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 gaslighted 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.

Hamilton braids her personal 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.