Deconstructing the Other: Female Subjectivity and Desire in Maud Ventura's My Husband

Abstract

My Husband (2023) by Maud Ventura delves into the life of a protagonist who is both obsessed and devoted, with her identity being entirely enveloped by her marriage. Describing herself as “lucky” to have a husband who gave her three children and a domestic life, her autonomy is restricted to her role as his “wife”. The novel’s potential to be analysed as a feminist critique of subjectivity and desire further demonstrates that marriage as an institution of patriarchy casts women as the other by limiting their autonomy and subjectivity and erasing and silencing their desire. This paper applies Simone De Beauvoir’s “Woman as Other” and Luce Irigaray’s “This Sex Which is Not One” as frameworks to examine how My Husband (2023)  portrays female subjectivity as relational to men and defined within patriarchal structures, and their desire as erased and defined within those structures.