Point of View

“How to Be an Other Woman” is written from the second person point of view. This unique narrative vantage point captures and enacts the protagonist Charlene’s internal experience throughout the short story. The reader might interpret the effects of the narrative vantage in a multitude of ways. For example, in one sense, the second person conveys the shame that Charlene feels in regards to sleeping with a married man. In another sense, the second person is enacting her attempts to disassociate from her true self in order to convince herself that she is indeed “another woman” (5). In yet another sense, the second person point of view captures the disparity between Charlene’s true self and her donned self. This is indeed why she comes to define the word “mistress” as “to put your shoes on the wrong feet” (5). In the same way that the...