The Wife ("Interiors")

In “Interiors,” the only named character is Ramona, the husband’s mistress. The story is delivered in a pair of monologues by the husband and wife, but the wife is a more complex character than her husband and is given slightly more speaking time. In his monologue, the wife is worshipful and inferior: “you loved me like a god and so accommodated yourself instantly to all my whims … fancifying them into significant escapades of the soul” (5). The freewheeling, philandering husband paints the wife as a lovesick pushover who is nevertheless unable to enchant him permanently. He has the grace, however, to suspect that she has hidden depths which have been suppressed for love of him: “I get the feeling that when I’m dead happiness is gonna rise up out of your soul and wreak havoc on life” (8-9). Nevertheless, seen from the outside the wife...