Narrator and point of view

The short story “To Feed the Night” by Philip Hensher is told by a third-person narrator who is outside the action and who only functions as an observer. Although the narration is in the third-person, the narrator mainly confines himself to the point of view of the husband. The narrator follows the husband’s actions and mostly presents his thoughts and feelings rather than his wife’s:

He continued to eat the tidy food which his wife had cooked seven times before in the certainty that nothing had ever gone wrong with it, and, saying nothing, felt the narrowness of the flat he lived in. His mind roamed quickly over the sitting room and bedroom and bathroom and galley kitchen. It did not take long. He said nothing. (ll. 25-30)

At times, the narrator explores the wife’s feelings, in extracts such as the following: “ ‘Can’t we—’ she said. But it was hopeless; not because she saw what he wanted, bullying her into submission, but because as she spoke, she felt her own want move inside her like ...