In 1975 the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society published an article bringing to light some newly discovered letters, dated May 1867, that suggest Herman Melville physically and emotionally abused his wife. One letter reveals that Elizabeth Shaw Melville’s minister proposed a feigned kidnapping to get her out of the house and away from her husband. 1 In 1981 twelve commentators responded to this discovery in a monograph published by the Melville Society. Several of them believed the new information to be crucial to Melville studies, while others dismissed its importance. Beyond this monograph, which I will discuss in detail presently—and despite its aim to put the new evidence ‘‘quickly... in the widest possible scholarly and critical perspectives’’(EWW, v)—the discovery has received astonishingly little sustained attention. 2 In the pages that follow I will present and review the indications in the historical record that Herman Melville physically and emotionally abused Elizabeth Shaw Melville. 3 I will then argue that his wife abuse is one crucial element in a network that also includes his tortured relation to writing and his simultaneous dependence on and resentment of the Melville women whose labor he needed to produce his texts. Finally, I will consider the implications of my analysis for understanding the position of woman in Herman’s notoriously ‘‘womanless’’fiction. My argument thus intends both to call specific and corrective attention, as a biographical and historical issue, to the wife beating that scholars have either silenced or failed to confront and to explore the implications of such a revelation for our understanding of Herman’s writing.