Bitsy is the wife and mother of the family that moves in across the street from the Mayfields. The name “Bitsy”—a diminutive of Elizabeth—makes her sound small and childlike; she is always perfectly coiffed, dressed, and obedient, though she is clearly not happy. After Bitsy’s sister died by suicide, leaving a daughter, Katherine, in Bitsy’s care, Bitsy’s resulting depression was deemed particularly treatment resistant, so her husband, Gary, authorized her lobotomy.

The novel implies that Gary’s legal and medical power over Bitsy is emotionally abusive. He infantilizes Bitsy by minimizing her feelings and physically steering her where he wants her to go, and she physically recoils from his touch. Gary tells Henry that they tried “pills and such” for Bitsy’s unhappiness (178), insinuating that it was the personality- and intellect-destroying lobotomy that finally created the wife he wanted. Gary appreciates Bitsy’s post-lobotomy complacent emptiness, menacingly telling Lulu that he’d do anything necessary to keep his own life calm.

In the novel, Bitsy functions as Lulu’s foil. Lulu feels antagonistic toward her and imagines her as a cautionary example: Lulu fears that Henry will take Gary’s advice and authorize a lobotomy for her. Both women are victims of The Dangers of Medical Misogyny, their bodily autonomy and agency taken away by men who want to control how they exhibit emotions. Both are also not allowed to grieve their profound losses: Bitsy must pretend that she didn’t know her sister and that her niece is really her daughter, while Lulu is surrounded by people who refuse to acknowledge her dead child. Finally, both women are in the process of being erased: Lulu has given up career and creative aspirations, and she notes that she’ll never know who Bitsy was prior to her lobotomy.

While the novel ends optimistically for Lulu, Bitsy’s story shows the dark version of patriarchal control of women. Gary moves his family away from Greenwood after his treatment of his wife becomes publicly known, taking Bitsy somewhere else where she will have no support system.

Lulu’s husband, Henry, is a well-meaning product of his time. He isn’t intentionally vicious, abusive, or negligent like Gary, but he does expect Lulu to fulfill the role of wife and mother without thanks or consideration for her feelings or desires. He isn’t particularly exacting, as he doesn’t notice the house’s less-than-clean condition. However, he also pays little attention to her needs. He never asks how Lulu’s feeling after their daughter’s death, accuses her of inordinate moodiness, and claims that what she really needs is a dishwasher. Henry’s misguided ideas show that he is more influenced by consumer culture and the casual misogyny of his time than by any understanding of his wife as a person. He listens to doctors who do not examine Lulu; husbands like Gary and Jack, who publicly demean their wives; and women who have internalized patriarchal oppression, like his mother, who gives him Dr. Ruthledge’s number.

Like all the novel’s adult male characters, Henry represents the oppressive social structure that teaches men to treat women as inherently inferior, showing Patriarchy’s Infantilization of Women. However, Henry is also a dynamic character. At the end of the novel, shocked into the realization that Lulu has a serious autoimmune illness that doctors missed, he realizes the harm he did with his inattention to Lulu’s feelings and his unwillingness to grieve their daughter’s death.