Skip to main content

Week 3 Story: Bedtime Story


Author’s Note:

This story was inspired by the telling of "Cupid and Psyche" within the "Apuleiu's Golden Ass" translated by Tony Kline. In the original, the story of Cupid and Psyche is told by an old woman to a young girl who has been kidnapped by thieves the old woman works with. This way it is a story within a story. Similarly, I have included a condensed version of the story of Cupid and Psyche within this story about a mom and a daughter as a bedtime story. Here the mom is telling the story to the daughter, but she only gets half way through it before the daughter falls asleep where in the Golden Ass, the old woman finishes the tale. In the full story, Psyche goes on to betray Cupid, be tortured by Venus, and eventually be reunited with Cupid and made immortal. That seemed like a lot for a bedtime story so that is why this story only includes the first half.



Jane checked on her daughter Molly as she was getting ready for bed. As Jane leaned on the doorway she saw Molly brushing her teeth and humming some made up song. When Molly saw Jane standing there she finished up brushing, jumped down from the step stool in front of the sink, and ran to hug Jane. Looking up at Jane with a sweet smile, Molly asked, “Will you tell me a story before bed?” Jane, feigning indecision replied, “I don’t know sweetie. It is getting late. There might not be time for a story tonight.” Not quite understanding the joke, Molly starts to plead with her mother, “Please momma? I’ll go to bed extra early tomorrow if you’ll tell me a story tonight.” Never intending to withhold the bedtime story, Jane relented.

Once Molly was settled in bed, Jane sat down next to her and began to tell her the story of Cupid and Psyche. The story went something like this:

Once there was a girl named Psyche, so beautiful that all the people that saw her were convinced she was the goddess of love, Venus. Soon everyone but a few believed that she truly was Venus and began to worship her as such. Hearing this and becoming very angry that a human was being worshiped in her place, Venus told her son Cupid to make Psyche fall in love and marry a terrible creature. When a prophecy foretold Psyche’s unfortunate marriage, she and her parents accepted the terrible fate and Psyche was left alone on a hill top for the creature to come and claim. But, when Cupid came to make Psyche fall in love he was captivated by her beauty and instead fell in love with her himself and swept her away to a fancy palace where they lived happily for a while.

Stopping to take a breath and remember the rest of the story, Jane looked over at Molly. She was already fast asleep. Quietly, Jane got up and shut out the light. The rest of the story would have to wait until tomorrow.


Bibliography: 
Cupid and Psyche from Apuleiu's Golden Ass, Translated by Tony Kline
Picture of a Bed and Book via pixabay by Pexels
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Introduction

Hello!  My name is Cat and although this will be a blog about mythology and folklore, today I want to tell you all a little bit about myself and my summer. So, to start off I am a civil engineering student here at the University of Oklahoma. I will be graduating in December, but I will be staying on for another year to complete my master’s degree, also in civil engineering but with a focus on structural engineering. Civil engineering includes the design of buildings, infrastructure, water supply systems, waste water treatment systems, and traffic control systems to name a few.  Over this summer I had the opportunity to work as an intern for a civil engineering company and learned a lot from the experience. I learned to design pump stations, outline drainage areas, how to do the runoff calculations for inlets, culverts and drainage ditches, and a bunch of stuff about low impact development, but most importantly I learned that I don’t like doing any of those things....
7 comments
Read more

Reading Notes: Lang European Fairy Tales II: Blue Beard

I am doing some week 15 assignments here during dead week to fill in some missing points. Because I read the first Lang unit last week and enjoyed it so much, I decided to read the second Lang unit this week. Of the stories that I read here are my notes over "Blue Beard" which I found quite exciting! Blue Beard was very rich, but considered ugly and terrifying for having a blue beard I would like to research to see if this is a reference to something else, because it is so strange  He also had had many wives previously and no one knew what happened to them  One of his neighbors had two daughters and he wanted to marry one of them  Neither of them wanted to marry him and kept playing him off on the other  To persuade them, Blue Beard invited the family and many others to one of his estates and they partied for a week After that, the younger sister decided he wasn't so bad and they were married  Blue Beard has to go away on business so he gives all...
Post a Comment
Read more

Week 8 Reading and Writing

Hello! Thus far I have really enjoyed the reading and assignments for this class. Having something new to read each week has kept me interested, and the writing assignments are an enjoyable way for me to exercise a part of my brain that I don’t get to use much. Although I always feel pressed for time in completing these assignments, I look forward to the time I get to spend on them more than the work for any other class. I think the things I am the proudest of right now would be the look of my blog and the introduction to my story book. As for my introduction, I don’t know how long I spent just staring at a blank word document before I got up the courage to write it. Creative writing like that, specifically storytelling, was never something that was emphasized in any curriculum I have had. It has all been centered more towards technical writing or academic writing. So, this was new territory for me, and anyone that knows me well at all knows I hate being bad at things and tha...
Post a Comment
Read more