms the traps. The tiger also seems to have disappeared from the ridge above the town.
One of the village women takes Dariša aside and explains to him that the young, pregnant woman is the tiger’s wife. Dariša has been suspecting sabotage of his traps, and after confronting the apothecary for not telling him the truth, he leaves. The villagers are incensed and frightened that the tiger’s wife has beaten them.
Natalia narrates the next part of the chapter from the tiger’s point of view. The tiger’s wife has taken the tiger to the forest above the ruined monastery, Sveti Danilo, for his safety, bringing him food and leading him back there when he comes to find her. The tiger happens upon Dariša’s wagon and attacks his oxen. The oxen bolt, but there is no sign of the hunter.
That same night, the grandfather cannot sleep, so he visits the tiger’s wife’s house. Finding it empty, he goes in search of her in the woods. He finds her just as Dariša the Bear does. Dariša grabs her. The grandfather launches himself at Dariša, clinging to his back and biting his ear. They struggle and the grandfather grabs for something in the snow, accidentally shooting Dariša in the face, killing him. The grandfather and the tiger’s wife run back home.
Chapter 7-9 Analysis
The lives of the butcher, Luka, and Dariša the Bear demonstrate the storytelling abilities of the villagers, particularly Marko Parović. Natalia learns these stories only after her grandfather’s death, during her visit to Galina. The inclusion of their stories provides depth and additional detail for the tiger’s wife story and reveal the intersection of the tiger’s wife and deathless man stories.
The deathless man, Gavran Gailé, runs away with the silk merchant’s daughter, Amana, who is Luka’s fiancé. The intersection of the two myths is all the more striking because the sources of the two stories are different. The grandfather tells the deathless man story, while Luka’s story and the entire tiger’s wife story are revealed to Natalia by Galina residents. Without the deathless man, the tiger’s wife would never have come to Galina, and she never would have met the grandfather.
The grandfather never reveals the secret of his role in the accidental killing of Dariša the Bear.
