Into the Water

“No one liked to think about the fact that the water in that river was infected with the blood and bile of persecuted women, unhappy women; they drank it every day.”

While no absolute explanation ever appears for why so many women die in the Drowning Pool, Nickie contributes her own perspective: that somehow the people of Beckford absorb the deaths through the water itself. By ingesting the history of these women, the people of Beckford are doomed to repeat that history, trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence.

“Everyone wanted to put it behind them, to get on with things, and there you were, in the way, blocking the path, dragging the body of your dead child behind you.”

Grief and guilt—and how individual people process those emotions—are a significant motif throughout the novel. Louise represents the paragon of grief, of someone who cannot move on, and becomes a nuisance to others because of it. She understands the perception others have of her but refuses or is unwilling to leave her problems behind. 

“Some say the women left something of themselves in the water; some say it retains some of their power, for ever since then it has drawn to its shores the unlucky, the desperate, the unhappy, the lost. They come here to swim with their sisters.”

In Nel’s unpublished chapter about her own experiences with the Drowning Pool, she observes the strange power the water seems to have over women who come to Beckford. She suggests an explanation for why so many different women over the course of history have ended up drowned in that particular body of water, alluding to the bonds of sisterhood that, in Nel’s view, bind all women together. 

“‘Nel Abbott’s interpretation of events. Of selected events. Her…spin on things.’”

Sean’s denunciation of Nel’s writing ties into the major theme of perception. Sean has a personal stake in the matter, since he was having an affair with Nel and is the one who pushed her to her death, but his assessment of the situation could be an assessment of every character in the story. Every character handpicks events on which to focus and interprets them through the lens of their own biases. 

“The locals didn’t like her attitude, the sense of entitlement of an outsider coming to their town and purporting to tell their story.”

One of Erin’s coworkers in Nel’s investigation explains why many of the townsfolk are not overly upset over Nel’s death. They strongly disliked her for bringing an outside perspective and imposing her own narrative on their stories. That this observation happens during one of Erin’s chapters suggests that perhaps the people of Beckford have the same attitude towards Erin—that she is an outsider challenging their self-narratives in trying to dig up the truth.

“And now, with Nel burned to ashes, Louise was left with nothing. Nothing. At no one’s door could she lay her pain and suffering, because Nel was gone. And she worried that in the end the only place she had to bring her torment was home.”

Misplaced blame plays a large role in the novel, and no one is guiltier of it than Louise. She blames Nel for Katie’s death, then Lena, then Mark as well as Lena and Nel. In this moment she at least somewhat acknowledges her behavior, admitting that if she doesn’t blame other people for Katie’s death, she will ultimately only blame herself, which would be too difficult to bear.  

“But he wasn’t a bad man. It was just that when he loved, he loved completely—and what on earth was wrong with that?”

Mark’s self-narrative neatly sums up Hawkins’s point about “good” men. Mark, an adult and authority figure to his students, paints his relationship with Katie—a 15-year-old in his care as her teacher—as “love.” His perception of himself is so skewed that he lies to himself in order to protect himself from any shame or guilt he might feel at taking advantage of a child.

“After she moved into Patrick’s home, Helen found herself afflicted by terrible insomnia: a debilitating, anxiety-inducing, waking hell.”

Hawkins never explicitly states whether spirits are real in the world of “Into the Water,” but she does suggest that they are, and Helen’s insomnia is an example of that suggestion. Both she and Patrick suffer from insomnia while living at the Wards’ cottage. Erin suffers a similar problem when she moves into the cottage to be closer to town. The property seems to have a negative affect on anyone who stays there—and perhaps contributes to Nel’s death, as Sean and Nel stay at the cottage shortly before Sean kills Nel.

“Helen was straightforward, modest, intelligent—wholly uninterested in the kind of celebrity trivia and gossip that seemed to consume most women.”

Patrick reduces women to simplistic terms, generalizing that the vast majority of them are preoccupied with things that don’t matter. By categorizing women in this way, he never needs to question his misogyny because he believes that men are superior. He is the embodiment of misogynist culture. 

“Nel had gone off in a huff and said that if Nickie couldn’t tell the truth, then they were wasting their time, but really what did she know about the truth? They were all just telling stories.”

Throughout the story, most of the characters struggle to reach any sort of objective truth, instead relying on their perceptions and self-narratives to determine what they think happened in a given situation. Nickie, who probably comes closest to knowing and understanding the truth of anyone, is frustrated that Nel doesn’t believe that she knows the truth. Nickie acknowledges that truth is hard to come by. 

“Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it?” 

Jules repeats this line—said to her by Nel when Jules was 13 and had nearly drowned after being raped—many times throughout the story. For much of the story, she believes that Nel was suggesting that Jules liked being molested by Robbie, something that left Jules angry with Nel for decades. Jules learns that Nel did not know about the rape and was actually asking if Jules liked the feeling of drowning, which recolors Jules’s entire relationship with her sister. 

“Libby was an innocent, a young woman dragged to the water by men who hated women, who heaped blame on them for things that they themselves had done.”

