A Poor Wife starts with the main character secretly reading his wife's diary. In this work, the form and the subject are in harmony using the cross structure. Both the male-discourse and the female-discourse are the subjects, and each discourse becomes the subject ‘I’, while at the same time, becoming the other as an object. Reading her diary results in the husband having two perspectives: one, seeing himself through her eyes as the subject and the other, viewinghimself as the object through self-reflection. In the male discourse, the main character is confronted with two opposing representations of his wife. The first is how he knows her in their daily lives whilethe second is what he learns about her through her diary. In the female discourse, communication is both direct and indirect. First, it is direct in that she writes and he reads. It is indirect in that she communicates her desire for him to know her thoughts by leaving her diary where he can easily find it. She invites him to read it. This takes him from his stable and routine world to her chaotic emotional world. The shock and anxiety helps him find truth beyond his everyday life. Through this forced self-reflection, the husband develops an attitude of care, sympathy and consideration for others. The wife takes control of communication usingher diary as a vehicle to convey her thoughts and feelings to her husband, thereby, resulting in his becoming a better person.