The Interaction between the young housewife and the narrator in "The Young Housewife."

In paragraph five of his literary criticism of William Carlos William’s “The Young Housewife,” Barry Ahearn makes the assertion that nothing happens between the narrator and the housewife: “Finally, the meeting of housewife and doctor is defused of sexual anxiety by the doctor’s slightly pompous and ridiculous final act: ‘I bow and pass smiling.’” In his criticism, Barry Ahearn correctly analyzes the sexual tension between the narrator and the housewife; however, Ahearn perceives that nothing happens between the narrator and the housewife, which is incorrect.
Throughout the entirety of the poem, Williams portrays a young housewife who is struggling behind the “wooden walls of her husband’s house “against the domination of her husband and social stigmatisms of that day. Unfortunately for her husband, the young housewife fights these gender stereotypes through negligence of her duties, “in negligee behind,” and adultery.
The fact that the young housewife comes “again” to call the ice-man and the fish-man, suggests that this is a common occurrence. This common occurrence would most likely not be a problem if the young housewife kept the boundaries between her and these possible adulterers; however, this does not seem to be the case. The fact that the young housewife comes to the curb at ten o’clock A.M. suggests that her husband is most likely at work, since many jobs are from eight A.M. to five P.M. The absence of her husband from this reoccurring scene dramatically increases the likelihood of an interaction between the young housewife and another man (the narrator in this case). In addition to the absence of her husband, the fact that the young housewife leaves the confines of the wooden walls and comes to the curb without her corset suggests that she is completely releasing the restraints of society and committing adultery without any self-control. This lack of restraint also increases the likelihood that something occurs between the narrator and the housewife.
When Williams uses figurative language, a metaphor specifically, to compare the housewife to a fallen leaf, the reader comprehends the young housewife to be one who has fallen away from society’s and her husband’s conventional standards. William’s confirms this decadence and the fact that an interaction indeed occurs between the narrator when the narrator’s “noiseless wheels…rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves.” Now, the housewife has not just fallen away from her husband and society, but she has completely denounced this conformity; thus, the fallen leaf becomes the dead dried leaf.
For all of these reasons, I disagree with Barry Ahearn’s assessment of the interaction between the narrator and the young housewife, because according to my close reading of the poem, something did occur between them.