Vivian's feelings of guilt.
I wrote about this before, but as I said in a recent post, I am going to write about it again. Some people seem to think that because Vivian keeps going on with her cheating, lying, hypocrisy and betrayals that this means that she does not feel guilty about any of it, but this is not the case. By the end of chapter 2, this may have changed some, and chapter 3 may show us if she is moving in the direction of feeling less guilty, but up until now, guilt has played an important role in Vivian's character. Vivian's guilt plays an important role for Christian's character as well.
Mostly agree. I would add that normally a woman will not stay with a man if she realizes
she cannot trust him to have her best interest at heart
she cannot respect the man she has come to know him to be, which is not the same as what she first thought.
A woman does not respect a man because he enforces his will upon her or other people. She respects a man when she finds goodness in his heart, which test Boss is going to fail badly. Forceful men can have good hearts, but force is not the requirement. Except that some women are attracted to power, and others can find the presence of wealth in itself to be sexy. Goodness can then be seen as an impediment to wealth and power. I don't think those are what Wife is about.
None of which means that she will not crumple and allow herself to be degraded. That is the climactic scene that waits in coming chapters. Will she/won't she? I think that if guilt would motivate her then, it would motivate her now. It would help her think more clearly if she could be free of the guilt, which Sunshine has helped to do. Think more clearly because then she would not be so vulnerable to Boss's manipulations.
I think those dinner scenes show Wife's thinking. She thinks that by chastising him, he will start being less of an asshole. His response is to not try to get her to go to a fancy hotel with him. He is obviously taking her home. She responds by taking his dick out and caressing it and sucking it. He takes her home, gets her undressed, starts fucking her. She is still trying to get him to treat her better. He throws her out of the car and demands to hear her say she likes sex with him.
That was her fist attempt to get him to show goodness. The second is where she delivers her demands at the end of chapter 2. Her hope is that in return for saying he owns her, he will cease to be an asshole. My suspicion is that he is not one bit interested in complying. Negotiation, accommodation, compromise are the cores of a successful relationship. Boss is not going to do any of that. He is going to attempt to force her, and he will not really care how she feels about it. Storm clouds loom.