The Wives

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-24

Chapters 25-30

Chapters 31-36

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Perceptions Versus Reality

The central question of the novel is what happens when women are pushed to their limit by the constraints of a patriarchal society. The concept of subjective perception and its impacts on a person’s understanding of reality is a theme that illustrates the consequences of gendered understandings of perfection and love. In the novel, Thursday lives in a constructed version of reality in which she is a part of a polygamist marriage to Seth. Thursday experiences what the novel calls “delusions” and suffers from an unspecified mental illness that alters her understanding of reality.

Thursday represents what occurs when unrealistic concepts like perfection are prioritized within one’s sense of self. Thursday is obsessed with appearances. In the beginning of the novel, Thursday depicts the situation she finds herself in: “When you’re newly married, you see a pair of candlestick holders and imagine a lifetime of roast dinners that will go along with them. Dinners much like the one we’re having tonight. My life is almost perfect” (11). She sees the future she imagines with Seth as “almost perfect,” hinting to the reader that something is not quite right. Thursday, in an effort to attain what she believes to be a perfect relationship with Seth, becomes obsessed with discrediting Seth’s other relationships. Thursday begins to spiral as she chases her imagined future with Seth; while she follows this idea of perfection, her perceived reality begins to take over and encroach on her relationships with other people.

Thursday’s perceived reality begins to shift and become more obsessive immediately following her discovery of Hannah. After Thursday finds Hannah’s social media profiles, she realizes that her perception of “perfect” Hannah is completely wrong. Her comment that “[a] row of orange bottles stares back at me from the medicine cabinet” (38) foreshadows that Thursday’s perceived reality is beginning to overwhelm her. As her perception of reality is challenged further, Thursday becomes more aggressive and holds on to her version of the truth tighter than ever.

Throughout the novel there is an ongoing dialogue about how one’s perception of reality is colored by emotions. For example, Thursday thinks, “It’s strange how perception is altered by bitterness” (75), which helps prepare the reader for the eventual reveal of Thursday as an unreliable narrator. This is also a narrative screen; Fisher acclimates the reader to Thursday’s shifting perception based on her emotional state, which tricks the reader into believing Thursday when she thinks Seth seems different when he picks her up from the hospital. He is different because it is Thursday’s father, not Seth, but the narrative has not yet revealed Thursday’s psychosis. In creating multiple layers of perceived reality, the novel implies that Thursday may never come to terms with the facts of her situation.

The Constraints of Patriarchal Gender Roles

Conventional gender roles and their impacts on relationships is a recurring theme that exists within the narrative. In this novel, gender roles serve as a limiting factor in the lives of women and ultimately push them to their breaking points. Thursday’s story is an allegory for this. Thus, her increasing psychological instability becomes symbolic on a societal level.

Thursday was raised in a traditional American family that believed women are meant to become wives and raise children. This philosophy was ingrained in Thursday from an early age. “Cooking, my mother taught me, is the only good way to be a wife” (11), she thinks as she prepares to welcome Seth home at the beginning of the novel. She wants everything to be just “the way he likes it” (12) and convinces herself that, rather than this indicating her subservience, it is a sign of her love. In some ways, Seth is a stereotype of toxic male behavior. He is violent toward his partners and drugs Thursday to induce an abortion, which is a felony. Though Seth is never tried in a court of law, he gets narrative justice when Thursday shoots him during their altercation, paralyzing him permanently.

The novel attempts to grapple with the expectation of perfection that is often placed upon women, but its conclusions are contradictory. Thursday, as she attempts to learn more about the other women in Seth’s life, struggles with the realizations that the other women she is “sharing” Seth with aren’t perfect. Regina is struggling financially, and Hannah wanted to leave Seth before she found out she was pregnant. Even Lauren, her coworker with a seemingly perfect marriage, is revealed to be the victim of constant cheating. Upon realizing that nothing is as Thursday believed it to be, and all the women in her life are dealing with similar deceptions from men, she says:

[N]ow I see the truth: women are stuck in a cycle of insecurity perpetuated by the way men treat them, and we are constantly fighting to prove to ourselves and everyone else that we are okay. Sure, women occasionally lose their minds over men, but does that mean we’re all unstable […] [I]t takes a village to put someone in a mental institution (121).

However, instead of this realization leading to an alliance among the women who have been wronged, even in spirit, the plot drives the women apart: Hannah goes back to Seth, and Regina and Thursday attack each other.

The Bechdel test is a scale created by filmmaker Allison Bechdel to test women’s representation in film. To pass the Bechdel test, a film (or other fictional work) must feature two women who talk about something other than a man. Even the novel’s title, The Wives, positions the female characters in relation to one man, Seth, and when the women talk to each other, it is usually about Seth or other cheating spouses. Thursday’s and Regina’s miscarriages and Hannah’s pregnancy are the only subjects the women discuss that don’t directly reference Seth, but he is the father in each case, and the discussion eventually winds back to him. Neither Thursday nor the novel as a whole ever quite escapes the patriarchy’s grip.

Using Sex and Femininity for Power and Control

In parallel to the concept of traditional gender roles being challenged within the novel, the author also challenges the validity of forms of power that are traditionally attributed to women through the stereotype of the manipulative woman. Thursday’s mother represents the outdated view that women should use their femininity to entrap a man, and this implies that women are only worthwhile if they succeed in gaining a man’s sexual interest. In the novel, pregnancy represents the ultimate form of gendered power. Thursday’s mother encourages her to use this power, saying that she “wouldn’t be the first woman to trap a man in a marriage with a baby” (35). The novel later subverts this trope, as Seth traps Hannah in their marriage by hiding her birth control and getting her pregnant.

When the novel begins, Thursday has already miscarried and knows that having a child is no longer an option for her as a way to win Seth’s loyalty. So, she turns to the next best weapon: sex. Thursday begins the novel fully believing she can retain Seth’s interest through sex. She even chooses flowers for this purpose, explaining, “I chose them for their sexual innuendo because when you’re in a position like mine, being on top of your sexual game is of the utmost importance” (10).

Sex acts as a double-edged sword within the novel, both allowing women to regain control over their relationships and also leading to them losing it. Thursday says of Seth, “[He] controls me with sex, and I control him with sex. It’s a merry-go-round of pleasure and servitude that I’ve always enjoyed” (104). The cyclical model she describes makes it seem that the power dynamic evens out over time, but Seth is the one in multiple relationships while Thursday is focused solely on him. Though he reminds her that she consented to his marriage to Hannah, Thursday may have given her consent while under his emotional and psychological control. Her actions throughout the novel make it clear that she was not content with remaining Seth’s mistress, and the complexity of the lie creates corresponds with the depth of her grief and desperation.

The novel ends pessimistically, as do many other psychological thrillers. Though the root of Thursday’s psychosis is not her fault, at the end of the novel, she slips back into flawed reasoning, believing that bashing Regina’s head into the ground is a way to regain her personal power. Feminism only triumphs insofar as Seth is paralyzed, which means he can no longer control multiple women and jet between cities, leading secret lives. The novel’s dark tone is a nod to the noir genre, a subgenre of crime fiction that arose in the aftermath of World War II. Noir narratives dictate that the world is morally corrupt and triumphs are necessarily brief. Fisher taps into this philosophy; it shows that sexual manipulation by both genders is wrong, but no one in the novel models a healthy, equitable sexual relationship.