My thoughts on a Charter Arms for the wife

I have a S&W 36 and full power .38Spl are painful for me after a couple cylinders. I can't imagine a woman shooting well with it or enjoing it.

Depends on the wife....might be a fair trade.
Jokes aside, while Charters tend to be 'rough', they are diamonds in the rough, as the are solid and well built.
Downside with your premise is that the smaller handguns are, the more difficult they are to shoot, and the more recoil is involved, both of which tend to discourage novice shooters from practicing with them.
The nice thing about Charter Arms is they offer droves of models, there's bound to be something for everyone. If you are dead set on getting her a Charter pistol, the model I recommend is the "Professional" (#63270), and the reasons are:

• Caliber; It is a 32 H&R Magnum, which also fires .32 S&W and .32 S&W Long. These are very light recoiling rounds even in a small revolver, and excellent for training.
• Barrel length; it has a 3" barrel, on of the few Charter that do. It also have a fiber optic front sight.
• Grip design; the wood grip has a different and better design than the usual rubber grips on most models.

If you get her one of these, get several boxes of each caliber and start her with the regular .32 S&W's, it's not much more than shooting .22 LR. Let get used to the gun, then when she's ready, move on to the S&W Long. Have her get used to those, then have her try a cylinderful of .32 H&R mag (Buy some good SD rounds.) Remind her that if she needs to fire them for SD, she will not notice recoil. (probably not the loudness if fired indoors, either)

Blue Brick said:

Does anyone make a 5 shot 32 speed loader?

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Even if they did, she'd have to practice regularly with it. Reloading with speedloaders is not easy, much more labor intensive than with a semi-auto magazine.

I hate posts that start out with the premise that the poster should select a firearm for someone else. And why limit the selection to CA or to a revolver? None of these decisions made by someone who is presumably the end user of the gun.

perhaps it was just my bad luck, but i found a new charter arms 9mm snubbie revolver to be exceedingly unpolished. it worked but was an intolerably rough shooter, tore up my trigger finger by 50 rounds. sorry to say and ymmv, but i will never touch another charter arms firearm. in centerfire revolvers i will stick with s&w, ruger and taurus, in rimfire i will skip the taurus. in centerfire snubbies, 38 wadcutters and pachmayr full grips are your bff.