Our Wives Under the Sea

The Centre remains something of a mystery itself throughout the entire novel. While it ostensibly has the funding and the expertise to mount a deep-sea expedition, the Centre fails to represent itself in a professional and transparent manner. Indeed, the point of Leah’s mission is not entirely clear, and it begins to appear as if the research is being conducted on the crew rather than the creatures of the ocean. Though Miri does not initially suspect that anything is amiss with the mission, in retrospect, she notes warning signs. At the going-away celebration before the submarine departs, Miri observes that “[t]he atmosphere, though convivial, seemed shot through with something unidentifiable—strange sensation, almost a flavor in the air” (38). She goes on to compare the employees of the Centre to devotees, “standing with hands clasped in front of them or under their chins, the way you might expect to witness at a church event” (38). Devotion can quickly careen into zealotry, which can lead the congregation astray. The Centre’s intention, to prove life exists everywhere, might ironically lead it to consider the crew expendable in the face of discovery.

Miri finds it impossible to access any answers or assistance from the Centre once Leah comes back changed; eventually, the Centre simply disappears, leaving not a digital trace. She notes that their full name, the Centre for Marine Enquiry, invokes “a blandness that implies longevity, a patrician sense of having always been there, of being a long-established institution, which of course it is not” (66). Its newness suggests instability. Miri also realizes that she is not entirely certain as to what Leah’s job actually is with the Centre, something she evidently knew about Leah’s previous jobs.

In the submarine, the crew begin to have their own suspicions about the Centre, especially Matteo: “I don’t think they told us the truth,” he tells Leah. “They shipped us off with so much food onboard. The comms went out before the system died, like they switched us off externally. We know all this, we know this” (162-63). He explicitly suggests that they themselves are the experiment. Clearly, Leah’s devout belief in the possibilities of the ocean feeds into the Centre’s stated mission: “I have always felt that there is something knowable about the sea, something within comprehension, and I knew that I couldn’t allow the opposite to be true” (201). She is one of the Centre’s unwitting disciples, plunging into the deep and making herself known to the gigantic octopus-like creature who dwells down there. It is never revealed what the Centre does with such information—or even if Leah chose to disclose her discovery to the Centre. That the Centre is referred to as “The Centre” may reflect its role as doubt or intuition, the instincts at Leah’s core that draw her into exploring the ocean depths, which in turn represent her buried self.

Miri struggles with the memories of her mother’s illness and death, which come to symbolize Miri’s own perceived failures. These memories crop up especially when Miri experiences stress or doubt. Miri also suffers from a measure of guilt over never introducing Leah to her mother—though Leah was a comfort to Miri during that difficult time. Miri’s mother was difficult, and Miri recalls the woman with a mix of love and fear. In Miri’s memories, her mother exhibits imperiousness and weakness, expressing both acceptance and rejection toward her daughter. Miri learns from her mother as much about who she does not want to be as about who she would like to be: “I see my mother in myself, though less in the sense of inherited features and more in the sense of an intruder poorly hidden behind a curtain” (116). Miri sees her mother’s flaws in her own easily frustrated personality, her quick temper, and her judgmental nature: “I see her when I assume people are worse than they turn out to be” (116). Miri’s relationship with Leah, however, has mitigated some of these personality traits. Miri has begun to become her own person, despite the lingering characteristics from her mother.

Clearly, Miri has inherited at least some of her anxiety from her mother. The first time her mother is mentioned in the book, the woman is associated with fear and vigilance: “Everything with my mother was always harsh chemicals—she filled a binder with clippings on the cancer risks of various meat products, sent me books on UV rays and home invasions” (7). Later, a memory of her mother’s illness—specifically, the fear that she will inherit it—nearly incapacitates Miri: “I imagined my mother’s symptoms and read them into the way that I swallowed, the way I shaped my words. I fell prey to patterns of terrible thinking” (84). However, as Miri tells her doctor, “I’ve always been like this [...], it’s just that she [Leah] made it better” (84). Thus, Leah’s support allows Miri to free herself from the domineering anxieties of her mother—Leah’s role in this capacity is part of the reason why Miri is so reluctant to introduce Leah to her mother and eventually to let Leah go.

In the end, Miri fantasizes about Leah meeting her mother as much to restore her own sense of self-worth as to alleviate her guilt: “In the fantasy, if fantasy is quite the right word, this typically takes place at my mother’s house by the sea, and perhaps my mother has never been ill, or perhaps she has but I haven’t failed her” (212). Such a meeting is not possible. However, Miri does take Leah to her mother’s house by the sea to guide her into the ocean, her now natural habitat. Miri has not failed Leah as she believes she had failed her mother; rather, she relinquishes her own self-centered needs and selfish desires in order to release Leah. Miri saves Leah’s life by letting her go.