Wood, Naomi. “(Em)bracing Icy Mothers: Ideology, Identity, and Environment in Children’s Fantasy.” 198-214 in Wild Things: Children’s Culture and Ecocriticism, edited by Sidney I. Dobrin and Kenneth Byron Kidd. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004.
Wood discusses the depiction by Kingsley of the various maternal Northern nature goddesses in The Water-Babies. Though emanating from the icy inhospitable North, these females accentuate the salutary physical and moral nature of cold, especially cold water. The frozen North is actually a place of life and the goddesses are life-giving. Even if their embrace results in the final cold of death, they lead children to a spiritual truer life.
The Water-Babies; Females; North.