Say Yes

The opening line of “Say Yes” is: “they were doing dishes, his wife washing while he dried” (1). Although the story is written in the third person, the use of “his wife” establishes the story through the husband’s perspective. His wife, Ann, the only named character, is never seen without him. For instance, when he leaves to take out the trash, there is no parallel scene from the wife’s perspective. Not only does this amplify a sense of mystery around the wife, but it also implies that she is often defined in relationship to her husband. This concept that Ann is merely a part of the husband, which it’s clear the husband has internalized, will change as the story progresses.

As the couple washes dishes together, there’s a sense of equality and shared understanding at the beginning of the story. This quickly crumbles once they discuss interracial marriage, which creates a rupture, the central conflict. Ann has a strong reaction to her husband’s disapproval of interracial marriage, which surprises him. The husband asks, “how can you understand someone who comes from a completely different background?” to which Ann responds “Different? […] not the same like us” (2). Ann’s tone is deliberately sarcastic, implying that the two of them may not be as similar as her husband believes. Ironically, this very fight indicates that the two are radically different.

Ann asks her husband, “you wouldn’t have married me if I’d been black?” to which he responds, “if you were black, you wouldn’t be you” (2). The husband sees race as something immutable and as a firm barrier, which restricts him from fully understanding Black Americans. This also indicates that he misunderstands his wife. Ann’s rejection of his racism forces him to grapple with race as a concept, which we see when he takes out the trash and decides not to throw rocks at stray dogs. This moment indicates the husband’s character development, as he changes his customary behavior. That this behavior is cruel adds to his characterization as thoughtless and unempathetic toward others until his wife points out his erroneous thinking.

After the fight, the couple splits up; Ann goes to the other room while her husband continues to clean the kitchen. The husband hears the movement of the pages from the kitchen and recognizes that Ann is reading a magazine, which suggests he knows her habits well. Prior to the argument, the husband might have taken this to mean that he knows Ann well, but after she voices opposition to him, there are several small moments that lead the husband to liken Ann to “a stranger.”

At the end of the story, they reunite and attempt to reconcile before bed. However, the story offers no firm resolution. When the husband turns off the lights, “his heart [pounds]” as “he [waits] to hear it again – the sound of someone moving through the house, a stranger” (4). At the end, the husband feels distant from his wife, as if he is meeting her for the first time. Recognizing that Ann has different opinions and doesn’t see herself as a part of the husband, as he previously assumed she did, changes the husband’s perspective of her and makes her seem foreign to him. Irony appears again here, as the husband was certain he and his wife had more in common than a Black and white person might, but he finds in this moment that he may not actually know his wife at all.