54 pages • 1 hour read
Julia ArmfieldOur Wives Under the Sea
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “Twilight Zone”
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “Miri”
Miri recalls attending a party at the Centre before Leah’s expedition. She would like to think that she had some sort of warning about the consequences of this particular journey, but she remembers nothing out of the ordinary. After all, “Leah had gone and returned many times before and I had no reason to presume this trip would be any different” (36). Miri also recalls meeting Jelka, one of the other crew members.
Miri reflects on her mother, dealing with her illness and death. She thinks of her mother’s easily offended sensibilities and the emotional distance between mother and daughter. She then notes that, when Leah speaks now, which is rare, she talks only about scientific details or other general facts. She is not actually speaking to Miri.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Leah”
Leah reflects on the formlessness of the ocean as she, Jelka, and Matteo become accustomed to the fact of their steady sinking. Leah is not really concerned about dying, though she is vaguely aware that they will not be able to resurface.
Leah remembers when her father taught her how to swim at the age of seven. His method was unorthodox: He threw her into the water and told her not to drown. This experience ironically fueled Leah’s growing love for water and, by extension, the sea. She thinks of a Norwegian explorer about whom she once read, who traveled for five thousand miles across the open Pacific Ocean. She particularly likes the detail about how a live squid once thumped onto the deck along with the flying fish. It suggests to Leah that “deep things routinely rose to the surface and sometimes even higher than that” (47).
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “Miri”
Miri vents her frustration—with Leah, with the Centre—by screaming and scrubbing herself raw in the shower. She has destroyed her phone after a particularly maddening call with the Centre. She meets up with Carmen under the guise of replacing the phone. Miri keeps most of the details about Leah’s condition and their deteriorating relationship to herself. Carmen tries to sympathize, but the woman’s issues with an ex-boyfriend pale in comparison to Miri’s situation.
In the interim, Miri struggles to remember the loveable parts of Leah, the parts that she wants to convey. These memories are increasingly relegated to the past, as Leah has changed so much. Miri remembers when Leah taught her how to swim and when Leah introduced her to some friends of hers from university.
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Leah”
Leah remembers another book about the ocean that captivated her as a child, describing the explorations down in the Mariana Trench, thought to be the deepest part of the ocean. She traces her career path back, in part, to her fascination with this particular book.
The crew continues to try to make sense of the situation, but they are still sinking. Jelka hums nervously, while Matteo longs for a steak dinner. Finally, the submarine starts to slow as they near the bottom.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary: “Miri”
Leah has now been home for two months. Miri thinks often of her mother, recollecting the day of her funeral and how comforting Leah had been. Miri continues to call the Centre every morning and tries to keep track of work, but she is falling behind. She worries about Leah, who barely eats; when she does, it is only salty things like olives and anchovies. Usually, Leah can be found in the bath.
Miri recalls that, as a teen, Leah had worked at an aquarium. She befriended an octopus there, named Pamela, and that this experience had led to a collection of octopus trinkets—gifts from family and friends. Miri even gifted her a “sleeve of promotional postcards from the aquarium at which she’d once worked” (65). One was a photograph of Pamela. Miri thinks of Leah’s career, how she has only worked at the Centre for a short time. She remembers their first dates and their first kiss, how they revealed themselves to each other.
Miri wakes in the night, startled by a loud sound. Leah is screaming. Miri has moved into the guest bedroom, so she must leap out of bed and figure out what is wrong. Water is gushing from Leah’s body as she vomits in her sleep. When Miri wakes her, the convulsions cease.
