Our Wives Under the Sea Commentary
SPOILERS AHEAD!
“The deep sea is a haunted house: a place in which things that ought to not exist move about in the darkness.”
Julia Armfield’s second novel, Our Wives Under the Sea, is a love story— an intimate, evolving love between two women and an awe-struck love for the ocean— tangled up in the sheets with a horror narrative about a submarine dive gone wrong. The story is divided between two people: Leah in the submarine at the bottom of the ocean and her wife Miri in the aftermath upon Leah’s return. Happy as she is that her missing wife is back, Miri is disturbed by this different Leah— changed and changing and unfamiliar. Mentally, Leah isn’t quite there; her mind is still on the seafloor, distant and cold. But then her body starts to change, too, slowly devolving away from a human form back into something completely bound to the ocean, a jelly creature designed for deep sea living. Miri must confront the harsh reality of her wife’s mysterious affliction, evolve her love to meet Leah where she is, and decide whether or not to let her go. Our Wives Under the Sea is about the random details that become love stories, the ocean haunting us from within and without, the anxiety of losing a partner, the terror of finding them again, but different, and the pain of evolution.
Leah, a marine biologist, is one in a team of three traveling in a submarine to the ocean floor to observe and study, paid for by the mysterious “Centre”. Upon descent, the submarine completely loses power and communications. The team, in free fall, has no idea how deep they plummet or even where they land, without lights to see outside the submarine. After inspection, the submarine proves to be totally fine— nothing malfunctioned or broke. They are safe inside the submarine and have plenty of supplies. But they are stranded, alone, with miles of water on top of them. What began as a week long mission stretches into months and months and months, though the team have no way of knowing how much time is passing.
Leah’s chapters document the time in the submarine, including how the pressure affects the dynamics between the three people, trapped together in close quarters. Each loses their mind to some degree.
Leah’s anxiety is laced with fascinating facts about the ocean and the creatures that live there, but her admiration is undergirded by an uneasy eeriness born from the mystery of the depths. In a very real sense, she knows the ocean and isn’t afraid of it. But the black abyss is unknown, though she believes it to be knowable— at some height of human civilization. She respects the primordial horror of the ocean and all that we don’t yet know.
“There are five main layers to the ocean. The first is the Epipelagic, or Sunlight Zone… which covers the distance between the surface and approximately six hundred feet beneath. Here, there is only minimal pressure, coral reefs, color, and pleasure divers, the option to hold your breath and jump. After that comes the Mesopelagic, or Twilight Zone, reaching an approximate 3,000 feet, at which point sunlight may still penetrate, though beyond this drop comes the Bathypelagic, or Midnight Zone, and from there on you’re down in the dark. At around 13,000 feet and below you pass through the Abyssopelagic, or Abyssal Zone, an area whose name roughly translates to “no bottom”. No light here, of course, and temperatures a little above freezing… Once you reach depths of 13,00 feet, everything has a strange name but rarely a backbone: vampire squid and zombie worms… There are big things down here, old things, and certainly more of them than we know about. Almost every piloted dive to these depths has uncovered something new. Beyond this point, there is a final layer, known as the Hadalpelagic, or Hadal Zone, a name that speaks for itself. Lying between roughly 19,000-36,000 feet, much of this layer of the water is unexplored, which is not to say uninhabited.”
One of her team posits,
“Did you ever think that maybe this is just a dead part, he said, after a moment. I mean, not that we’re not in the ocean but that we’ve somehow fallen down into some part of it that died however many years ago and now there’s nothing here at all.”
Leah insistently believes that there must be something out there with them; the ocean is full of life. But it’s maddening to her that they never see anything once down there. Leah’s profound love for the sea is also her fear of it and we experience this dichotomy often in her chapters as a blend of fact and terror, precluded by an unconditional love.
“Sometimes I think you prefer it down there, [Miri] had said to [Leah], holding her face in my hands and wondering whether I meant it to sound like a joke or reproach, you go so deep you forget you’re supposed to come back.”
