The protagonist in this story is the wife because the story focuses on her desires and the drive to fulfill them. The story is told in a limited third person, and while readers don’t get much direct insight to the wife’s thoughts, the wife’s words and actions reveal her character. Unlike George, “the American wife” is unnamed; she is called “the American wife,” “the wife,” “his wife,” and “the American girl.” She is never called a “woman,” and after she encounters the maid, the narrator refers to her only as “the American girl” or “his wife.” The American wife feels most comfortable with Traditional Gender Norms; she wishes for long hair (“I get so tired of looking like a boy” [123]), to be a caretaker of the cat, and for her husband to provide for her emotionally and materially.

Her transformation over the course of the story is subtly woven beneath the surface of the story, in what Hemingway called the “iceberg effect.” That is, although she hasn’t explicitly communicated her discontent to George, her quest for the cat prompts her to use her

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