A Study in Drowning

“If she said yes, I do, she was a conceited harpy. If she shook her head and rebuffed the compliment, she was falsely modest, playing coy. It was fae-like trickery. There was no answer that wouldn’t damn her.”

This moment highlights the inherent flaws in society’s Gender Dynamics and Systemic Discrimination. Effy equates patriarchy to supernatural forces, paralleling the novel’s recurring motif of men’s weakness being exploited by the Fairy King. Despite its supernatural undertones, the observation also illuminates the realistic way in which marginalized people are unable to find an agreeable escape from discriminatory behavior.

“Yet Effy found herself half in love with the Fairy King sometimes, too. The tender belly of his cruelty made her heart flutter. There was an intimacy to all the violence, she supposed. The better you knew someone, the more terribly you could hurt them.”

This moment foreshadows the “intimacy” of Effy’s connection with the real Fairy King. Here, she is referring to the fictionalized account in her favorite book, but the duality of her feelings in response to the villain’s nature is a metafictional reference to many popular and problematic romantic male leads in contemporary literature, particularly young adult fiction and fantasy. It also suggests a complexity to love and intimacy that transcends simple affection.

“What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned, / What a selkie but an unwilling wife…”

This line is taken from an excerpt from a fictional poem, “Elegy for a Siren,” by Emrys Myrddin. Like all of his work, it uses nautical imagery, a motif that the novel itself employs often throughout the text. In particular, this moment is referenced later when Effy describes herself as “vanishing like a selkie beneath the waves” (292). It highlights the relationship between women and the sea, a thematic concept that is touched on several times over the course of the story.

“I waited for the Fairy King in our marriage bed, but he didn’t know I was wearing a girdle of iron. Angharad’s words were so familiar, they were like the voice of an old friend.”

This moment foreshadows Effy’s future friendship with the real Angharad and subtly hints at the truth of the epic: They are described as “Angharad’s words,” which turns out to be more literal than Effy had expected. In a more present way, Effy’s relationship with her favorite book highlights The Power of Storytelling to comfort her and guide her in times of hardship. The line also draws from real folkloric beliefs in the protective powers of iron.

“We must discuss, then, the relationship between women and water. When men fall into the sea, they drown. When women meet the water, they transform.”

Taken from another epigraph, this moment connects to a prior one in which women were compared symbolically to their mythic marine counterparts. Though stereotypes about how different genders engage with hardships can ultimately be harmful, this line raises questions within Effy’s culture about the true nature of water and why, broadly speaking, men and women are affected by and interact with it differently. This moment highlights water as a transformative force. By the end of the novel, the sea has destroyed Myrddin’s concrete legacy and transformed both Effy and Angharad, giving them new lives.

“Effy thought of Myrddin’s Fairy King: charming, cruel, and, in the end, pitiful in his corrosive desires. He had loved Angharad, and the thing he loved the most had killed him. She frowned. Surely there was nothing more human than that.”

Effy and Preston both see the humanity of the Fairy King, although Effy’s personal experiences with him are different. This moment draws commonalities between this otherworldly being and the men whom he inhabits, such as Master Corbenic, Marlowe, and Myrddin. This allows Effy to empathize with him in a small way, in spite of her aversion and fear.

“And it would be worse to tell him this deeper, more painful truth: that seeing Hiraeth had ruined her childish fantasy, ruined the version of Myrddin she had constructed in her mind, one where he was benevolent and wise and had written a book meant to save girls like her.”

Effy’s major internal conflict throughout the novel is the erosion of her idealistic image of Myrddin, Angharad, and what the story represents. Despite the discomfort of this disillusionment, it represents a coming of age and a type of rebirth in which she recognizes the duality of her favorite author’s legacy. This raises questions of what defines a piece of art once it has been separated from its creators (or implied creator).

“To religious Northerners, the fairies were demons, underworld beings, the sworn enemies of their Saints. To smarmy, agnostic scientists and naturalists, the Fair Folk were as fictitious as any other stories told in church. But to Southerners, fairies were a mere fact of life, like hurricanes or adders in your garden.”

This small and concise bit of worldbuilding grapples with The Variability of Truth, presenting each side of the argument as equally possible. Although the novel is set in a secondary world, it reflects real attitudes and conflicts wherein cultures are divided by their inability to accept the potential truth of the other’s beliefs. This moment represents the divide that came from the age of enlightenment in Effy’s culture, in which more magical or religious ideologies were abandoned by some in favor of more academic approaches.

“Effy had put her faith in magic. Preston held nothing more sacred than truth. Theirs was not a natural alliance.”

Preston and Effy often become divided by their differing approaches to finding the truth, with Preston being a staunch supporter of objective and concrete evidence. Here, Effy also chooses to use the word “faith,” a belief system that exists independent of truth. As their journeys converge, Effy comes to fight for the truth and Preston becomes more empathetic to the idea of magic and faith.

“Romantic epics are typically written in the third person, and always narrated by men. Heroes and knights whose goals are to rescue damsels and slay monsters. But the Fairy King is both lover and monster, and Angharad is both heroine and damsel.”

This moment highlights the divide between traditional and contemporary storytelling and the complexity of truly human characters. Although Effy is referring to a fictionalized woman in this context, the line also parallels her own role in the story: She is at times a damsel to be rescued and at others a hero who steps up to protect those she loves. Even the Fairy King, a supernatural creature, exhibits this dualistic humanity.

“There was something wrong with this section of the house. It seemed to exist in another world, cold and silent and strange, like a shipwreck on the ocean floor. The rest of Hiraeth creaked and groaned and swayed, protesting its slow destruction.”

