Our Wives Under the Sea

The horror genre is a powerful pathway for exploring romance, which often has its own ghosts in the form of unspoken thoughts and deeply buried feelings. Our Wives Under the Sea takes advantage of that pathway to conduct a study of romance gone awry. Leah’s absence and presumed death, coupled with Miri’s intense bouts of anxiety, are only part of their relationship. Leah’s physical transformation—the most obvious signifier of change—mirrors her psychological one: She changes from a strong and stable partner, the one on whom Miri relies, into a silent and distant shadow of herself. Her physical body becomes literally more translucent and more fluid. Her experience in the submarine, stuck in the darkness in an unknown and mysterious place, and her physical metamorphosis are both conventions of the horror genre, marked by suspense and supernatural or inexplicable events and creatures. The couple’s mutual taste in movies—from The Fly to Jaws—highlights their (and, by extension, the author’s) familiarity with the tropes and traditions of horror films. The Fly features a man’s mutation into an insect, while Jaws is about battling terror from the deep, both subjects that feature in the book. It is also significant that much of the LBGTQ+ community has embraced the horror genre; the conventions of horror often reject social norms and traditional expectations while embracing unorthodox characters and pairings. The LGBTQ+ community often sees their own struggles within the horror genre more broadly, as the suspense and terror of the genre echo the struggles of living within unaccepting, and often physically dangerous, societies and communities.

The movie Jaws has a particular resonance within the book. The author employs a quotation from the movie in her epigraph, which elucidates Chief Brody’s fear of drowning. This fear reverberates in several ways: Leah is submerged miles beneath the water, while Miri is psychologically drowning in her wife’s absence, for example. Matteo sings “Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies” (45) as the submarine sinks, echoing the maritime ditty sung by Quint in the movie. Notably, Quint sings the song just before he relates his terrifying story about the USS Indianapolis, a World War II ship that was torpedoed and sunk, dooming the men to be a feast for the sharks. Jaws is also a touchstone for Miri and Leah’s relationship. It is a movie they have watched together numerous times, and their interactions while watching it in the past reflect the depth of the bond that is now disintegrating. Leah would excitedly explain the science of sharks before interrupting herself for fear of being boring, yet Miri found her eager knowledge charming. The two even discussed the gay subtext in the movie, “how Hooper and Brody were obviously in love” (29). In the present, Miri once puts it on for them as Leah soaks in the tub after her return: Leah “says nothing now, though she seems to follow the movie, flicks water at the back of my head the first time the shark appears” (150). The film thus generates a rare, if delicate, moment of connection.

Other movies and conventions are also referenced. The disembodied voice that Miri hears when calling the Centre is resolutely unhelpful: “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Miri” (20), it says, when Miri asks the voice to allow her to pretend to be Leah. This phrasing directly echoes the antagonistic and psychopathic computer HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The novel also references tales of squid larvae growing in the human mouth; the “tendency to gigantism” in creatures of the deep sea (90); and strange banging outside the sunken submarine, “as though something were knocking to get in” (123). It could be argued that the creature did, in fact, “get in”—all the way in, transforming Leah into another strange being of the deep. Leah is described, at one point, as a Dr. Frankenstein character: Miri remembers “the way that [Leah] looked at [her], the open surge of her gaze, like [Miri] was something she’d invented, brought to life by the powers of electricity” (103). But Leah ultimately becomes more Frankenstein’s monster—a tragic figure, cast out from society. Leah’s penchant for transformation is present even before she goes out to sea, as Miri notes: “I often thought of her like this: sheathing herself with the intent to deflect,” akin to “an insect that mimics something else” (35). This deflection and deliberative disguising reflect more about their romance and relationship than Miri cares to admit, until the end is inevitable.

Once Leah’s transformation becomes undeniable, Miri ponders the considerable horror of how their story progresses: “[E]very horror movie begins like this,” she thinks, with “no lights and a voice in the darkness” (67). This thought comes right before she finds Leah screaming in her bed, vomiting up seawater. It also echoes the voice that Jelka—and, eventually, Leah herself—hears in the darkness surrounding the submarine. As Leah notes near the end of her harrowing journey, “Every horror movie ends the way you know it will” (209). She further explains that the hero often transforms into the shape of the so-called villain: A werewolf or a vampire will turn their heroes into reflections of themselves, thus disrupting the concept of what a villain is in the first place. Leah’s story ends with her transformation into a creature of the deep, just as the novel promises from the very start: “The deep sea is a haunted house,” Miri’s narrative begins, “a place in which things that ought not to be move about in the darkness” (3). This new Leah “ought not to be” (3), yet she is, and Miri must accept this conclusion—though it remains open ended, like the waters themselves. Here, at the edge of the ocean, Miri’s romance with Leah ends. Concurrently, it is where her romance with Leah continues, albeit in a radically new form.