Point of View

Her Sweet Jerome is narrated in the third person from Jerome's wife's point of view. In this way the reader is shown the very strong opinions held by Jerome's wife concerning how she views herself and education, and how (despite Jerome's physical and emotional abuse) she views "her sweet" Jerome. Throughout most of the story she sees money as power and education as something inferior. It is only at the end of the story that she realizes that even though she has money, she is inferior because she is ignorant. The reader can view Jerome's wife as an unreliable narrator, obsessed as the wife is on finding a fictitious lover and moving toward a breakdown.

Setting

The story is set in a town somewhere in the South where Jerome teaches school and his wife owns and runs her own beauty shop at the back of her...