Part 2 Analysis
In these chapters, revelations about the women’s pasts suggest that the foundation for the present transformation was laid long before Leah’s expedition. For example, while a distance has grown between the two after Leah’s return, the narrative also reveals Miri’s underlying sense of possessiveness. When Miri is at the pre-mission cocktail party at the Centre, one of the other attendees asks her “Which one is yours,” as if Leah were “my jacket from a pile” (35). Miri is somewhat offended by this offhanded question, but she nonetheless traffics in the possessive often, frequently calling her wife “my Leah” (63). When recounting Leah’s qualities, Miri often qualifies those memories with “as I knew her” (49), both staking her claim on past-Leah and detaching from the strange Leah of the present. This Leah is someone quite different from her Leah. This distinction plays into Transformation’s Role in Achieving Autonomy, with both women finding increasing autonomy as Leah’s transformation eases them ever further apart.
In addition, Leah’s past interest in apparent transformations predates her expedition. For example, Miri notes Leah’s previous penchant for transformation in terms of Leah’s wardrobe: Leah “didn’t often wear dresses, though when she did it always seemed she chose the ones that looked like something else: cocoons and folded paper, carapaces, wet suits, wings” (35). This past tendency, along with the many current clues—oyster-sheen skin and shell-like debris in the bathtub—plays into the theme of Liminality as Integral to Change. It also gives added weight to Miri’s growing suspicion that her wife is decidedly not the same: “I’m not convinced she’s really back at all,” she thinks as her friend Carmen tries to pass off the distance between the couple as a period of readjustment (53).
The signs of disturbance or discontent within the relationship are compounded by moments in which Miri and Leah are the objects of nonchalant prejudice. When Miri explains that Leah is her wife to one of the Centre’s partygoers, he responds unthinkingly: “There’s a lot of it about [...] My brother’s wife has a sister, you know. Same thing” (35). He speaks of their relationship as if it were a transmissible disease. Even one of Leah’s friends tactlessly asks Miri if she has dated women in the past, suggesting that Miri’s feelings for Leah are somehow disingenuous: “Oh honey, you know how people are like ‘I’m gay for Jennifer Anniston, I’m gay for Gillian Anderson’” (51). This kind of comment trivializes their relationship and undermines their commitment, not to mention casting doubt on their identities. In addition, when Miri is introduced to Jelka, she notices that Leah and Jelka are the subjects of much scrutiny and attention—“It’s like you’re famous,” Miri says (37). While Leah has her arm around Miri, Leah has more in common, at that moment, with Jelka.
The Value of Relationships Ending is a theme that emerges slowly, as, in exploring this theme, the novel does not shy away from the complicated and dark feelings that arise during such a transition. Miri already suffers from anxiety and self-inflicted isolation; she yearns to repair the connection between her and Leah. She distracts herself instead, pushing away the emotions: “I find that if I squint at the television hard enough it’s easier to think about things other than how much I miss my wife” (42). Miri’s tendency to disassociate, however, cannot forestall the dissolution of the relationship.
These repressed feelings also lead Miri to think a great deal about her deceased mother, who suffered from a long and unspecified illness. These Memories of Mother, as a symbol, often indicate what Miri considers personal failings, such as personality traits that Miri is striving to outgrow or overcome or her failures as a caregiver. Miri’s mother is described as difficult, “refus[ing] almost every aspect of [Miri’s] help” (40) and prone to take offense at the most minor of slights. This relationship reverberates within Miri’s own marriage, wherein Leah keeps insisting that nothing is wrong with her and Miri continues to feel helpless and distant. It is telling that Miri remembers that, on the day she moved her mother to a hospice facility, there was “the smell of something burning” in the air (41). This description echoes the smell of burning meat that Leah and the others note as the submarine begins to sink. It is a smell that presages the inevitable.
The “Twilight Zone” section fittingly ends in horror, with Leah leaking and vomiting copious amounts of salt water. Even before that terrifying scene, Miri has become weary of water: “I look toward the canal and wish this city were not veined with water like the lines on the back of a hand” (55). Though water surrounds her, she resists its significance just as she resists the transformations it elicits. In the end, Jelka’s rosary beads may not be of much hope for the crew on their mysterious mission; rather, “Matteo’s Cthulhu bobblehead” (44) might signify more accurately what awaits them in the darkness.
