Point of View

Our Wives Under the Sea oscillates between the first-person points of view of Miri and Leah. In the sections told through Miri’s perspective, in the present tense, she describes her life after her wife, Leah, returns from a six-month long oceanic expedition. She struggles to cope with Leah’s altered personality, and emotional distance. The sections told through Leah’s first-person lens, in the past tense, recount her life during the observational mission, which lasted six months. When she and the other crew were onboard the vessel, their communication cut out and the submarine sat in the Hadal Zone without contact or movement for months. The author chooses to move between both partners’ lenses in order to develop an emotional connection between the reader and both partners. If Armfield had only used Mari’s or Leah’s lens, the narrative would have given a...