“Our Wives Under the Sea” by Julia Armfield: The Abyss of Our Consciousness
- Francesca Rucco
- Dec 18, 2024
- 7 min read
Let’s talk about Julia Armfield’s novel Our Wives Under the Sea
“The ocean depths are haunted houses: places where things that shouldn’t even exist wander in the darkness.” Restless—this is the word Leah uses, tilting her head to one side as if reacting to some sound, though the evening is quiet: outside the window, only the monotonous hum of the street, with little to stir the ear. “The ocean is restless,” she says. “You have no idea how deep it is. You go down, further and further, and there are things moving down there.”
Julia Armfield is an English author who had remained largely unknown until the release of Our Wives Under the Sea in 2023, published by Bompiani in April 2024 as Le nostre mogli negli abissi. With this title, the author garnered nominations for numerous awards and won the Polari Prize for Book of the Year. In interviews, Julia Armfield explains that the novel was born from a reflection on the sea and its depths. Her fascination is palpable, so much so that in the book’s final notes, she expresses her love for the lion’s mane jellyfish, the largest jellyfish in the Mediterranean Sea.
Our Wives Under the Sea: The Plot
The novel centers on the lives of Leah and Miri in the present, interspersed with flashbacks to Leah’s past. Leah, a marine biologist, increasingly worries her wife due to her deteriorating physical condition. For a month, Miri experienced Leah’s absence as though she were dead: Leah had participated in an underwater expedition to study deep-sea species but didn’t return, leading Miri to believe she might never come back. Miri began to feel lost and consumed by grief.
However, Leah eventually resurfaces after nearly a month of disappearance, but she is no longer the same. She hears sounds that don’t exist, her skin takes on an ivory hue and starts peeling, and most unsettlingly, she can’t stay away from water. Leah begins filling bathtub after bathtub in their city apartment to soak in water all day. In the book, this condition is referred to as the “reemergence anomaly,” a term for the physical consequences experienced by people who spend too much time underwater.
The relationship between Miri and Leah is fractured; neither of them recognizes the other anymore, and Miri is at a loss for how to improve the situation or stop Leah from deteriorating further. Miri keeps calling the Center—the organization responsible for the underwater mission—but no one answers, and when they do, they dismiss her concerns. They insist it’s normal, that Leah has simply spent too much time in the ocean and will recover, but Leah’s condition worsens. Miri feels as though she’s losing Leah all over again—or worse, that Leah is no longer the same person.
I think I should try going to the Center in person. I’ve been there once, when I went to pick Leah up after the mission, but I can’t find the address anymore. I spend an hour sifting through documents in the vain hope of locating it, and then I give up. After all, what could I even say once I’m there? Can you fix her? Can you give me the real one back?
The Loss of a Partner and of Reality as a Primary Emotion
Julia Armfield’s novel is imbued with a profound sense of loss for what was once familiar. During Leah’s absence, Miri must confront the difficulties of finding herself alone after years of sharing her life with another person—adopting her habits, preferences, and every small nuance. What Miri experiences is a collapse of her own identity, as she struggles to recover memories anchored to an abyss that mirrors the one consuming Leah’s body, dragging it ever deeper.
Loss emerges as the central emotion of the book, taking on the responsibility of portraying a relationship falling apart—a reflection of all those situations in which the partner we fell in love with becomes unrecognizable. Julia Armfield positions herself as a devoted explorer of the transformations within relationships. Rather than constructing a present-day narrative that risks being flat or shallow, she weaves a dense fabric of darkness that remains unseen but palpably present throughout the story.
Our Wives Under the Sea has been described as a “queer gothic fairy tale,” a label that encapsulates its depiction of a love story between two women with both fairy tale and gothic undertones. In an interview with Writers Unlimited, the author was asked whether she felt this definition was fitting for her story. Armfield responded that once her work is published, it ceases to belong to her, allowing readers to see whatever they choose within its pages. In this sense, the author provides a mirror for our inner selves—an observant eye analyzing the world and reproducing what resonates with reality.
Our Wives Under the Sea: A Ghost Story of the Mind
Julia Armfield’s expressive writing style doesn’t reveal itself gradually—it is evident from the opening lines. As shown in the article’s introduction, the author skillfully uses language to tether every sensation to reality. This paradox enables her to write about things that don’t exist or can’t be seen while rooting them firmly in a tangible dimension.
Though the novel isn’t strictly a supernatural story, it carries all the characteristics of one. Living with a wife whose ivory-colored body grows increasingly translucent, tied more and more to the ocean, unable to live without water, and hearing sounds and voices that don’t exist—all these elements transform the narrative into a kind of portal to an otherworldly realm. This realm seems poised to reclaim the creature that escaped its dominion. Yet, Armfield masterfully connects these fantastical elements to a story grounded in reality, making it almost believable—almost as if we weren’t really reading about a woman vanishing into the memories of the deep sea.
