The Younger Wife

“Their smiles are painted on, unconvincing, but then who would be pleased to see their father marry a woman young enough to be their sister? And while their mother looks on to boot.”

In this opening observation, the unnamed narrator uses the image of “painted on” smiles to establish an immediate tension between the Aston family’s public performance of happiness and their private, unspoken resentment. This initial image of forced civility at a supposedly joyous event frames the family’s dysfunction and foreshadows the violent unraveling of their polished image.

“Tully’s hands acted on autopilot, from muscle memory, from instinct—like a baby moving to music. One minute the wallet was on top of Heather’s bag; the next, it was deep inside Tully’s.”

This passage occurs during Tully’s panic attack at lunch, defining her shoplifting as a compulsive coping mechanism rather than a malicious act. The simile “like a baby moving to music” emphasizes the pre-rational, instinctual nature of her kleptomania, portraying it as an involuntary response to overwhelming anxiety. This moment of theft externalizes Tully’s internal chaos and her desperate need to regain a sense of control.

“Sometimes she pictured her own insides, full of all the things she’d pushed down over the years rather than articulated. She imagined a series of ugly deposits, masses of secrets and regret, wedged around her lungs and stomach.”

Through visceral imagery, this interior monologue reveals the physical toll of Rachel’s repressed trauma and connects to the theme of The Corrosive Nature of Family Secrets. The metaphor of “ugly deposits” and “masses of secrets” illustrates how unspoken pain becomes a toxic, internal burden that affects her physical and emotional well-being. This metaphorical treatment of secrets as a suffocating presence explains her use of food and baking as a way to assuage her inner distress.