EN 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 28: Iceberg, Smalltown America Records
Document Summary
Both strether and the narrator use water imagery to describe female characters, particularly the way strether relates to these women. Gostrey has gone away and left strether to digest many significant events on his own, he finds that he no longer depends on her help to properly understand the events he witnesses. He then refers to her as one pail among many in his life, as one of the tributaries from which the water of meaning he seeks to gather flows. Likewise, he describes mrs. newsome as a large iceberg, as if to suggest both her firm, stubborn, insistence on certain ideas and to accentuate her geographic distance from the matters at hand. Finally, he refers to madame de vionnet as a boat on water that attracts him. In this way, water and water- related imagery coalesce to serve as a constant reminder of strether"s complex and varied relationships to the women of the novel.
