Finally! A solid episode!

Now that I’ve figured out HongShim’s puzzling confusion over WonDeuk’s identity, I can begin to follow the show with less irritation and more enthusiasm.

For starters, I liked HongShim in this episode. I welcomed her transformation from a noisy termagant, always scolding and shaming WonDeuk, into a more forbearing and restrained wife.

She balked at spending money on an expensive elixir with deer antler for his cure, but she went to the forest herself and foraged for food to nourish him.

The scratch on her face was a nice touch.

It wasn’t only a mark of her selfless act of charity, but it was also a sign of how “realistic” she had been in Episode 1. Back then, she scoffed at her friend who said that, “If you get married, your husband would feed you.” She said, “There were plenty of men who can’t even provide proper meals,” and she called their kind “completely useless.”

Lol. Prophetic words indeed. Little did she know that she was REALLY going to have to feed a man she considered a “money-stealing ghost” and her “worst enemy.”

Another thing I liked about HongShim in this episode was her perspicacity. She could quickly assess bad situations and she tried to turn them into her favor. She was wily.

Take for instance when WD found out that he’d been fed with the disgusting Beakkyung worms. She distracted him by telling him a tale of Wonhyo who drank dirty water to survive. Her moral lesson was that taste was all relative. When she was threatened to take a bite of the worm food herself, she again distracted him by expressing her happiness for his recovery. He forgot his anger over the worms when SHE REPULSED him with her even more nauseating declaration that his body was hers.

HS: Your body isn’t yours anymore.
WD: My body isn’t mine?
HS: Your body belongs to me until you pay off your debt.
WD: Let go of me! What’s wrong with you?!

She also showed her cleverness when she argued in front of the Mayor to cancel their debt to the loan shark since WonDeuk was a fool. That was a funny scene.

But I liked that scene because it made for a good plot development.

WonDeuk was furious that she would humiliate him just to be absolved of paying 30 nyangs. So he retaliated and told her that she should have become a concubine of Lord Park instead of marrying a poor man like him.

Savage!

That in turn made her angry and she slapped him. With undisguised contempt he told her, “How dare a lady hit her own husband?”

But when she disappeared for days after that, he was worried. Then when they met again at the feast, and Lord Park propositioned her, he was upset that she was willing to entertain Lord Park’s advances…like a concubine. hahaha.

Here then we have a good solid arc about her being a concubine.

She was exasperated by his buffoonery but she was forgetting that, from the very start, it was his foolishness that saved her from being a concubine. If he had been a smarter man, a man with his wits (and memories) about him, there was no way he would have married somebody like her — and she would have been doomed to be a kept woman.

Did you get it?

If HongShim argued that the loan shark’s contract with WonDeuk was moot and void because WonDeuk was a fool and thus, unable to sign contracts, then it would be equally true that their marriage was null and void because WonDeuk was a fool when he agreed to marry her to save her.

Finally, the abandonment theme —

The last reason I thought this episode was solid was because of her letter to Jung JeYoon. I liked it not only because she nipped in the bud any emotional entanglement with him, but because it gave us an insight into her character.

She wrote,

Thank you for the lantern. It’s been a long time since I’ve received a gift from the heart. Even if my wish doesn’t come true, that’s enough for me. It’s been 10 years since I visited that place to meet my brother again. For the first few years, I had hope. However, it became more and more painful as the years passed. It felt like I was confirming that my brother died on the day of the full moon every month. Please stop coming to Mojeon Bridge just to meet me. I’m not going to go back there anymore.

Like in the previous episode when the cherry blossom tree reminded her of the promise of the young boy Lee Yul, the bridge was also a reminder of her promise of her brother to meet again. As I said in my post explaining her lies, she had expressed her honest feelings about being abandoned. Lee Yul didn’t come although she waited and endured everything for him. Lee Yul should have fulfilled his promise; she had so believed in him keeping his word.

Now it was her brother who broke his word. She had no choice but to assume that he was dead, because in all those months and years, he had not once shown up at the bridge on their appointed meeting time. And that was unlike him. He had always cherished and spoiled her. In the two flashbacks we’ve seen so far, Seokwan generously gave her gifts: the red ribbon in Episode 1, and the “small needle” or sword here in this episode. So, she’d come to accept that Seokwan’s nonappearance meant his death. Thus, she was abandoned again.

Not only this, prior to going to Hanyang, she had visited her father’s grave. There, she asked, “Why aren’t you keeping your promise? You promised me you’d find me a man as kind and capable as you were. Did you disown me as your daughter because I’m no longer Yoon Yi Seo? If you were still alive I wouldn’t have met a husband like WonDeuk.”

She thought her father had broken his promise, too, because she was saddled with a useless husband. She thought she was abandoned because she had assumed a new identity as HongShim.

All these failed promises of the men in her life would have — or SHOULD HAVE — broken the spirit of a normal girl. She was abandoned by these men who promised to be at her side.

But the admirable thing about HongShim was that she trudged through all the obstacles. Unlike the Crown Prince who grew up resentful and uncomfortable of his privileged lifestyle, HongShim grew up helpful, considerate and spunky despite her hardships.  I guess Lee Yul could learn a thing or two from her resiliency in the next episodes.