It's this paradox that makes the American wife such an interesting, complex character.
As the reader, we don't necessarily have to agree. The wife is a woman you can like and sympathize with very much, but she's also a woman you might see as a whiny brat who won't shut up, like her husband seems to. It's this range of possibilities, however, and the way in which she talks about desires that she doesn't quite comprehend that makes this character so multi-dimensional and so real. Come on, what's more real than that— knowing only the tips of our desires, but feeling their unnamed shadowy bulk deep within us?