Ambrose Trenham
Further names: Ambrose, Trenham, husband
Ambrose Trenham is a professor at Kingsborough. He has no immediate family, except for his wife Milly. But he doesn't love his wife and betrayes her for eighteen months with his younger neighbor Barbara Wake, until Milly killes herself.
The closeness Ambrose found in Barbara, he never felt with his own wife. He couldn't understand her and couldn't take her feelings seriously.
Trenham was struck silent. It was true. He had never been really able to enter into
poor Milly's imaginings, the matter of her lonely musing; and here was this girl to
whom, in a flash, that solitary mind lay bare. (Lewis 683)
Even at her funeral he didn't want to see his wife for one last time in her coffin and was very uninterested.
Someone asked Trenham what was to be engraved on the plate on the lid, and he
said: “Nothing.” (Lewis 669)
During the ceremonial his head bowed forward on his hands.
Usually he is absent-minded and unobservant and wants to blame others for his fault.
The sole cause-for in a flash Trenham had thrown off his own share in the disaster.
“The woman tempted me-” Yes, she had!
It was what his poor wronged Milly had always said: “You're so weak: and she's
always tempting you-” (Lewis 670)
Ambrose is a man who can't live without tenderness but this will be his undoing because normally he is shy and his reticence had to be broken down first.