The Last Housewife

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses death by suicide, sexual violence, trauma, self-harm, misogyny, gender essentialism, cult activity, and drug use.

The narrator seems to speak from the perspective of Scheherazade, the narrator of The Thousand and One Nights, talking to her husband, the king. She says that her husband could have any woman he wants, and she is grateful that he chooses her. She is comfortable with her husband, who protects and provides for her. These are the stories she tells to “stave off the night [he] will finally look at [her] from across the room, see the woman underneath the fiction—weaving, weaving madly—and lop off her head” (2).

Shay Deroy is aware of her body and how it draws attention from men. She recently left her job at The Slice, where she wrote articles, to devote herself to writing a novel, though she is struggling to put it together. Her life is monotonous, passing each day with her friends and her husband, Cal.

Shay likes true crime podcasts, and she has recently started listening to Transgressions, a podcast hosted by her childhood friend Jamie Knight. She keeps the podcast a secret from her friends and Cal, because the sound of Jamie’s