Vignette: That same sea

Summary

… the sea is referred to so often in her writing, the sound of it, the smell of it, the waves, the weed, the rocks, that it's quite clear she had some kind of relationship with the sea, to the extent that she felt she was of it perhaps …

Claire-Louise Bennett, Checkout 19, p. 176

Quin's writing is fascinated by water and especially the sea; with the textures of seaweed and sand, the briny tang and uneven contours of the beach, the feeling of being in the water. For Stevick, this sensory writing of the sea is also a sensual one: ‘No one makes water more sexual than Quin: the sea, the river, the wash basin, the hot-spring pool, the hotel shower, the swimming pool.’ In Berg the sensuality of being immersed in water is directly expressed when Berg and Judith are having sex, as ‘Entering the sea. The sea alone. Alone by the sea. By the sea. Alone. By yourself. Oh it's nice when you do that, do it again, oh it's lovely.’ While elsewhere their sexual encounters are ambivalent or disappointing, Berg's experience with Judith here is ‘lovely’, like entering water, as if it is the sea he is having sex with, a suggestion enhanced by the rhythmic part repetitions of mainly monosyllabic words, which also mimics the rippling rhythms of the water. In Passages, the male protagonist asks, ‘Is it her body I hold in my arms or the sea?’ Bennett's idea of Quin's intimate ‘kind of relationship with the sea, to the extent that she felt she was of it perhaps’, is suggested by these descriptions of sensations of immersion and blurring between bodies and the water.

Quin grew up by the sea and was a strong swimmer; she also died by drowning off the same coast that she had lived by as a child. As Bennett puts it, ‘Ann Quin went into that same sea and did not come out again.’ Unlike Woolf, who left a suicide note and deliberately drowned herself in a river, the causes of Quin's death at sea are unknown.