Character Analysis
Jake Grimes and his son are the lamest father/son pair since Dr. Evil and Scott.
At first, Jake seems like he'll be Mrs. Grimes' knight in shining armor. That couldn't be further from the truth. Despite their conflict, Jake acts a lot like the German farmer, forcing Mrs. Grimes to spend "every moment of every day [...] feeding something" even after they marry (2.2). Marriage should have made her Jake's partner—not his servant. And that's not even getting into his drunken abuse and cruelty.
Having children doesn't help things either. Grimes the Younger is just like his old man, ordering "the old woman about like a servant," treating her more like a slave than a mom (3.2). What's up with that? These two guys should care for Mrs. Grimes more than anyone, but they treat her like little more than an object.
These two guys are either unable or unwilling to see Mrs. Grimes as a person. But they're getting it all twisted—they're the ones who've sunk below human standards. In reality, she is the master and they're her animals—after all, the narrator does say that she was "destined to feed animal life," and no one acts more like animals than these two doofuses (5.14). Like the dogs that surround Mrs. Grimes after her death, these two men are nothing more than wolves disguised as domesticated animals.