Everything that happens in the ocean is described to us but never explained, and herein lies the novel’s most striking difference. We can sense it but never fully comprehend it. We attempt to enter the fabric of these memories, but they push us out, refusing to allow entry into a world beyond human reach.
The Five Levels of the Ocean as the Five Wounds of the Soul
Our Wives Under the Sea could easily be mistaken for the work of a true marine biologist. Julia Armfield conducted meticulous research, evident throughout the novel. The story is divided into five sections, corresponding to the five oceanic zones defined by scientists based on water density, pressure, and the species that inhabit each layer. These are: the epipelagic zone, the mesopelagic zone, the bathypelagic zone, the abyssopelagic zone, and the hadopelagic zone. Within these zones, we alternate between Miri and Leah’s perspectives: one anchors us in the decaying present, while the other drags us into the depths of the past.
According to some studies, human beings are shaped over their lifetime by five wounds of the soul—traumas embedded in human memory. These wounds are activated when events trigger the corresponding pain. Viewing Armfield’s novel as something open to interpretation, one possible reading is this: Miri and Leah represent two extremes of the human journey. Miri remains anchored to Earth, still bearing its emotional burdens, while Leah appears entirely detached, having become more ocean than anything else.
In the same interview mentioned earlier, the author speaks of water as a vessel for femininity and creation. The ocean is the home of an ancestral terrain we struggle to understand but intuitively recognize as the origin of all things. During the months of gestation within the maternal womb, we, too, inhabit a space closely connected to the aquatic environment.
I sat in the main cabin and thought about Sylvia Earle, about something she said in the article I had clipped and kept like a treasure. She claimed that our understanding of the universe comes from the ocean. The ocean has taught us that life exists everywhere, even in the great depths; most of life is found in the oceans; the oceans govern the climate. Our biases likely stem from the fact that, as land-dwelling creatures, we need air, which is why it has taken us so long to realize that everything we care about is anchored to the ocean. I was sitting with my back to the porthole as I thought about these things, and suddenly it felt like I could no longer bear the oppressive emptiness beyond the glass.
If Leah faces her mission while coldly losing her humanity, sacrificing it to become something entirely different, Miri, on the other hand, wrestles with fears that are deeply human. The five wounds—rejection, abandonment, injustice, humiliation, and betrayal—act as rites of passage that profoundly shape each individual’s existence.
The Miri we meet at the beginning of the story is a woman who, on one hand, rejects the situation, struggling to believe that her wife is truly gone. This is followed by a phase of deep abandonment, where she blames Leah for leaving her behind for an unknown mission in the depths of the ocean. This feeling of “being left behind” is intense and violent, and it deeply affects Miri.
When Leah finally returns, Miri is forced to contend with an unresponsive bureaucracy. The Center, which oversees the mysterious missions, embodies everything that is wrong and opaque in the world. Not knowing becomes a slow torture that ultimately spares no one. Humiliation and betrayal go hand in hand, overwhelming Miri with guilt and the impossibility of rebuilding trust with a partner who no longer seems the same.
Leah and Miri attend therapy sessions provided by the Center to help them reacclimate to each other’s presence and learn the new dynamics of their relationship. It is clear that Miri struggles to come to terms with her trauma; her emotions are strong and oppressive. Despite this, the love she feels for Leah—what she means to her, their relationship, and the time they’ve shared—remains powerful and overwhelming.
Miri represents tormented waters, filled with passively angry waves crashing onto the shore. Leah, on the other hand, symbolizes the unsettling stillness of deep waters about which we know nothing.
One thing is certain: in this book, the abyss of our consciousness is explored with both delicacy and remarkable specificity.
I thought about the day when, after her death, there would be no one left in the world whom I truly loved. I think you can love someone for a long time without realizing it; you notice it in the way an imperfection in their face or a flaw in their speech catches your attention—an anomaly you can never forget once you’ve recognized it. “Are you only now realizing that people die?” Leah had asked when I voiced that thought aloud, curled up next to her on the couch, my knees pressed against the back of hers. “Not people,” I replied, “you.”
Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea presents itself as a multifaceted story, where each reader can extract something different from the meaning of the abyss’s depths. One can adhere to a more straightforward perspective, experiencing a tormented tale of a difficult relationship; one can seek the supernatural in everything that happens, or view each event with as scientific an eye as possible.
One thing is certain: when you delve into the depths of your consciousness, you emerge profoundly changed.
Article published on May 27, 2024, in L’Altro Settimanale
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