- Explain the relationship between the narrator and her husband John. How does this relationship affect the narrator?
The narrator's relationship between her husband, John, is unique and different, almost like a fantasy vs reality type of relationship. The narrator’s husband is a physician and says “he has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures”. John does not believe in the supernatural and focuses on the living and current, the narrator on the other hand seems to believe in the supernatural, as she says in the beginning of the short story, “there is something strange about the house-I can feel it”.
John believes the narrator is over analyzing things too much, and since she is sick, it is making her condition worse than what it is currently. The narrator’s relationship with her husband John affects her in a negative way. Since the narrator is sick, John tells her she should rest and not work, but the narrator wants to work and continue writing because she now feels that she is a burden to John, and she is starting to feel they are becoming distant between each other. The narrator would also like to share her writing ideas with John, and for him to critique her writing as well.
