The story ‘Unicorn in the Garden’ has two characters which revolve around the event of sighting a Unicorn in the garden by the husband. The story portraits the husband as a mild characterised person and the wife as mean spirited. At first the husband’s character comes to the reader as somewhat not in touch with reality. Then it further progresses to the wife’s character and portraits the wife as demeaning towards the husband. The story starts with highly imaginable and portrayal of the whole scene that occurred.
The use of the words such as ‘sunny morning’, ‘garden’, and ‘eating roses takes the imagination of the reader to a very realistic level and creates an engaging mood followed by curiosity. When the story progresses towards the event where the husband runs off to tell the wife about the sight he witnessed, takes a very interesting turn, the fact that the wife totally refuses to believe her husband, more interestingly the reaction of the husband, the reaction that he showed was in fact a result of somewhat presumed behaviour of her wife; “The unicorn is a mythical beast,’ she said.
The wife’s behaviour then progresses towards the action of insult for the husband, where she refers to him as somewhat insane. “You are a booby,” she said, “and I am going to have you put in the booby- hatch,” The second paragraph really uncovers the wife’s true nature. “She was very excited and there was a gloat in her eye”, this truly paints her character, she was rather excited to hand his husband over to the authorities. This part really sheds light and gives an insight on the relationship between the husband and the wife.
As the story progresses, irony takes it turn, the authority’s arrival and the wives explanation of the sight seen by her husband to them results in rather a misfortune for the wife. The authorities without even conforming from the husband take the wife into custody. After this point, the arrival of the husband is the crux of the story, the smart and brilliant move made by the husband, the denial of the fact he witnessed a unicorn in the garden eating roses and a lily is crucial to investigate. This is the cold revenge he gets for the treatment from his wife, the master stroke he strikes with intelligent timing in the whole scenario.
The question I chose to answer will deduce the relationship between the husband and the wife. The couple suffers from marital burnout and clearly the wife is the most belligerent. If we look at the event when the husband comes upstairs to tell her wife about the unicorn the wife responds coldly, for example, when the husband wakes up his wife to tell her he saw a unicorn in the garden, she just turns over, glares at him and responds in disgust, “You are a booby and I am going to put you in the booby-hatch. The women represent a very aggressive behaviour on the other hand the husband presents more of a cunning character.
For example, at the end of the story the denial of the husband against the wife’s story to the authorities, he simply feigns ignorance turning the tables against his wife. This depicts the whole relation between the two. ?”The Unicorn in the Garden” has no particular moral as such. Thurber is just illustrating the fact that friction does exist between husbands and wives in many marriages. The War between Men and Women,” which was reprinted in his anthology titled The Thurber Carnival. The story is showing husbands and wives in conflict. His male characters are typically impractical dreamers like the husband in “The Unicorn in the Garden” and like the hero of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. ” His female characters are often hard-core realists and intensely practical. Thurber is probably best remembered for his stories and cartoons dealing with domestic infelicity. ?
