The Two Wives; Or, Lost and Won — Text and Context

A Wife's Concealed Anxiety

Mrs. Wilkinson's actions reveal a pattern of self-suppression. When her husband is late, she takes out her bonnet and shawl, then pauses: 'If business should have detained him at his store, how will my appearance there affect him? I do not want him to feel that I have lost confidence in him.' She returns the items and composes herself. Her ear catches his key in the lock; she murmurs, 'He must not see that I have been over-anxious.' The narrative follows her internal struggle—'How instant and eager were her efforts to suppress all signs of anxiety!'—and then his perception: 'The low, nervous tremour of that hand he instantly perceived, and as instantly comprehended its meaning.' This mutual reading of hidden signals defines their relationship.

The Blame Shifts to the Other Wife

When Mr. Wilkinson explains his lateness—a loan to Ellis that wasn't repaid—his wife sympathizes. But he redirects the fault: 'If Ellis goes to ruin, it will be his wife's fault. She has no sympathy with him, no affectionate consideration for him. A thoroughly selfish woman, she merely regards the gratification of her own desires, and is ever making home repulsive, instead of attractive.' Mrs. Wilkinson protests, 'You must be mistaken.' He insists Ellis complains of her conduct. The contrast is explicit: 'Many a night has Ellis spent at a tavern, which, but for Cara's unamiable temper, would have been spent at home.' Mrs. Wilkinson sighs, 'Ah! she will have her reward,' and her husband silently thinks, 'And you yours.'

Temperance as a Domestic Crisis

The catalog subjects list 'Temperance -- Fiction,' and the preface states the story aims to show 'the power of tender, earnest, self-forgetting love, in winning back from the path of danger a husband whose steps have strayed, and who has approached the very brink of ruin.' The excerpts do not yet show drinking, but the groundwork is laid: Ellis's 'habits have not been very good of late,' and his wife's behavior drives him to taverns. Mr. Wilkinson's own evening errand and his wife's fear of losing confidence in him hint at a parallel danger. The novel frames intemperance not as a vice of the individual alone but as a consequence of marital failure—a wife's lack of sympathy or a husband's response to a repulsive home.

Readers should attend to the asymmetry in the opening: we see only one wife's perspective, yet the title promises two. The preface declares a moral purpose, but the excerpts complicate it—Mrs. Wilkinson's self-forgetting love may be as fraught as Cara's selfishness. Watch for how the narrative distributes sympathy and blame, and whether the promised 'lost and won' applies to husbands, wives, or both.

I’ve shelved those two volumes side by side for years, watching their quiet kinship. The anxious wife’s hidden tears in The Two Wives often remind me of the murmuring tenderness in A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus — Reading Companion—both whisper how love survives its own silences, a steady hand through domestic fog.