When Mr. and Mrs. Mitty meet again at the end of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," Mrs. Mitty scolds her husband for hiding in the winged chair where she cannot see him when she enters the room of the hotel. Walter answers vaguely, "Does it ever occur to you that I am sometimes thinking?" Whether or not she has heard him is questionable. But, she replies, "I'm going to take your temperature when I get you home." In other words, she simply dismisses Walter's thoughts as some feverish outburst showing that she is rarely (if ever) satisfied with him.

Mrs. Mitty embodies the authority of society, a society that Mitty wishes to escape in his daydreams that find him asserting himself in acts of bravery until reality reels him in. Even when he does try to uphold his individuality, something happens to crush it, such as the parking lot attendant telling him to leave his car "there" when Mitty is unable to park it, and then the attendant swiftly backs his car into the slot. Nevertheless, poor Mitty is underterred until the end. Mrs. Mitty waits