Madge Barker
Reg's wife, whose affair reveals that heterosexual relationships are not automatically simpler or more stable.
The book
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMadge is a young British woman whose needs and frustrations lead her into an affair while Reg is hospitalized.
Her storyline broadens the novel's moral world beyond Laurie's relationships and should not be reduced to a villainous type.
How the book draws them
- PeriodA practical coat and curled hair place her in wartime Britain.
- ExpressionAnxiety and defensiveness are more fitting than caricature.
- MarriageWar and separation strain her relationship with Reg.
- FunctionHer choices complicate claims about conventional respectability.
Their relationship remains strained within the novel's broader wartime domestic reality.
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