My Husband

Ariane’s interest in translation is a motif that showcases her gift with languages, but also symbolizes her quest to interpret and capture another person’s point of view. When she works on a novel by an Irish author, she tries to come up with the best translation by inhabiting the writer’s perspective and style. She studies the writer’s other works so that Ariane “can write in her voice” (26). Ariane tries a similar method with her husband, observing his every movement so that she can inhabit his mind and truly get to know him. Her dexterity with translation contrasts with her lack of open communication with her husband.

However, the skills that serve her well in her literary work escape her when it comes to a person. Ariane’s inability to see the difference between a book and her life shows her blinkered approach, which coexists oddly with her keen intelligence. She employs a similar approach with the works of Marguerite Duras and Racine: Though she does not translate these works in the literal sense, she studies them so she can inhabit the minds of characters, like the unnamed protagonist of The Lover and Phèdre. She hopes to capture these characters so she can translate their reality into her own life, not realizing that this is neither possible nor desirable.

Ariane’s notebooks are an important symbol in the novel. Ariane describes the dozen notebooks she keeps: Some of these notebooks serve as vocabulary lists for her translation work, others are more personal. The green notebook contains advice on marriage and intimacy, while the punishment notebook, which Ariane has maintained for two years now, records her husband’s offences and their corresponding punishments. Ariane notes that the journal is not a diary; it simply contains three columns: “offense, punishment, date” (235). Its first two pages record the most common punishments, such as not cuddling with her husband the next morning because he forgot to wish her good night. More extreme punishments include moving his things around so he thinks he has lost them, and having an affair with another man.

The notebooks are a symbol of Ariane’s desire to control her chaotic reality. Like a scientist, she observes and catalogues her world with the intention of understanding it. She calls her observation of her marriage a “romantic microscope” (182); the notebooks are where she records her findings. However, as the Epilogue shows, Ariane’s attempts at control are faulty at best. It is clear that not only does her husband know about the notebooks, he also uses the data in them to manipulate Ariane. Despite Ariane’s attempts to codify and catalogue life, it slips from her grasp.