38 pages • 1 hour read
Rachel HawkinsThe Wife Upstairs
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Gothic Novels
Gothic novels gained popularity throughout the 18th and 19th centuries; they typically feature an atmosphere of mystery or suspense, a damsel in distress, the supernatural, visions or omens, and strong emotions. Throughout The Wife Upstairs, various characters refer to Gothic or Gothic-influenced novels. These allusions include those to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the text that inspired Hawkins’s novel and a work that itself borrows heavily from the Gothic tradition. Hawkins thus pays homage to Brontë’s text through her use of Gothic elements while also creating an atmosphere of mystery and suspense throughout the novel.
One of the more prominent Gothic tropes that Hawkins borrows is the presence of a mysterious, threatening, and powerful male character. Jane repeatedly hears thumping coming from the third floor of Eddie’s home. She jokes to Eddie, “I’m creeping around upstairs like I’m in a gothic novel or a bad horror movie” (301). She grows paranoid and begins to question Eddie’s role in the disappearance of his wife. Bea likewise compares Eddie’s actions to that of a villain within a gothic novel, saying he has “kept [her] locked away in this house like something out of a goddamn gothic novel while he seduce[s] the naïve young woman who walk[s] his dog” (423). Although Hawkins reimagines the specific dynamics between each of the characters, the major elements of Jane Eyre’s Gothic plot remain and serve to build an air of mystery and suspense around Thornfield Estates.
Smith Lake
Smith Lake serves as the location of Blanche Ingraham’s murder. Bea and Blanche venture onto the lake in the dark of night. The depth of the lake complicates the search for Blanche’s body and symbolizes the obscured truth that Jane seeks to uncover throughout the novel. Eddie informs Jane that the lake has “trees under the water. Tall ones, sixty feet high in some places. A whole fucking forest under the water” (251). These details are not visible from the surface of the lake, much like the surface-level assumption that Blanche’s death was an accidental drowning conceals the truth. It takes months for the police to recover Blanche’s body, but when they do, they discover that Blanche was murdered. Similarly, Jane learns that a web of contentious relationships complicates her original, shallow assessment of Thornfield Estates as a haven of safety and stability. Like the lake, Thornfield Estates and its inhabitants harbor deep resentments that cloud the truth. Through her investigation, Jane dives into the murky waters of Thornfield Estates to see what lies beneath the surface.
Hawkins’s use of Smith Lake as a murder setting evokes another novel influenced by Gothic literature generally and Jane Eyre specifically: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. In this novel, the protagonist learns that her husband killed his villainous former wife but arranged the death to look like a sailing accident. The setting therefore serves as a red herring in The Wife Upstairs by seeming to implicate Eddie.
Blanche Ingraham
A snobbish socialite in Brontë’s novel, Blanche Ingraham represents the old money of the South in The Wife Upstairs. Unlike Bea, she was born into the affluent circles of communities like Thornfield Estates. She does not attempt to escape her privileged past but to protect it from outsiders. When Bea struggles to adapt to life at Ivy Ridge, Blanche initially welcomes Bea and teaches her how to navigate this new environment. However, when Bea gains admission to a more prestigious college than Blanche does, Blanche rejects her and insists they attend different colleges. Blanche goes on to follow the trajectory of the rich women in her community by marrying young and moving into the impressive Thornfield Estates. She rejects Bea again at the Southern Manors company party when she witnesses firsthand the success Bea has found on her own. Blanche in fact calls the validity of Bea’s success into question, commenting on the similarities between Bea’s designs and Blanche’s home décor.
This conflict between Bea and Blanche solidifies Bea’s position as an outsider in Thornfield Estates. Despite her success, Bea still struggles to gain elite acceptance. This fuels her dangerous ambition and results in the murder of Blanche. Blanche’s rejection of Bea symbolizes the gatekeeping characteristic of old money and contributes to the development of Bea’s dehumanizing thirst for power.
Theft
One thing that sets Jane Bell apart from the character who inspired her is her habit of stealing. She continues taking jewelry and other items from houses in Thornfield Estates long after she has any need for money, which she admits was never really the point anyway; she simply likes “having” the things she takes. Bea steals on a much grander scale, at least according to Tripp and Blanche, who accuse her of plagiarizing Blanche’s style and selling it under the Southern Manors name. There are also more figurative examples of “theft,” with characters like Bea, Jane, and Eddie borrowing freely from other people’s life stories and even identities to craft new personas for themselves.
For these three main characters, stealing seems like the only pathway into elite society; thanks to the pretensions of those born into wealth, money alone isn’t enough to secure social standing, so Bea in particular makes up the matching pedigree. Ultimately, however, Hawkins uses this kind of social climbing to skewer the artificiality of all elite society. The same women who demand “authenticity” from Bea’s brand construct their own lives and identities out of items they’ve purchased from her. As a novel that combines elements of several different source texts, The Wife Upstairs perhaps suggests that a certain amount of borrowing is inevitable, but it satirizes the idea that these composite identities are in any way authentic.
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