Book Review of a Well-trained wife: My escape from christian patriarchy

Tia Levings’s powerful memoir, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, delivers a searing critique of patriarchal religious systems through the lens of her own harrowing journey. As a Gen X survivor of religious fundamentalism, Levings provides a revealing window into the oppressive structures of Christian patriarchy, offering both personal testimony and broader cultural commentary.

Levings, raised in a 20,000-member Baptist mega-church in Jacksonville, Florida, was recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife. The Quiverfull movement, named after a passage in Psalm 127 that likens children to “arrows in the hands of a warrior,” encourages married couples to have as many children as possible and reject all forms of birth control. This movement, which gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, promotes strict gender roles, homeschooling, and complete submission of wives to their husbands. From the age of 14, Levings’s primary purpose was to prepare for Christian wifehood and motherhood. At 19, she married Allan, a devout 21-year-old who quickly replaced affection with control. Their relationship became emblematic of the movement’s core tenets: male headship and female submission.

Their identities are systematically erased, replaced with a carefully constructed persona of the perfect, compliant daughter who will seamlessly transition into the role of a subservient wife.

The process of becoming a “well-trained wife” in these fundamentalist communities begins long before marriage. Girls are groomed from a young age to embody the ideals of submission, obedience, and self-sacrifice. They are taught to lower their voices, avert their eyes, and prioritize the needs of others above their own. Their identities are systematically erased, replaced with a carefully constructed persona of the perfect, compliant daughter who will seamlessly transition into the role of a subservient wife.

This training is relentless and all-encompassing. Every aspect of girls’ lives is controlled and scrutinized, from the clothes they wear to the thoughts they are allowed to think. They are conditioned to find joy in service and see their own desires as selfish and sinful. The ultimate goal is to create women who will willingly submit to their husbands and perpetuate the cycle of patriarchal control.

Women in these communities are expected to be silent, obedient, and “keepers of the home.” They know that to outsiders, their families appear strange, but they can’t risk exposing their secret lifestyles to anyone outside their religious communities. They hide in plain sight as years of abuse and pain accumulate.

When asked to elaborate on the concept of a “well-trained wife,” Levings doesn’t mince words. She describes such a woman as someone who has internalized her indoctrination completely, serving others tirelessly from dawn to dusk. This ideal is often equated with the Proverbs 31 woman in evangelical Christian circles. However, Levings points out that this biblical figure is actually a composite of many women, not a single paragon of virtue.

Levings and other women like her were taught that their path to heaven was through their fathers, husbands, and religious leaders. If they served these men well, they were guaranteed salvation. This indoctrination runs so deep that even mundane tasks like ironing clothes are seen as spiritually significant acts. Levings writes, “Years later, on Instagram, I’d read a meme that read, ‘Why were we taught to fear the witches instead of the men who burned them?’ And who were witches, anyway, but women with knowledge, skills, and names?” (p. 96). Women in these communities are expected to be silent, obedient, and “keepers of the home.” They know that to outsiders, their families appear strange, but they can’t risk exposing their secret lifestyles to anyone outside their religious communities. They hide in plain sight as years of abuse and pain accumulate.

One of the most insidious aspects of Levings’s indoctrination was the adoption of the “fundie voice.” This high-pitched, childlike tone that conveys submission and innocence is perhaps most famously associated with Michelle Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting fame. This voice is not just a manner of speaking but an audible manifestation of suppressed identity and internalized oppression. Sentences trail off into questions, reflecting conditioned uncertainty and deference to authority.

Like the Duggar family, Levings was conditioned to maintain a perpetual smile and to suppress her own voice and desires. The Amazon docuseries, Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets, in which Levings participated, exposed the dark underbelly of the seemingly wholesome Duggar family and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) organization they were part of.

In these fundamentalist communities, a “good” girl is one who has internalized the teachings so completely that she polices herself and others, maintaining the façade of happiness and contentment even in the face of abuse and oppression. “That’s People-Pleasing 101,” Levings says. “If you’re only saying yes so they’ll like you, then you’re abandoning yourself and operating from a place of shame and extremely low self-worth” (p. 256).

This excessive labor was a form of control, keeping women too busy and exhausted to question their circumstances or seek alternatives. The relentless demands of this lifestyle left no room for individual thought or resistance.

Clothing plays a significant role in this control system. Women are required to cover their bodies modestly, often in shapeless garments designed to conceal any hint of femininity. Levings wore a jumper that hid her figure, chosen to erase any hint of individuality. Paradoxically, this extreme modesty can serve to sexualize women, as it makes men wonder what is hidden underneath.

Levings’s book touches on the themes of homeschooling and homesteading, practices that contributed to her isolation and indoctrination. “Both are crucial to the indoctrination piece in high-control environments,” she explains. “They’re extremely self-isolating and involve a lot of hard work. So, you’re busy, busy, busy accomplishing homeschooling and homesteading, and that is supposed to leave you little resource to do anything else

The sheer amount of labor involved in maintaining this lifestyle is staggering—caring for four young children, managing their education, cooking three meals a day, cleaning, and even making homemade ketchup. “When I look back at the amount of labor that I did in those years, honestly, I don’t know how I’m not broken down because it’s backbreaking,” she admits. “The labor was excessive and utterly critical to the lifestyle” (private conversation).

This excessive labor was a form of control, keeping women too busy and exhausted to question their circumstances or seek alternatives. The relentless demands of this lifestyle left no room for individual thought or resistance.

Levings’s A Well-Trained Wife serves as both a personal testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a powerful indictment of the systems that seek to control and silence women.

Levings’s journey towards freedom began when she realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women. She writes, “And it wasn’t fair to my children that their mother had to heal and put herself back together in the same time span that they grew up” (p. 257). She began to resist and question how they lived. But in patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Levings faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences or flee with her children.

The act of writing saved her. Levings found her voice through her memoir, a process that was both therapeutic and empowering. This reclamation of narrative control represents a profound act of resistance against the patriarchal systems that sought to silence her.

Levings’s story intersects with current political and social debates about women’s rights in several ways. Her experiences highlight the ongoing struggle for reproductive rights, as the Quiverfull movement’s rejection of birth control aligns with broader conservative efforts to limit access to contraception and abortion. The book also touches on issues of educational freedom and the potential for abuse within homeschooling systems, a topic of increasing debate as some states consider stricter regulations on homeschooling.

A Well-Trained Wife builds upon the foundation laid by other powerful memoirs of escape from religious fundamentalism. Tara Westover’s Educated (2018) chronicles her journey from a strict Mormon household in rural Idaho to earning a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. More recent additions include Daniella Mestyanek Young’s Uncultured: A Memoir (2022), which recounts her escape from the Children of God cult and her subsequent service in the U.S. Army. The Duggar family has also contributed to this genre; Jinger Duggar Vuolo’s Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear (2023) offers an insider’s perspective on growing up in the spotlight while adhering to strict religious principles.

Levings’s A Well-Trained Wife serves as both a personal testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a powerful indictment of the systems that seek to control and silence women. It challenges us to examine our own beliefs about gender, power, and religion, and to consider our role in perpetuating or dismantling patriarchal systems. In a time when women’s rights are increasingly under threat, Levings’ voice is not just brave—it’s necessary.