Synopsis:
Every #tradwife needs a baby. She’ll get one at any cost.
When Camille Deming isn’t cooking, cleaning, or homesteading in her picture-perfect country farmhouse, she’s posting about her tradwife lifestyle for her online followers. She takes inspiration from other tradwives on social media, aspiring to be like them, but Camille’s missing a key component: a baby. And contrary to what she posts online, things with her husband, Graham, have been strained. Pressured by her eager followers, Camille fears that without a baby, her relationship will suffer and her social media will never grow out of its infancy.
When Camille discovers a mysterious, decrepit well in the wheatfield behind her house, she makes a wish for a baby. Afterward, she has unsettling experiences that she convinces herself are angelic in nature, and when she’s visited one night by a strange creature, her wish comes true.
Camille’s pregnancy announcement gets more engagement than anything she’s ever posted—so what if Graham’s reaction is lukewarm? Camille’s life is finally falling into place. Never mind that her pregnancy is developing freakishly rapidly and she’s suddenly craving raw meat. Being a traditional wife is worth it.
Review:
Saratoga Schaefer’s “Trad Wife,” is a kinda sexy, very bloody, unexpectedly fun, righteously furious and nuanced condemnation of the pretty pre-historic ‘trad-wife,’ culture that has taken the internet by storm, and ripe for it, bubbled now into the horror genre. We’re in for a treat. I’m telling you. Schaefer’s latest, packed with commentary upon gender roles, reproductive labour, domestic performance, religion and parenting, in addition to some bizarre and very scaly erotica, is not what I anticipated- a far stranger, more bingeable beast that I consumed with mounting dread, disbelief and delight, for beneath its sourdough crust and all that gingham is a most bloody and unpleasant surprise. This one is out from Crooked Lane in the US February 10th, and Bantam in the UK, February 19th.
We follow Camille, adoring wife and micro-influencer- for now. Her house is aggressively curated, her content aesthetically faultless, but folic acid-free bagel recipes and morning routines can only get a trad wife so far. What Camille and her metrics really need, to elevate her content to the likes of Mara Shoemaker, is a child- but it’s just not happening for her and Graham. Until she’s visited, first in imagination only, by a strange creature. Then it happens. Her pregnancy announcement viral, her instagram reaping the benefits of her baby already, things couldn’t be better. Okay, the baby is kicking a little hard, growing a little fast, and yes, her pregnancy cravings are… unconventional, but that is simply the price of success, and Mara Shoemaker just commented on her post.
Camille is a complex main character. She is often rather infuriating, in that we are angry on her behalf long before she allows herself such a luxury- (on the surface perhaps) for the bulk of the novel she seems rather content with the beige, linen and lightwood corner she’s backed into. Certainly initially, she is difficult to like- she is after all the manifestation of the trad wife culture that the novel sets out to skewer. She has these few and far between moments of startling clarity, where she seems to come to her senses, remembering she can think critically, before continuing on as if nothing happened. It almost reads like a possession story, with some underlying, sane and seething part of her always trying to scratch and claw its way to the surface and out of such a miserable existence. It’s probably no spoiler to say that that part of her prevails eventually, and Camille turns from the trad wife she was deceived into believing she had to be to something incandescent, furious and glorious. It’s a magnificent transformation that we really do root for.
What Schaefer makes clear to us is that the regressive compliance that this portion of the internet paints as a virtue is learned, coerced and rewarded, most of the women trapped in this vicious circle are victims as well as apostles of it. “Trad Wife,” warns through clenched teeth about the danger of chasing engagement and validation, the lives of these budding Nara Smiths, unfulfilling, discontent, full of sourdough, spurred by a soft tyranny of approval. Such oppressively wholesome, palatable lifestyles are deeply rooted and encouraged by that vile place where the internet and conservatism (and evangelism too) converge.
I appreciate that all sounded a little heavy. It is a little heavy though, and all the better for it. Schaefer’s “Trad Wife,” hits all the right notes, it’s politically engaged, quite rightly enraged, and genuinely highly entertaining and cathartic in its excess. With its brisk and knowing prose, and break-neck pacing, I couldn’t help but gobble up this ‘good for her?’ ‘femgore?’ ‘pink horror?’ (we should really come up with some better names) horror triumph in a couple of sittings. If one good thing is to come out of this truly sickening ‘trad wife,’ complex, I sure hope it’s a couple more books like this.
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