Graham Swift’s Waterlandcontains many identifiable links to Dickens’ Great Expectations: one of its primary settings is the Fens, the narrative follows the model of a bildungsroman, there is the presence of a brewery, and there is clearly a link to be drawn between the elderly and mad Sarah Atkinson and Dickens’ Miss Havisham. Despite these multiple points of intersection, what is perhaps of more interest are the ways in which the texts diverge. One of the most notable differences between these texts is the way in which each author utilizes water. Both texts essentially begin and end in aqueous settings: Great Expectations begins in the Fens, and is capped off by a handful of chapters in which water is present by way of Pip’s confrontation with Orlick, and Magwich’s attempted escape, while Waterland begins with a description of the Fens and culminates with Dick’s oceanic suicide. However, unlike its predecessor, Waterland draws water throughout the text, cycling repeatedly between it and various landed settings.
The overwhelming presence of water in Swift’s text appears instructive when considering the way in which it mirrors the patterning of the narrative. Much as the text’s rivers and rains both rise and recede throughout the text, so too does the story ebb and flow between various points of the past and the present in constructing Tom Crick’s narrative. Summarily, the use of water in the text mimics and reflects Swift’s use of history in the novel. Towards the beginning of the text, Tom Crick rather tellingly describes the Fens in historical terms:
To the north, the Fens advance, on a twelve-mile front, to meet the North Sea at the Wash. Or perhaps it is more apt to say that the Wash summons the forces of the North Sea to its aid in a constant bid to recapture its former territory. For the chief fact about the Fens is that they are reclaimed land, land that was once water, and which, even today, is not quite solid. [8]
In this passage, the link between the movement of the Fens’ tributaries and the type of historicity Swift is offering is highlighted. As Tom Crick describe them, the Fens are “ reclaimed land” , a term that could easily be applied to the work he performs narrating the entirety of his family’s history. Retelling these stories, Tom appears to be reclaiming his life by recasting the disfunctionalities and failures of his parents and brother in terms of a greater narrative of familial curses and problems. Similarly, despite this intensive effort to reclaim his narrative, Tom remains at the end of his life “ not quite solid.”
Questions
How does Swift’s use of water and narrative contrast with that of Dickens’s? What is gained by altering the structure of the bildungsoman as it appears in texts such as Great Expectations?
Aside from its ties to Great Expectations, what is the significance of utilizing the Fens as a primary setting? What is gained by utilizing a saturated, muddy, unstable environment for the center of Swift’s text?
Reading Waterland in terms of its position as a Neo-Victorian text, how does one negotiate the way Swift dips into moments in history that are undeniably Victorian? Is there anything Neo-Victorian about these Victorian moments, other than their presence in a Neo-Victorian text?
How does the revisiting of history performed by Pip contrast with that performed by Tom? What is its relationship to revisiting landscapes, aqueous and otherwise?
