This reader-response study focuses on the influences that four readers relationships with families and friends have on their responses to several literary characters and the relationships among these characters as presented in six short stories. Four college students, two men and two women, read and responded to the stories in writing and in interviews with the researcher. The stories depict men and women confronting gender related family or individual crises concerning such topics as independence, autonomy, and the nature of the marriage commitment and male/female relationships.