her status as a subservient, socioeconomically as well as physically. This reversal of roles continues, as the husband ascends the staircase, approaching Amys world of emotion, trying to find out What it is that she sees that he does not. He must ascend the stairs to achieve this insight, because he must utilize Amys emotion that is So small the window frames the whole of it. The comment on the part of the man that the window frame is not much larger than a bedroom(25-26) allows the reader to infer that the dynamic that is being experienced in this discourse is the sum of their relationship, and that all feeling and connection that the relationship had was dissolved with the death of their child. This creates a feeling of confinement within this dynamic, as does the staircase, each only able to move up or down in opposition to one another, but never able to expand outward within the constraints of their relationship. The concept of blindness plays into this symbolic world as well, Amy calling her husband a blind creature(16). The combination of these two specific terms is what gives the reader such a visual concept of the husbands psychological make-up. He is, here, not only a creature, one who is unable to experience human emotions entirely, but a blind creature, devoid of both the ability to see emotionally and the ability to literally see the physical landscape, the graveyard, and his childs grave specifically. This blindness is the reason that in her place Amy refuses him any help. Until Amys husband acknowledges her as an equal entity within their relationship, she will never help him to enter her world of emotion and enable him to express their collective grief over the death of the their child. At this point, the motion does tend outward, but in opposing directions, again. As Amy's husband has ascended the staircase to try to reach Amys emotional level, the house suddenly becomes suffocating to her and she mus...
