Submitting to unwanted sex destroyed Kate’s love for her husband
But she considered killing herself before she could imagine leaving
In this electrifying literary memoir, Kate Hamilton deftly traces her complicated journey from loving wife to gaslit victim to furious feminist with an urgent goal: to expose how women are pressured to uphold the institutions of marriage and family, no matter the cost.
In the tradition of Know My Name and The Argonauts, Hamilton braids her own story with cultural criticism to argue that we must face the misogyny lurking in the shadows of marriage in the 21st century. She examines the beliefs and conditioning that held her in an increasingly destructive marriage and unflinchingly documents what she did to keep her family together—therapy, unwanted sex with her husband, swinging, affairs, an abortion—without always knowing what she freely chose. And she considers the damage that was done, to herself and others, until she could acknowledge that to save herself and her sons, she had to destroy her marriage.
Emotionally intense and timely, Mad Wife interrogates how marriage and the institutions that support it provide the perfect ecosystem for abuse of women and children, endangering their lives and denying them autonomy—all in the service of men’s desires.
Author’s Note
Introduction: Testimony
PART 1: TUMULT
1. Fellow Creature
2. Love Story
3. Betrayal
4. Stay
5. Voices
PART 2: SEEMING LIBERATION AND PLEASURE
6. Boiling Frog
7. Freedom
8. Control
9. Family
10. What We Owe Each Other
PART 3: DIVORCE IS NOT WORST THING
11. Inside/Outside
12. Hovel
13. Cruel and Inhumane
14. Control Redux
15. Banshee
PART 4: SEX IS NOT SOMETHING YOU OWE
16. Mad
17. Disturbing
18. Monstrous
Epilogue: Awakening
Resources
Recommended Reading
Acknowledgments
Notes