This quotation uses the novel’s interwoven nautical imagery to convey setting and theme. In this moment, Ianto’s private rooms and the main body of the house are given two different nautical similes and metaphors: The private rooms become a shipwreck, a boat that has been destroyed and now exists in a state of stasis, while the larger house becomes a groaning ship that exists in a state of slow and determined change. The language also foreshadows the house’s eventual collapse into the sea.

“Lying was a form of survival, a way out of whatever trap had been set. Some animals chewed off their own limbs to escape. Effy just tucked away truth after truth, until even she wasn’t sure if there was a real person left at all, under all those desperate, urgent lies.”

Exploring the theme of The Variability of Truth, Effy considers her own relationship with lying. She consciously acknowledges the destructive power of lying, referencing an animal’s self-harm in the name of survival, an image that evokes her own feelings of fear. Here, truth becomes a tangible thing that can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient.

“Effy always wondered whether her mother had picked her name, Euphemia, to be a blessing or a curse. The feminine variation of Eupheme, patron saint of storytellers. Most of the time it just felt like a cruel joke.”

Eupheme is mentioned earlier in the novel, as his portrait hangs in Hiraeth Manor in contrast to the one of the Fairy King. Effy’s full name highlights her deep connection to stories and her need to express her own. This elicits ideas of fate, a concept that is more firmly introduced through the idea of the Fairy King’s lifelong interest in her.

“Says the sea to the sailor: strive with me and live; neglect me and drown.”

This Argantian aphorism encompasses the relationship between people and the sea that permeates much of this fictionalized landscape. As a broader idea, it acts as a lesson to exist in harmony with the natural world instead of in opposition with it. When Ianto tries to exert dominance over the natural world by repressing the Fairy King and upholding his father’s false legacy, the sea retaliates by devouring his home.

“[A] romance is a belief in the impossible: that anything ends happily. For the only true end is death—and in this way, is romance not a rebuke of mortality?”

This epigraph examines romance in the classical sense, as a literary genre rather than a marketing genre defined by its amorous themes. Here, romance encompasses love as well as a belief in the extraordinary and its essential happy ending. This quote offers a dual perspective: that happiness is both unrealistically brief and that it is an act of resistance against the constraints of real life.

“Preston was a good storyteller. He paused in all the right places, and his voice grew grave whenever it was appropriate. Effy tried to stay as silent as she could, hardly even daring to breathe.”

The Power of Storytelling is a recurring theme throughout the novel. Here, Preston’s use of storytelling creates a deeper connection with Effy, taking their relationship to the next stage. Even though this is a personal history, Effy describes the experience as being a “storyteller’s” offering, showing how intrinsic stories are to her perception of the world.

“Anything can be taken from you, at any moment. Even the past isn’t guaranteed. You can lose that, too, slowly, like water eating away at stone.”

Using the novel’s pervasive marine imagery, Preston explores the ephemerality of happiness—an idea raised in Chapter 12 (See: Important Quote #16)—as well as time itself. While one might believe the past to be a fixed element, Preston suggests that it is in fact a construct of our minds. This once again refers to The Variability of Truth when conveyed through the fallible minds and interpretations of people.

“The words now felt like prophecy. If a story repeated itself so many times over, building itself up brick by brick, did it eventually become the truth?”

Effy considers what makes an idea true and if truth is inseparable from authenticity. This moment suggests that, in contrast to what Preston believes, there is no “objective truth.” Instead, the truth equates to the reality one builds around themselves, which becomes the filter through which they experience the world.

“She wasn’t afraid of dying, not really. It was the ultimate act of flight, an escape artist’s tour de force.”

Effy often describes herself as a survivor, one who can escape her hardships by retreating into herself. In this moment, death becomes another type of escape. She presents the idea that death can be its own type of survival in that it transcends the world of the living. This contrasts with her later desire to survive and overcome the Fairy King.

“Effy was no architect, and she might never be a storyteller, either, no heir to magic and myths and legends, but one thing she knew was survival.”

Early in her journey, Effy plays a role as someone who wanted to pursue architecture and ended up on her path by choice. To herself, she imagines the making of an author like Myrddin, one capable of affecting real courage and change in her readers. In this moment, she exhibits her growth as a character by stripping away the artifice with which she has armed herself and presenting herself in the most authentic way she knows how.

“All the hurt was what made it real. The hurt that transcended all the years stretched between them, tying two different girls on two different shores, half a century apart.”

In this moment, Effy grapples with the Gender Dynamics and Systemic Discrimination that she and Angharad have both faced in their journeys. She despairs over how these dynamics still exist even in a seemingly enlightened culture and how these problems in society have not yet been adequately addressed. However, it also links the two characters together through a sense of solidarity and understanding developed generally among women.

“‘The Fairy King was all of them,’ said Angharad. ‘Every wanting man has that same wound he can use to slip in.’”

This moment creates a connection between men across generations. The novel presents the idea that men carry a weakness that makes them vulnerable to the Fairy King’s influence. Notably, Angharad refers to this weakness as a “wound,” presenting it as an external infliction rather than an inherent flaw. This raises questions for the reader about the nature of choice, gender predilection, and personal responsibility. 

“She would not go back to that green chair.”

Master Corbenic’s green chair is a repeated motif in Effy’s thoughts as she navigates her trauma and fear after her assault. In this moment, it comes to symbolize something bigger than a literal furnishing in which she lived through a horrific experience. It represents a broken social order and unbalanced power dynamic that she and other women face systemically throughout their lives. Here, Effy creates a line between her old life and her new.