On one level, "A Gentle Creature" is a love story. However, instead of fulfilling romantic ideals, "A Gentle Creature" portrays a battleground. Instead of a tale of mutual happiness through mutual submission, it tells of a power struggle between the narrator and his wife. Despite the fact that the husband possesses all of the story's narrative time, it is his wife who, through her death, eventually triumphs. The entire tale is the futile attempt of the narrator to regain the power he loses when his wife commits suicide.
             There are many examples of how the narrator attempts to control his wife-not only throughout her lifetime, but from beyond the grave. For example, the text never provides the reader with a name for the narrator's wife. Thus, she exists in the text only through her relationship to the narrator. On that basic level, she is denied her own individuality. Although the narrator himself also goes nameless, this namelessness does not imply the same lack of control. Because the husband possesses all of the narrative force within the text, his refusal to provide a name is irrelevant to the power struggle inherent in "A Gentle Creature." Unlike her namelessness, the narrator's is his own conscious choice.
             From the very beginning of their relationship, the narrator is attracted by his future wife's helpless situation. When she is attempting to pawn more or less worthless items, the narrator is willing to part with two roubles for the chance of triumphing over her pride. "She flushed crimson again...but swallowed the insult, didn't fling the money back at me. Took it like a lamb. That's what poverty does for you..."(P 672). He is pleased to discover that she is proud, not because pride implies inner nobility or strength of character, but because: "Proud women are particularly good when-well, when you're no longer in doubt about yo...