"The Dover's Wife" contains a frame story for the narration of the Bushwoman's past: the current situation in which she is in is used to frame the narrative of her personal development. By interspersing episodes from the bushwoman's past into the story's present, the reader gets a sense of the challenges she's faced over time, which makes the harsh reality of her current circumstances even more poignant:
She has few pleasures to think of as she sits here alone by the fire, on guard against a snake. All days are much the same for her; but on Sunday afternoon she dresses herself, tidies the children, smartens up baby, and goes for a lonely walk along the bush-track, pushing an old perambulator in front of her.
In the frame story, a snake has just entered the bushwoman's house, and she realizes the danger the snake poses and gets her children out of its way. Sitting down next to the fire as a storm rages outside the shanty, she takes a club and watches the place she believes the snake might emerge from. While this is going on, she muses and reflects on other moments in her past when she has experienced danger, such as when she's dealt with catastrophic floods, outbreaks of disease, and even the death of a child while living in the remote Australian bush. As such, the structure of the frame story helps illustrate how the bushwoman's life has hardened and harshened her, as "all days are much the same for her" within it.
