William’s Wife - Gertrude Trevelyan

Category: Classic, General Fiction
Language: English
Keywords: British Literature

Written by Gertrude Trevelyan
Read by Catherine Bailey
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Length: 7hrs and 27mins
First published: March 2026
Publisher: Boiler House Press

“William’s Wife is a study in pathological control. As Jane goes about her life – restricted, repetitive, deadly – we cannot look away. What begin as Jane’s acts of resistance to William’s control – keeping tiny amounts of money for herself – ends as the cause of a debased, paranoid and lonely life. The horror isn’t that which punctures and invades ordinary life; it is ordinary life, lived to its logical conclusion.” - Leigh Wilson

When Jane marries the elderly grocer William Chirp, she thinks she has moved up into the comfort of middle class. Instead, she discovers that William exerts a control over her life that forces her to live like a prisoner. His tight-fistedness and suspicions so affect Jane that even after his death, she finds herself trapped in a penny-pinching paranoia and resorts to scavenging for food out of garbage bins and taking her silverware with her everywhere in a shopping bag.