Inside the Hidden World of Christian Patriarchy: One Woman’s Journey to Freedom
A Well-Trained Wife turns the weight of that visibility and legibility inward. One phrase recurs throughout the memoir: “Stay where I can see you” (121). Levings frames this as a maternal reminder coopted by husbands, pastors, elders, and institutions. Unlike Educated, where Tara Westover leverages visibility to shield herself from the erasure, gaslighting, and denial practiced by her family and community, or Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull, which exposes theologies A Well-Trained Wife depicts from the inside, the change in Levings’ life begins not when she’s most visible, but when she slips out of sight.
