The second part of the novel takes place about a year later and follows Yeong-hye’s brother-in-law, a mixed media artist. Later, he will divorce her and cut ties with her family. Cheong wakes up to find that Yeong-hye is missing he finds her in the garden, naked from the waist up, holding a small bird with bite marks in it. After her father forces her to put meat into her mouth, Yeong-hye cuts her own wrist. Cheong watches her father slap her twice against the face. At a family meal designed to intervene in Yeong-hye’s vegetarianism, Mr. Cheong continues to find his wife’s behavior both alienating and disturbing, Yeong-hye descends deeper into her frightening dreams of blood and murder. He feels “shut out” (25) of Yeong-hye’s dreams and decides “this strange situation had nothing to do with ” (26). As she continues inconveniencing him and ignoring his wishes, he begins raping her. Cheong finds himself angry with his wife whenever she breaches the social contract, whether at home or publicly. A man who is distinctly “inclined toward the middle course in life” (12), Mr. Cheong articulates his frustrations with his newly vegetarian wife.
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