In Waterland Graham Swift depicts both time and space as fluid. The saturation of the landscape of the Fens mirrors certain qualities of historical, personal, and generational time in the narrative. At certain points, water fails to flow just as the narrative becomes caught in certain significant periods. However, it is the flow of water and time that propels the story into the future.
The history of the Fens plays an important role in understanding the significance of water in the story. Much of the area of Eastern England lies below or just above sea level. The ambiguity of this area as both valuable farmland and uninhabitable marshland punctuates the novel and underlies many of its themes (e.g. fertility, history, and profession). Swift walks his readers through the history of man’s struggle to control water flow in the fens as he walks through his family history in Chapter 3. His family profession moves from working with the flow of water to working to control the flow of water:
They ceased to be water people and became land people; they ceased to fish and fowl and became plumbers of the land. They joined in the destiny of the Fens, which was to strive not for but against water. For a century and a half they dug, drained and pumped the land between the Bedford River and the Great Ouse, boots perpetually mud-caked, ignorant of how their efforts were, little by little, changing the map of England. [Swift 13]
Here, water resists containment. The “plumbers of the land” must perpetually work to prevent water from repossessing the land. However, Swift points out that these men did not convert entirely to “land people”:
Or perhaps they did not cease to be water people. Perhaps they became amphibians. Because if you drain land you are intimately concerned with water; you have to know its ways. Perhaps at heart they always knew, in spite of their land-preserving efforts, that they belonged to the old, prehistoric flood. And so my father, who kept the lock on the Leem, still caught eels and leant against the lock-gates at night, staring into the waterÑfor water and meditation, they say, go together. [Swift 13]
The narrator’s family are not the only “water people” who resist the movement to land. As early as the seventeenth century, forms of protest such as song become fairly widespread:
Powte’s Complaint
Anon.
Come, Brethren of the water, and let us all assemble,
To treat upon this matter, which makes us quake and tremble;
For we shall rue it, if''t be true, that Fens be undertaken
And where we feed in Fen and Reed, they'll feed both Beef and Bacon.
They'll sow both beans and oats, where never man yet thought it,
Where men did row in boats, ere undertakers brought it:
But, Ceres, thou, behold us now, let wild oats be their venture,
Oh let the frogs and miry bogs destroy where they do enter.
Behold the great design, which they do now determine,
Will make our bodies pine, a prey to crows and vermine:
For they do mean all Fens to drain, and waters overmaster,
All will be dry, and we must die, 'cause Essex calves want pasture.
Away with boats and rudder, farewell both boots and skatches,
No need of one nor th'other, men now make better matches;
Stilt-makers all and tanners, shall complain of this disaster,
For they will make each muddy lake for Essex calves a pasture.
The feather'd fowls have wings, to fly to to other nations;
But we have no such things, to help our transportations;
We must give place (oh grievous case) to horned beasts and cattle,
Except that we can all agree to drive them out by battle.
Here, the battle between water and man turns into a more overtly political struggle between different uses of the space that continues to the present. In 2003, a massive project known as “The Great Fen Project” has been undertaken to restore the area to its pre-agricultural (http://www.greatfen.org.uk/) state. The narrator’s father seems to straddle the boundaries between these two positions as lockkeeper. He makes the transition from water to land, but never gives up his attachment to water. He allows the water to flow at times and stops the flow of water at other times. However, the forward propulsion of the water continues beyond the lock. The narrator plays a similar role with regard to the confluence of various histories (personal, generational, and national) throughout the story. He controls the ebb and flow of history in his narration, but time propels the characters into the future beyond the constraints of history.
Questions
How does fertility in the novel relate to the idea of flow and blockage? It may be interesting to consider this in terms of Mary’s attitude toward menstruation and experimentation and the way her attitude changes after she loses her baby. What blocks her curiosity in her adult life?
How is the flow of beer represented differently than the flow of water in the novel?
To what degree does the book depict a kind of compromise between the project of blockage and letting water and time flow? How does this relate to the recurrence of the idea of revolution and the politics of blockage and flow? How does Dick fit into the paradigm of blockage and flow? Might he represent a sort of genetic blockage? How do we resolve that with his relationship with water?
What is the significance of the narrator’s physical detachment from the Fens in his adult life?
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fens
http://www.greatfen.org.uk/
“Literary Norfolk” http://www.literarynorfolk.co.uk/Poems/powte's_complaint.htm