The Silent Wife

Much of what motivates Todd’s actions, both personal and professional, is his desire for a legacy. Over the course of 20 years, he has built himself up into a position that may allow him to finally make a significant mark on the real estate landscape of Chicago. The driving factor in his decision to leave Jodi for Natasha is the unborn child that Natasha carries and the patriarchal legacy a son will embody.

The novel reveals quite a bit about Todd’s career trajectory. When he and Jodi meet, he is renovating a derelict mansion. From there, Todd spends a decade flipping houses before developing his first large-scale project, a four-story office building (31). At the time of the novel, he is working on a six-unit apartment house, which he sees as “an interim project […] the game plan is to sell it and use the capital for his next venture, an office building on a grander scale, something that will trump everything he’s done so far” (34). Jodi reflects that “He has something bigger and grander in mind—a building that’s on the map” (219). Todd started small, with a hands-on solo project, and worked his way up to being a legitimate property developer. His desire for a building “on the map” reflects his desire to make his mark on the city and be remembered.

Todd is preoccupied with his own death and sees his son as a way to leave a piece of himself behind. He describes his desire for children not as a desire for “children,” but a desire for “descendants, heirs, or just one heir, preferably a son, someone who shares his DNA, a variant of himself to replace him when he’s gone” (77). He hates the thought of “a crop of strangers who will take over the structures left behind: the buildings, the professions. His building and his profession. When he gets on this jag the only thing that comforts him is the thought of his unborn child” (215). In Todd’s musings about fatherhood, he values not the relationship he’ll have with his offspring, but rather the marker of success and legacy that children will provide. He sees Natasha as “a born mother,” but imagines himself “as a patriarch, the benevolent head of a brood of boys and girls […] clean and pressed, quiet and well behaved” (144). What he wants is not a loving family with close bonds between himself and his children, but rather the image of a successful family, including kids who will obey perfectly and absorb his “accumulated knowledge,” which he hopes will be “passed on and not gone to waste” (144). Todd sees his potential children not as beloved individuals, but as vessels for his legacy, a continuation of his life’s work, his name, and his DNA.

The first and most obvious way The Silent Wife develops the theme of the attractions of novelty is the value it places on youth. The basic premise of the plot is a man leaving his long-time partner for a much younger woman. Jodi and Todd both perceive themselves in terms of relative youth and age. Todd’s fears about the competition of younger men suggests that he is aware of his decreasing value and recognizes the greater appeal of youth and newness.

The novel’s opening paragraphs introduce the contrast between the old and the new in its portentous description of Jodi: “At forty-five, Jodi still sees herself as a young woman. […] [S]he is deeply unaware that her life is now peaking, that her youthful resilience […] is approaching a final stage of disintegration” (3). The use of the word “peak” in the description suggests that one’s later years are a time of decline and diminishing value. Later in the novel, Jodi makes this explicit when she jokes with friends about the breakup, citing “the power of youth” as the force that ended her comfortable 20-year relationship. Descriptions of Todd and Jodi’s early relationship as passionate and intense—verses their distant, routine-driven relationship at the time of the novel—further support the idea that the freshness of the new and the young is preferable to the settled state of middle age. Todd remembers himself at the beginning of their relationship as “a cocky young man […] infatuated with his own capability and promise” and describes his early feelings for Jodi as “the sonic boom of his love” (42). In their present relationship, Todd considers their domesticity as “penance” and wonders “when he lost his taste for the kind of comfort that Jodi so ably provides (68). Middle-aged Jodi is thus associated with an almost maternal domesticity that provides no excitement.

In contrast, Natasha is described as sensual and vibrant, with her youth often emphasized. Todd is preoccupied with their age difference and the way the markers of Natasha’s youth make him seem older in comparison: “She makes him conscious of his aging body and flagging vitality. Not because of anything she says or does; only because she’s young and desirable and insatiable” (40). He fixates on “the throngs of likely young men who rub shoulders with her every day at school” and sees himself as “more than half done. Forty-six. Over the hill. A few more years and he’ll be popping vitamin V. He can’t compete with a rival half his age” (74-75). Todd’s anxieties and lust for Natasha privilege physical youth while expressing disdain for the older body.

At the same time, the novel also considers the attractions of familiarity. Todd for example, thinks that “Natasha is young; she doesn’t understand the pull of the years. She’s impatient and lacks perspective, has a hot head, tends to be stubborn and willful like her father” (144). Here, the contrast between Natasha and Jodi falls in Jodi’s favor. He also credits the longevity of his relationship with Jodi for his sense of stability later in life, after having grown up in a turbulent household: “As things progressed, as their togetherness deepened, something in him shifted, the ground solidified beneath his feet and he lost the sense that he couldn’t take a right step, that any step he took would land wrong” (146). Todd does value some aspects of his relationship with Jodi, particularly how frictionless their time together is. He thinks: “His life with Jodi belongs to a realm that has nothing to do with [Natasha], a parallel universe where things run smoothly and will go on doing so, where blameless years stretch sweetly into the past and comfortably into the future” (46). In these cases, settled routines possess an appeal that the passion and potential of novelty cannot claim.