The author of this story subverts the reader's expectation that the husband turns into a werewolf. Explain what ACTUALLY happens to the husband. Provide evidence from the story to support your answers.
It is not until the end of the story that the reader realizes that he or she has been duped into believing that the story was about a human relationship. Le Guin brilliantly misleads the reader by never explicitly saying the narrator and her family are human. “The Wife’s Story” prompts a reader to examine the relationship between the reader and the story.
Le Guin illustrates with “The Wife’s Story” the extent to which readers apply their assumptions to a text. Though Le Guin never says that the characters are human, she counts on this assumption to create the plot twist. In this way, she shows how a story’s impact comes from what is imagined in the minds of the readers.
