In one notable case, a family is bereft of a central family member's support as result of selfishness. In "A Sorrowful Woman", while the protagonist, a wife and mother, does voice her feelings of guilt, she still abdicates all familial responsibilities in favor of her narcissistic pursuits. At first, the effects of her selfish decisions are inconsequential. For example, the husband is perhaps slightly inconvenienced, when she unexpectedly asks him to put their son to bed and read him a bedtime story. However, his responsibilities become so overwhelming that at one point he ends up falling asleep in the child's bed out of sheer exhaustion. He has to wake up earlier than usual to feed, bathe, and take his son to school, before he goes to work.
