The Wife Upstairs

Adam is the antagonist of The Wife Upstairs. He is in his mid-thirties and described as handsome and tall, with striking green eyes. He is the best-selling author of three mystery novels and is financially successful. He presents himself as a loving, selfless man, which made Victoria fall in love with him. He showered Victoria with lavish gifts, showing a disregard for money, which Victoria notes in her diary, writing, “He loves me more than he cares about some money” (79). As his relationship with Victoria progressed, his behavior changed, and he became jealous, possessive, and violent, but his outer charisma has managed to convince others in his life that he’s incapable of such behaviors. Even as Sylvia reads Victoria’s diary, dictating Victoria’s firsthand experiences with Adam, she doubts Adam’s actions: “I’m having trouble justifying in my head that he would do such a thing to her, especially since he seems like such a nice guy” (135). Adam’s outer persona successfully hides his darker inner self, as he charms those around him into believing that he is incapable of violence or manipulation.

Adam’s work as a writer offers him an outlet for his controlling tendencies. He constructs stories that match the way he wants his life to go and mirror the reality he lives in. When he discusses writing with Sylvia, he says, “But when you’re creating your own fictional world, you can make everything happen exactly how you want it to. That’s what I love about writing” (168). In his first book, All in the Family, he wrote about a man who kills his entire family and gets away with it; by the end of The Wife Upstairs, the reader learns that Adam did the same to his own real-life family. His third book, The Vixen, follows a cheating wife who is murdered by her husband. However, Adam fails in murdering Victoria, as she survives his attempt on her life.

Adam is deeply self-absorbed and image obsessed. Though Victoria did not initially realize it, as Adam pretended to be shy, she realized after the publication of The Vixen that he craves praise, especially from those who do not realize his true nature: “He wants everyone to tell him how great he is. He doesn’t get enough of that from me so he has to go to Irina” (284). Victoria realized that Adam fed off the validation of those who view his fictional life as reality. He states verbatim that he tried to kill Victoria to avoid the embarrassment of her giving birth to Mack’s child, asking Sylvia, “Do you know how people would’ve laughed at me if I let that happen?” (363). His question illustrates how deeply he believes his jealous delusions about Victoria, adding nuance to his characterization. He does not manipulate and control Victoria solely out of cruelty; he truly believes himself to be the victim of her manipulation, not the other way around.

Victoria is the secondary protagonist of The Wife Upstairs. She is described as beautiful, with blonde hair and blue eyes. After her accident, her eyes are duller, she has a large scar across her face and scalp, and she has limited mobility. Prior to the events of the novel, Victoria wrote a digital diary on her laptop, which she left for Sylvia to find. Victoria lost both her parents early in her life, so she found herself yearning for family. She worked as a nurse practitioner in an emergency room in Manhattan before her relationship with Adam, and she had close friends. After she began dating Adam, he slowly isolated her from those in her life, and this isolation plays a significant role in Victoria’s character arc.

Adam paints Victoria as money hungry to those around them, including Sylvia: He tells Sylvia that Victoria bought the wine, prompting Sylvia to think that Victoria “ha[s] very expensive taste” (64). However, this is false, as Victoria wrote in her diary that she did not care how much money Adam had, stating, “I could be happy with a Big Mac and a large French fries if I had him with me” (77). Victoria did not fall for Adam because of his money but because of the person he pretended to be. He pretended to be caring, warm, and charismatic, but in reality, he used his charisma to draw Victoria in before changing his behavior for the worse, which Victoria noted after their marriage. She wrote that she began to realize “that all the things that first attracted [her] to Adam [we]re the things [she] hate[d] about him now” (206). Victoria’s rose-colored glasses fell off, revealing Adam as he really is, and this realization is a key aspect of Victoria’s character growth.

The final piece of Victoria’s character arc is the cultivation of her strength to leave Adam. When she found out that she was pregnant, she knew she had to get out, recording in her diary, “I don’t care what happens to me. But I can’t let that monster get his hands on my baby. I can’t let him destroy my child’s life the way he’s destroyed mine” (323). Victoria felt that her own life had already been destroyed, especially after Adam murdered Mack, the man who truly loved her. She became catatonic in the wake of Mack’s loss, but her pregnancy mobilized her and gave her the strength she needed to try to leave Adam. After the accident, Victoria has even less agency than before. Despite this, she manages to use what little mobility and voice she has left to guide Sylvia toward the truth and save Sylvia from Adam’s violence the way she could not save herself or her baby.

Mack was Victoria’s friend and romantic interest. He is described as tall, handsome, and muscular. He worked as a paramedic at Mercy Hospital alongside Victoria until she married Adam and moved away. He was in love with Victoria, though he tried to keep it to himself. When he said goodbye to her, Victoria noted that he looked emotionally conflicted, “smiling, but about to burst into tears any second” (223). Mack tried to keep his feelings to himself, demonstrating his selfless nature as he sacrificed his own desires for Victoria’s happiness. His character arc is cut short, so he remains slightly flat. He was in love with Victoria and sought to be her “knight in shining armor,” but Adam murdered him, ruining the chance of a happy ending for Mack and Victoria and ending Mack’s character development.