Comment on "Dreaming of Kimchee"

Throughout the story, it seemed like the narrator constantly felt the need to convince herself that what she was doing and the relationship that she was in was not necessarily bad. She dismisses magazine articles that cover extramarital affairs in a cautionary tone. It also seemed to me that the narrator didn’t feel bad or sorry about being the cause of her husband and his ex-wife’s divorce until a similar type of situation happens to her. In this messy relationship, the only person she really seemed to care about was herself. The narrator kept stressing on how “the stress of the relationship [has] hurt [her] tremendously” and how she would “get so sick of the whole thing” as if this wasn’t hurtful at all to the wife who had to let go of her husband because of her (434). While the narrator does claim that the society’s pressure was one of the main contributing factors as to why she thought she was “not supposed to be by [her]self” (and it may be true), I still don’t understand why she didn’t decide to leave the guy (434). The narrator even states herself that she wasn’t “exactly overjoyed when he asked [her] to marry him” because she was in the process healing and taking time off to figure out who she is (436). While I don’t want to undermine the level of influence society has on individual people, I can’t really buy the excuse of “leap of faith” via societal pressure as the main reason for the narrator wrecking someone else’s marriage. She could have found someone else to feel the same, if not greater sense of security and safety if she left the husband early enough. Based on the narrator’s relationship with her sister and her husband, it appears that she’s very dependent on other people for various things like physical comfort and emotional support. I wonder if the husband was her only option of getting that kind of support, or if she could have chosen more wisely on who to spend the rest of her life with. Because as I mentioned earlier, this relationship with her husband doesn’t do much good for her, as she begins to feel anxiety about his faithfulness at one point.

As a sidenote, I don’t want to make it seem like I’m putting all the blame on the narrator and her character, because ultimately the husband has to take the majority of blame here. He started the extramarital affair and decided to live a misleading life, which negatively affected both the ex-wife and the narrator. The narrator probably, to an extent, enabled his behavior. But it isn’t to say that he had no control over his actions. It’s hard to talk about him because not a lot of information is given on the husband, but I wanted to make it clear that I find him to be the most problematic in this relationship, not the narrator.

1. On page 437, the ex-wife states that “men who are unfaithful once are bound to cheat again” — do you think this statement is true? Or do you think people who cheat once (or more) are able to be loyal and faithful again?
2. What are your reactions to the narrator? Did you feel any sympathy towards her at any point in the story?