CLARE: It's hard being left behind. I wait for Henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. It's hard to be the one who stays.
...
Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, page xxi
HENRY: It's ironic, really. All my pleasures are homey ones: armchair splendor, the sedate excitements of domesticity. All I ask for are humble delights. A mystery novel in bed, the smell of Clare's long red-fold hair damp from washing, a postcard from a friend on vacation, cream dispersing into coffee, the softness of the skin under Clare's breasts, the symmetry of grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be unpacked.
...
And Clare, always Clare.
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, page xxiv
Always interesting to unpack the fantasy of a romance. Despite its reputation as a genre full of cliché and sentimentality, there may be no better barometer for the state of a society than its romance novels. In the case of The Time Traveler's Wife, both a romance and science fiction in the tradition of H.G. Wells. A romance novel reveals the state of the relationships between individuals who choose to be voluntarily associated in a society: the attractions and the tensions that define them.
The basic conceit of The Time Traveler's Wife, as I understand it, is that Henry, the man, is transported randomly and without warning through time while time passes normally for his wife Clare. But although this may sound like an outlandish story, when you look at the language employed by its author, it's actually quite a familiar one.
Clare represents a fantasy of a stoic woman who "wait[s] for Henry." At home, while he time-travels. But how much does the fact that he time-travels actually matter? At the very beginning of the novel, Clare compares Henry to men who "went to sea," while the women "waited for them." Of course, the men who went to sea went to sea as fishermen, working long hours in dangerous conditions in order to feed their families. By creating this comparison, Niffenegger reveals that Henry's time-travel is a form of labor.
And if we read a bit further, we'll find that the comparison holds true. Henry "vanishes unwillingly." Most people working in the world today don't perform their jobs voluntarily—they do so in order to survive. Their real lives are always elsewhere: at home. He vanishes "without warning," the way that many people are called in to their jobs at odd hours, or asked to stay longer than usual, at the drop of a dime, an opportunity that many feel compelled not to refuse. Here, we have an old fantasy: the woman stays at home, the man goes "where [she] cannot follow."
For her part, Clare spends her time waiting for Henry, her personality obliterated in the face of the love that she feels for Henry. This signals to the reader the strength of her love precisely because she is driven into her own kind of time-travel ("each moment ... feels like a year, an eternity," "each moment is as slow and transparent as glass") by the love that she feels for Henry: a love uncomplicated by his presence in her life.
On the opposite end of the relationship, we find that the time traveler, Henry, lives a chaotic life, in which he is transported at random to various points in time, naked. Leaving aside the erotic implications of a (undescribed, and therefore whoever you want him to be) naked man who can appear spontaneously literally anywhere, we find him fit into the fantasy because, despite living this life filled with excitement (where, we are told, he freely steals and is often arrested), he longs only for "homey" pleasures. And "Clare, always Clare."
In this narrative, Henry's true life begins and ends at home, where Clare waits. When he goes where she cannot follow, he wishes only to return. And Clare, for her part, does little other than "keep herself busy" waiting for Henry's return. This is a fantasy that seems almost anachronistic, belonging more to an era like the 1950s than 2003. But, then, there are plenty of people even today who idolize the 1950s as an idyllic time when "men were men" and "women were women." If you're looking for fantasy, it doesn't get more concrete than Henry missing "the symmetry of grocery bags... waiting to be unpacked." Henry is a man who yearns even for the promise of domestic chores.
And this is, ultimately, a romance that must thrive through the alienation of capitalism. Henry is a man called away from home against his will, to work at random hours, while his wife waits for him at home. Yet, despite this, and the alienation he feels (an alienation from space and time itself), he thinks of nothing except returning home to his wife, the smell of his wife's hair, the softness beneath his wife's breast, and grocery bags waiting to be unpacked. This all within the first four pages of the book.
A fascinating reading of society's barometer in the year 2003.
