The Wives

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.