60 pages • 2 hours read
Samantha DowningMy Lovely Wife
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The News
The news symbolizes secrecy, mystery, and the differences between appearances and reality. The family often watches the news until Jenna becomes afraid and Millicent bans it. Although the narrator thought he was committing murders “with” his wife, the news is full of information that surprises him, illustrating the degree of secrecy that exists in their marriage. For instance, the narrator finds out from the news that Millicent kept Lindsay alive for months to torture her, that she has killed three extra women in addition to Naomi and Lindsay, and that the real Owen is already dead. Although the news provides the narrator with new information, which is helpful, the news cannot provide all the answers he needs, just like it does not provide Jenna with the answers she needs. Instead, the news creates more questions than it answers, until the mysteries are finally solved at the end.
The news also illustrates secrecy because newscasters, such as Josh, are not allowed to share all the information they know. They are required to withhold certain facts from viewers until the police decide it is the right time to share information. Information is controlled and gradually released in a constructed intentional narrative. Furthermore, the news is dependent upon which people from the community choose to appear on it as witnesses, and what they choose to say. Although the news is a reliable, factual source of information, it is also shown to be imperfect and incomplete, emphasizing the role that mystery and secrecy play in this thriller novel.
Tennis Rackets
The narrator’s tennis racket symbolizes his identity, as well as his desire to transcend his social stature of being “average.” Having grown up in a wealthy community while being “merely” upper-middle class, the narrator desperately wants to achieve upward mobility and become rich, successful, and impressive. The one thing that he always excelled at was tennis, earning enough of his parents’ attention that they gifted him a tennis racket. Although he is not skilled enough to become a professional tennis player, the narrator is skilled enough to teach private lessons and earn a decent income doing so. Thus, tennis provides the narrator with his livelihood and identity, and this is symbolized through his racket.
The narrator also uses his tennis racket to kill Millicent’s sister Holly, who he believed was trying to kill Millicent. After the narrator starts to feel like he will never become rich, successful, or impressive, he takes solace in his ability to help Millicent murder people. He believes their criminal activities make them “above average” in some way if not financially or career-wise. His choice of a tennis racket as a murder weapon emphasizes his identity and his commitment to striving to be above average. However, ultimately, the narrator learns that murder makes him a below-average father and even a below-average tennis coach since he has to cancel a lot of lessons to make time to stalk potential murder victims. He renounces murder and chooses instead to prioritize fatherhood and coaching tennis. He appears to decide that being average is not so bad, and is preferable to being evil.
Hair
Hair symbolizes different characters’ identities, and how the narrator values some peoples’ humanity more than others. The narrator sends some of Naomi’s hair to the newscasters to prove her identity, but hair symbolizes identity for other characters besides Naomi. When the narrator becomes a suspect, for example, he grows his facial hair out to temporarily evade detection by the police. Changes in hair thus symbolize changes in identity, or at least in how identity is perceived. Millicent’s hair seems to always stay the same length or get slightly shorter, but the narrator never sees her cutting it. This illustrates Millicent’s degree of duplicity and secrecy throughout the book; the narrator is never sure who exactly Millicent is or what she’s capable of. A huge change in Jenna is also signified through a change in her hair: She cuts most of it off in an attempt to render herself less appealing to serial killers. Jenna’s haircut symbolizes how she has entered survival mode, thinking at all times about how to keep herself safe. Overall, hair represents identity, as well as certain characters’ shifts in identities and attempts to conceal their true identities.
