ABSTRACT
There are a variety of strategies, chosen at the card table or encountered by chance, by which a woman can find herself leading the game in this literary excursus. Unlike violence, meekness, waiting, good nature and silence fall perfectly into the female stereotype that crazy Amy was so good at dismantling. Few, if any, contemporary novels have managed to play with this element and make it the highly successful protagonist of an affair that is in its own way enthralling, as has the Canadian writer A. S. A. Harrison's posthumous work The Silent Wife. It was a sweeping success with both the public and critics. A broad range of women, both young and in particular not-so young, can identify with Jodi, the mature main character in The Silent Wife, in contrast to the eccentric "psychopathic" Amy or Lisbeth.
