Reading beneath the surface meaning: human character and the iceberg analogy.
Dr Gregory House’s favourite mantra is that ‘ everybody lies’ implying that human beings are innately deceitful not only to others but perhaps especially to themselves. This recognition helps the maverick physician solve seemingly unfathomable medical problems restoring the sick patient to some sort of miraculous healing.
Reading texts for analysis demands that we look beneath the surface meaning and try to gain access to what is really being communicated however obliquely.
‘ I should have told my husband but he didn’t like disturbance.’
Here the isolated wife, fearful of going ‘ mad’ in her lonely countryside existence confesses her inability to communicate her state of distress to her partner. When we read this for the first time we can infer that the wife feels inhibited in her relationship and that this inhibition limits their intimacy and is affecting her mental health.
We can further infer that the wife’s respect for her husband’s boundaries might stem from his power over her. This power seems the link to his success in his career and to his greater maturity. However, even on the first reading, the husband’s dislike of ‘ disturbance‘ seems a curious choice of word. We may infer that his absorption in his work requires a special degree of concentration and this demands quiet.
Yet the implications of the word ‘disturbance’ also suggest that the husband’s desires are paramount. His peremptory wishes must be respected and obeyed. We may infer that the narrator feels in awe of her older husband and behaves submissively around him.
Finally, anyone who has stayed in a hotel might catch the inference of the need for personal space when you think of bold ‘Do Not Disturb ‘ signs attached to doors to warn off unwanted visitors.
This lack of intimacy endured by the lonely wife is surely not conducive to the narrator’s happiness?
When we go back to this admission that, ‘ he didn’t like disturbance’ after we have reached the end of the story and know that he was conducting a secret affair rather than ‘ working late’ at his office, the implications of the admission deepen and become heavily ironic!
The fact that the first-person narrator is sharing the story of her marital misadventure retrospectively through the use of the past tense suggests we can infer far more than we may have first assumed. In fact, it is hard not to resist the connection between the husband’s undisturbed home life and his ability to pursue other romantic liaisons.
The dishonesty inferred creates sympathy for the isolated wife, as the husband’s premeditated veil of superiority deliberately protects him from suspicion and allows him to do whatever he likes at the cost of his wife’s mental health and equilibrium. Her remembrance of his dislike of ‘disturbance’ now becomes hugely revealing of her husband’s callous arrogance and controlling deception.
We can certainly infer that the wife believes that she was a ‘disturbance’ in her husband’s carefully planned, hypocritical life and that her discovery of his unfaithful behaviour ironically brought some disturbance upon his selfish head!
Here are some examples of ‘iceberg’ moments in life and fiction. Think about what you can infer from what is being communicated.
- ‘I am just going outside and maybe some time. ‘( Captain Oates quoted in Captain Scott’s final Diary.)
- ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am?’
‘Lear’s shadow. ‘ ( Shakespeare’s King Lear talking to the Fool in the play. )
- “In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” ( Darcy’s first disastrous marriage proposal in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice)
