The Sea Lady is a fantasynovel by BritishwriterH. G. Wells, including some of the aspects of a fable. It was serialized from July to December 1901 in Pearson's Magazine before being published as a volume by Methuen. The inspiration for the novel was Wells's glimpse of May Nisbet, the daughter of the Times drama critic, in a bathing suit, when she came to visit at Sandgate, Wells having agreed to pay her school fees after her father's death.[1]
In presenting a creature of legend active in the prosaic contemporary genteel English society, the book clearly falls into the definition of contemporary or even urban fantasy, at the time not yet recognized as a distinct subgenre.
Plot
The intricately narrated story involves a mermaid who comes ashore on the southern coast of England in 1899. Feigning a desire to become part of genteel society (under the alias "Miss DorisThalassia Waters"), the mermaid's real design is to seduce Harry Chatteris, a man she saw "some years ago" in "the South Seas—near Tonga," who has taken her fancy.[2] This she reveals in a conversation with the narrator's second cousin Melville, a friend of the family who adopts "Miss Waters". As a supernatural being, she is unimpressed with the fact that Chatteris is engaged to the socially-minded Miss Adeline Glendower and is trying to make amends for his wastrel youth by entering politics. With mere words, the mermaid shakes both Chatteris and Melville's faith in their society's norms and expectations, enigmatically telling them that "there are better dreams". In the end, Chatteris is unable to resist her alluring charms, though succumbing supposedly means his death.
In its narrative structure, The Sea Lady plays cleverly with conventions of historical and journalistic research and verification. According to John Clute, "Structurally it is the most complex thing Wells ever wrote, certainly the only novel Wells ever wrote to directly confirm our understanding that he did, indeed, read Henry James."[4]Adam Roberts has argued that The Sea Lady was written in a kind of dialogue with James's The Sacred Fount (1901).[5]
^"The Crisis" . The Sea Lady (1902). She reflected profoundly. "For all women— The child, man! I see now just what Sarah Grand meant by that."
Further reading
Austern, Linda; Naroditskaya, Inna, eds. (2006). Music of the Sirens. Bloomington (Ind.): Indiana University Press. pp. 56–58. ISBN978-0253218469. Retrieved 8 September 2012.
Batchelor, John (1985). H. G. Wells. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 62–66. ISBN978-0521278041. Retrieved 8 September 2012.
McLean, Steven, "'A fantastic, unwholesome little dream': The Illusion of Reality and Sexual Politics in H. G. Wells's The Sea Lady", Papers on Language and Literature, 49 (2013), 70–85.