“Extradited” by Isabella Valancy Crawford

Perhaps I am looking for homoeroticism in all the wrong places, but I thought that this story kind of suggested it. The relationship between the husband and his “friend” seemed a little, well, friendly for them to be just friends. The wife suspects the friend to be of questionable character, and while he did commit a crime he redeems himself in the reader’s eyes by dying trying to save the child at the end. However, the wife seems to feel no remorse at his passing. She seems pleased that he husband will no longer be distracted from their life.

The wife seems to be acting out of the stereotypically feminine desire to preserve and maintain the home and she views the friend as a threat to that home. By trying to save the child, the friend displays an equal amount of effort to preserve the home. So perhaps he truly was a threat to the wife because he was her equal in that regard.