Point of View

Mating is told in the first-person narrative by an unnamed female protagonist who tells the story strictly from her personal perspective and recollections. The reader is only certain of the narrator's thoughts and feelings. The thoughts and feelings of other characters are filtered through the narrator's sense of what they thought or felt or by dialogue from personal conversations she had with them.

Stories told from the first person are told from the viewpoint of "I," which is instinctively the way the reader thinks of themselves. This creates a bond between the reader and the narrator but also makes it painfully clear how limited a single human perspective always is - it has its insights and its blind spots. The fact the narrator has no name magnifies this aspect as the reader is less able to objectify her as a character and so remains more deeply...