Water Imagery in the Works of Eudora Welty, Teresa de la Parra, Kate Chopin, and María Luisa Bombal

Water Imagery in the Works of Eudora Welty, Teresa de la Parra, Kate Chopin, and María Luisa Bombal

“’The pouring-down rain, the pouring down rain’ –was that what she was saying over and over, like a song?”.

Eudora Welty, “A Piece of News”

“ Usually I prefer to stay at the pool because there the river holds a serene and mysterious charm for me”.

(Por regla general yo prefiero quedarme en la toma, porque es alla en donde el rio tiene para mi aquel encanto sereno y misterioso).

Teresa de la Parra, Iphigenia (The Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored) (Ifigenia (Diario de una señorita que se escribó porque se fastidiaba))

“ The voice of the sea speaks to the soul”.

Kate Chopin, The Awakening

“ And like this, naked and golden, I dive into the water”

(Y asi, desnuda y dorada, me sumerjo en el estanque).

María Luisa Bombal, The Final Mist (La última niebla)

Water imagery occurs repeatedly in the works of Eudora Welty, Teresa de la Parra, Kate Chopin, and María Luisa Bombal suggesting that it is intimately connected with the inner worlds of the female protagonists in these stories. The storm dramatizes Ruby’s death fantasy in “A Piece of News” by Eudora Welty. The river provides a place for María Eugenia to express herself in Iphigenia (The Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored) (Ifigenia (Diario de una senorita que se escribo porque se fastidiaba)) by Teresa de la Parra. The sea elicits Edna’s deepest desires in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, and the mist triumphs over the nameless narrator’s attempt to escape death in The Final Mist (La última niebla) by María Luisa Bombal.

According to Carl Gustav Jung, water is the commonest symbol for the unco...

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Furthermore, Jung’s explanation of water as “carnality heavy with passion” is linked with life, or the conception of children. However passion is also linked with death, because extreme passion is traditionally linked with sinfulness, which leads us to death rather than to eternal life in the Christian tradition (Archetypes 19). Jung also writes of “the longing to attain rebirth through the return to the mother’s womb” and the idea that the mother’s womb is described using water imagery (207). Water thus links death, passion, birth, and life.

But for the protagonists in these stories, these forces are somewhat out of sync. Failures of individuation, and the completion of transformational journeys which lead to madness, resignation, and death point to an inability of the characters to reconcile their wants and needs with their actual lives.