Jules sums up the primary theme of the story—that “troublesome” women are typically innocent, brought to shame and death by “good” men who are actually responsible for the crimes in question. Critically, Jules adds the key observation that the men in question do not hate “bad” women; they hate all women and use their internalized misogyny to attack those they claim are “out of line.”

“The mutuality of their feelings would be ignored—Katie’s maturity, her seriousness, her intelligence, her choice—none of these things would matter. […] Hadn’t she been the one who started all this? And why should it be him, then, left alone to suffer the consequences?”

Mark justifies his behavior in having a relationship with his student by placing the responsibility squarely on her shoulders. Though she is under 18 and incapable of making the decisions he attributes to her, Mark insists that everything is her fault rather than take responsibility for his own feelings. 

“He’d never felt a second of remorse, because in his head what he’d done wasn’t rape. All this time, and he still believed he’d been doing the fat girl a favour.”

Most of the “good men” characters feel some degree of guilt for the pain they have caused others. Sean experiences severe traumatic episodes tied to his guilt about his mother and Nel. Mark feels some guilt about Katie, however misplaced. Even Patrick may feel guilty about Lauren’s death, though those feelings are deeply repressed. Robbie, then, is the worst “good man” of the four, as he believes he did nothing wrong, and therefore feels no guilt. 

“When you said, I’m sorry he hurt you, you meant you were sorry I felt rejected. When you said, What did you expect? you meant that of course he would reject me, I was just a child. And when you asked me, Wasn’t there some part of you that liked it? you weren’t talking about sex, you were talking about the water.” 

In the wake of her confrontation with Robbie, Jules must reframe her entire self-narrative, which has driven her decisions since she was 13 years old. Having shunned Nel for years because of her belief that Nel knew of her rape, Jules learns that this is not the case and must unpack her relationship with Nel in order to move forward. 

“He wasn’t permitted to grieve the way he deserved to, because although he punished himself for what he had said to her in anger, he knew that this wasn’t really his fault. None of it was his fault—how could it be? Who could control who they fell in love with?”

Mark’s obsessive adherence to his perceived blamelessness falls into the novel’s larger theme of misplaced guilt and blame. In grief, rather than examine his behavior, Mark buys even more into his self-narrative of being a victim. He clings to the notion that “love is pure” to justify taking advantage of a child in his care. 

“He gave us the why, he gave us some measure of relief: it wasn’t our fault.”

Sean justifies his mother’s death by clinging to the narrative that she was unfaithful to his father—that someone else was taking her away from them rather than anything he or his father did. That framing of events allows Sean to process and accept his mother’s death, whereas placing the blame where it belongs would leave him confused and unable to deal with the situation. 

“There was no room for guilt.”

Virtually every character in the novel experiences guilt, particularly regards to someone’s death. Lena feels guilty about both Katie and Nel, believing that she contributed to both of their deaths. This quote comes immediately after Lena escapes from Mark. While it is not stated, Hawkins implies that Lena kills Mark, and unlike the deaths of her friend and mother, this time Lena feels no remorse, believing her actions were justified. 

“It’s, like, when someone has an affair, why does the wife always hate the other woman? Why doesn’t she hate her husband? He’s the one who’s betrayed her, he’s the one who swore to love her and keep her and whatever forever and ever. Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?”

This quote highlights both the crux of “Into the Water” and Lena’s unique voice in the novel. Lena speaks as one would expect from a 15-year-old, using childish syntax and swear words. Her point, however, is the primary issue that the novel addresses: that is, the unfairness of society consistently blaming women for problems caused by men, and choosing to punish the women rather than the men. 

“I told myself a story about you that made sense to me, that allowed me to get on with my life without ever having to face what really happened.”

Self-narrative and believing the story one wants to believe play a significant role in “Into the Water.” For much of the story, Jules feels angry with Nel for taking other people’s stories and making them her own—adding her own “spin.” Here Jules confesses that she has done the same thing, believing something untrue of her sister because it fit the narrative she constructed in order to deal with her trauma.

“Sean Townsend is a good man. There are a lot of them about. My father was a good man. He was a respected officer. Didn’t stop him beating the shit out of me and my brothers when he lost his temper, but still.”

As the outsider to Beckford, Erin comes from a culture not quite as steeped in misogyny. She recognizes that a “good man” professionally can still be a terrible man personally. Erin’s own experience is particularly apt as two of the murderers in the story are respected police officers, as her father was. 

“He’s a good person, Julia. How could I say anything? It would have got him into trouble, and he doesn’t deserve that. He’s a good man.”

Lena defends Sean to Jules after Jules finds out that Sean and Nel had a relationship. Lena’s assertion is doubly ironic. Firstly, she does not recognize the hypocrisy in being upset with Katie for killing herself to keep from getting Mark into trouble yet holding no blame over Sean for his relationship with Nel. Second, she does not know—and never finds out—that the man she is defending killed her mother. 

“I sat by the river and I felt as I’d been feeling for a while: that all this, Nel’s story and Lauren’s and Katie’s, too, it was all incomplete, unfinished. I never really saw all there was to see.”

Erin acts as the reader’s advocate, voicing the same feeling in response to the novel winding down that the reader feels. Though the reader has been offered some explanations for each of the deaths in question, none of them is clearly presented as absolute truth, leaving additional room for interpretation.