Water babies essays

He makes his way to a neighboring town, to the house of the local schoolteacher, who gives him food and a place to sleep. That night, Tom sleepwalks to a stream and in effect drowns himself. In a symbolic baptism, he washes out of his soot-covered body and becomes a water-baby among the fairies.

A complex and elusive novel, The Water-Babies (subtitled A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby) attempts to reconcile scientific learning with Christian faith. In this respect it is like many other nineteenth century novels, including George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1871-1872) and Edwin Abbott’s Flatland (1884).

Structurally, The Water-Babies follows several patterns, including those of sin-confession-penance, ablution-absolution, and birth-death-rebirth. Another pattern is evolution. In the course of the narrative, Tom not only regresses into a baby (a play on devolution) but also evolves from “a jolly little black ape” into “a great man of science.”

The concept of evolution organizes and permeates the novel, from the mention of Charles Darwin in chapter 2 to Tom’s metamorphosis into an adult in the last chapter. Structurally, The Water-Babies follows several patterns, including those of sin-confession-penance, ablution-absolution, and birth-death-rebirth. Another pattern is evolution.