Husband

Mr. Mallard was loving and solicitous. She is genuinely grief stricken as the news of her husband's death, but quickly realizes the freedom his death will provide her. The quotes below illustrate Mallard as a husband.

She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead.

John, in The Yellow Wallpaper, is never described as loving. He treats his wife like a child, and although both men are depicted as in complete control, Mallard is seen as the loving husband. Love does not appear in any description of John.