But eventually the power in the submarine turns back on and the team return to the surface. The Centre calls the after effects Leah experiences a “resurfacing glitch,” including throwing up water, skin texture changes, and bloody gums. They say these symptoms are expected and will pass, except they grow worse. Leah sits in the bathtub more and more often until her skin changes and she can’t breathe oxygen and must remain in the tub. Leah explains, barely present,
“I think that there was too much water. When we were down there. I think we let it get in.”
While Leah’s perspective is the more exciting one that people are here for, Miri’s chapters might be even more appealing to some readers— full of little stories from their love affair and the absence of that love with Leah’s disappearance.
“Every couple, I think, enjoys its own mythology, recollections like note cards to guide you around an exhibition.”
While Leah is missing, Miri doesn’t know how to grieve her, so she joins an online message board for women pretending their husbands are on missions in outer space.
“One thing I learned very quickly was that grieving was complicated by lack of certainty, that the hope inherent in a missing loved one was also a species of curse… It’s not grief, one woman posted, it’s more like a haunting… It’s hard trying to exist between these poles of hope and death.”
But when Leah returns, Miri must grieve again, in a different way, the loss of what they had before. At first, Miri tries to get Leah to do the things they used to before: like walking in their favorite park and watching TV together. Miri wants her old Leah back. She longs for and misses someone who clearly isn’t here anymore. As Leah’s condition grows worse and Leah slips further and further away, Miri changes her approach, accepting the person who is Leah now and accepting what new Leah needs. Even if it doesn’t include Miri anymore.
Leah and Miri’s struggle post-submarine represents the sort of struggle many couples face when one or both are disabled or injured or sick. Armfield captures non-disabled people’s fear of disability and a loved one becoming disabled. Life changes when disability enters the picture and we witness that between Miri and Leah— an intimate falling apart and subsequent clinging together. For example, when Leah is throwing up and leaking water all night, Miri decides to sleep in another room. This small change is an attempt at an accommodation, but Miri is riddled with resentments that build from here.
“On more than one occasion, I begged her to let me help her and met only resistance. You don’t have to worry, she would say, and then go on bleeding, and the obviousness of the problem combined with the refusal of help left me at first frustrated and subsequently rather resentful. It went on too long and too helplessly. The way that anyone who sneezes more than four times abruptly loses the sympathy of an audience, so it was with me and Leah. Can’t you stop it, I’d think about asking her, you’re ruining the sheets. Some mornings, I’d look away, set my mouth into another shape, and pour the coffee, thinking about going for a run.”
But as Leah’s condition worsens, Miri feels less resentment and more panic, finding no answers from the Centre. She clings as best she can to “normal” life, though her life grows less normal by the minute. Leah suffers back on dry land and Miri suffers caring for her as Leah changes into something Miri can’t understand.
“I try to think of something to say to Leah but nothing seems appropriate. Instead, I hold her and pretend her skin feels different— less temporary, less like something about to give way. It’s terrible when you can’t make something ok. As a hypochondriac, the typical response when I’m panicking is to acknowledge it will end. At some point, I will cease to be convinced that I have a brain tumor, or a stomach ulcer, or some degenerative condition of the nerves, and so at some point, the bad thing will end. When something bad is actually happening, it’s easy to underreact, because a part of you is wired to assume it isn’t real. When you stop underreacting, the horror is unique because it is, unfortunately, endless.”
Miri confesses,
“I used to hope, I typed once, that I’d die before my partner, even though I knew that was selfish. I used to think that I hoped I’d die before she died and before the planet died and really just generally before things got any worse.”
As Leah morphs into something that no longer belongs to Miri, she at first clings, then begins the process of releasing her. Tenderly, I found the ending appropriate, natural, and sweet, learning how to let go of your loved ones.
Intriguing, heart-breaking, and horrifyingly captivating, Our Wives Under the Sea is for readers who like those videos of deep sea creatures caught on camera, or were interested in Oceangate, or enjoyed the movie “The Abyss”. If you liked Whalefall, you might also like this— very different plots, but both capture why we should all be afraid of the ocean.