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Mrs. Mitty is Walter Mitty’s wife and main antagonist. Stereotypically bossy and unyielding, Mrs. Mitty dominates Mitty whenever she appears in the story. She orders Mitty to slow down when he drives too fast for her tastes. She forces Mitty to demean himself to other men, making him take the car to the garage to have their snow chains removed by someone younger. She questions his memory, reminding him to buy overshoes. She treats him like a child one minute then reminds him that he is no longer a young man. She asks if he has lost his gloves, and Mitty worries that she will berate him for forgetting to buy puppy biscuits at the grocery store. She also dominates Mitty physically, hitting him when she cannot find him where she told him to wait for her.
Mitty sees Mrs. Mitty as “grossly unfamiliar,” like a “strange woman” who has yelled at him in a crowd. Similarly, Mrs. Mitty does not really know or understand Mitty. Unaware of Mitty’s secret interior life, she views his frequent lapses as some sort of physical issue. She insists that Mitty could be treated, if only he would submit himself to a checkup by the family doctor, another man who makes Mitty feel inferior. Notably, Mrs. Mitty does not appear in any of his daydreams, suggesting she is part of the world he wishes to escape.
