By Ainsley Mura
“The thing about when you’re in something: you think you owe it to the situation to keep going.”
This quote, from page 235 of Sarah Langan’s Trad Wife, perfectly summarises the overarching message of the novel. Throughout the book, Langan tastefully explores the isolation of women who conform to patriarchal trends, such as the ‘trad wife’, without caricaturising or nastily disparaging any women along the way.
Forced to tread down a path she’d typically avoid, cancelled journalist Jenny Kaplan spends a week out at Black Swan Farm with ‘trad wife’ influencer Mia Wright, her husband, and their seven children. Staged accidents and eerie interactions all but write Jenny’s unfiltered exposé for her, until yellow-tinted air and whispered pleas for help force her to take a closer look at the not-so-picture-perfect family.
The first half of the book explores the effects of cancel culture and incel groups through the plot-driven hardships Jenny experiences, until the second half of the story invites a feminist lens – exposing the true ‘trad wife’ horror.
While the popularity of real ‘trad wives’, such as Hannah Neeleman (known online as Ballerina Farm), has brought forth a myriad of books exploring this trend, Langan’s rendition doesn’t fall into the trap of pitting women against each other. Instead, she employs it as a literary device that drives the story’s emotionally intense tone.
Compared to other, similar explorations, which are ultimately plagued with overcomplicated genre stacking and half-hearted intellectual prompts, Trad Wife completely leans into the gothic elements of psychological horror to capture the uncanny events unravelling between its pages. While obviously inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, the atmosphere of Black Swan Farm remains original in its sensory assault on the reader.
And though sometimes dreams are a point of contention in novels – a shortcut for clumsy storytelling – Jenny’s dream sequences are captivating and necessary.
Fans of modern folklore, ‘trad wife’ novels, and feminist horror will find Langan’s Trad Wife a bone-chilling page-turner ready to be immediately devoured.
