Hi @phil-glaz, @carolkean,

The question about woman's rights and feminism is convoluted and has to be dealt with by having appropriate statistics rather than anecdotes and personal opinions and, honestly, for me the topic is beyond the scope of this discussion.

For me, the important part of this exercise was to understand the author of the prompt in what she "wanted to convey" and understanding of the resulting character.

A woman being a tyrant is possible. @phil-glaz and I remember the Countess Morozova, who killed her countless serfs with unprecedented cruelty on her whim. However, when we are talking about caring for a bedridden person more often than not it would be a woman. Again, it's not that there are no compassionate and patient men, but caring is more in woman's character, and historically it was more often a woman's duty and consequently, she got the lion share of caprices and psychological abuse.

@phil-glaz if you remember the place in "War and Peace" when Marie Bolkonsky was psychologically abused by her father when he read all her letters, limited her communication with her friends, and insisted on her studying math. That in no way excluded his love for her as he was a very loving father, but a tyrant nonetheless. To finish this example, you might remember how Marie was ashamed in her own thoughts because she dreamed of the time when her father will die. Again, not because she didn't love him, but because she wanted to free herself from tyranny.

I tell you to want... In 2002 I went to see my mother in San Diego and found her in such a condition that decided to take her with me to Los Angeles immediately. She lived with us for two more years and, at a certain time, I had to drive from work during lunchtime and change her diaper. Also at night, she rang the bell, woke me up and wanted me to sit next to her and just talk. In some sense that was a tyranny, a tyranny of a situation rather than a tyranny by a person. Thus, at a certain time, I thought I won't be able to take this "abuse." It was just physically very demanding. In my mind I was saying "God, when will this finally end!"

Coming back to the story, the most important moment for me was whether a protagonist indeed felt psychologically abused, which I felt she was - partially due to the situation and partially from the man's mistreatment.

Secondly, whether her character had a strong enough core to come through with the "ultimate measures", which I gaged as no. I felt she could contemplate and hope on being free from the situation, could think of murder as a theoretical possibility, but not to the point of actually premeditating and committing the murder.

What you've done is also legitimate - switching the emphasis to the possible prehistory. But hey this isn't the novel, and you have just so much space to describe what happened. )