If there was one thing that he hated more than another it was the way she had of waking him in the morning. She did it on purpose, of course. It was her way of establishing her grievance for the day.

The lines sketch a domestic power struggle in miniature: the morning wake-up becomes a ritualized contest over control, resentment, and emotional bookkeeping. The speaker’s certainty that “she did it on purpose” shows how intimacy can breed interpretive paranoia—ordinary actions are read as deliberate provocations. “Establishing her grievance for the day” suggests that grievance is not merely felt but performed and renewed, as if the relationship requires a daily narrative of injury to justify hostility or distance. Mansfield’s sharp, economical irony exposes how petty routines can harden into patterns of mutual antagonism, revealing the psychological texture of a relationship already organized around blame rather than tenderness.