A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy

The “Blue House” in Lutherville is a symbol of the contrast between the family’s outward appearance and the violence, fear, and control concealed within the home. When the family first sees the house, Allan is immediately drawn to the century-old home with a “white picket fence, a wide front porch, and a stately maple in the yard” (178). Although Tia and the children do not want to move, Allan describes it as the “house of [her] dreams,” emphasizing an ideal of domestic life that differs sharply from Tia’s experience there. After the family moves in, the Blue House becomes increasingly associated with Tia’s isolation. Allan eventually restricts her outings to groceries and occasional hikes and tells her that otherwise her “place is here at home” (187). Looking at the walls of the Blue House, Tia acknowledges that being required to remain there “felt like prison” (187).

Tia explicitly notes the contrast between appearance and reality, stating, “Our corner looked like a photo for a jigsaw puzzle, a charming image of life out in the country, but no one knew the secrets inside” (2). The picturesque exterior conceals Allan’s escalating violence and threats as well as the reality that Tia has hidden from people outside the family. Earlier in the same passage, she acknowledges that she has convinced others that their lives are “picture-perfect,” strengthening the connection between the appearance of the house and the image she has maintained of the family. By the time Tia decides to leave, however, she recognizes that remaining in the home does not protect her children from Allan’s behavior. The Blue House therefore symbolizes the widening divide between the image of a stable family home and the danger concealed within it, a divide Tia ultimately rejects when she decides that she and her children must leave.

The Trapdoor Society is a symbol of intellectual and emotional escape, representing a space in which Tia can explore interests and relationships beyond the restrictions of her domestic life and, eventually, a network that helps facilitate her physical escape. The online forum allows Tia to explore ideas, art, writing, and aspects of her identity that have little space within her prescribed roles. Jazz creates the Trapdoor Society as a women’s community that offers “a way of escape” (124), and Tia gradually recognizes how closely its name reflects her own circumstances. She writes, “Maybe I needed Trapdoor because I was trapped” (132). The connection becomes even more explicit when Tia distinguishes between her identities in different spaces: “On Trapdoor I was Tia. At home I was Mama” (132). The Trapdoor Society therefore supports the theme of The Suppression of Identity Through Enforced Submission by giving Tia a protected space in which parts of her identity that she has little freedom to express within her marriage can continue to develop. She later describes Trapdoor as “a brief escape, a trapdoor to fall through and step off-stage” (132), directly connecting the forum with temporary relief from the constraints of her daily life.

The meaning of the symbol develops further when Tia eventually needs to leave Allan. After she is advised to take her children and hide, Levings asks where a mother with four children can go and answers, “She finds a Trapdoor” (233). The online friendships that once provided intellectual and emotional escape now give Tia and her children a practical network of people and places where they can seek safety. The Trapdoor thus develops from a figurative means of escape into part of Tia’s actual route out of her abusive marriage, connecting the preservation of an identity beyond her prescribed roles with her eventual ability to leave.