Family Secrets and Inherited Trauma in The Drowning Kind

The Weight of Silence: How Family Secrets Shape the Living and the Dead in The Drowning Kind

In Jennifer McMahon’s The Drowning Kind, the past is not a distant memory but a living presence that seeps into the present like the black water of the spring-fed pool at Sparrow Crest. The novel’s central thematic claim is that unspoken family secrets and inherited trauma are not merely psychological burdens—they are active, almost supernatural forces that shape the fates of successive generations. The Monroe family’s history is built on a foundation of deliberate silence, self-inflicted pain, and bargains made with a mysterious water that grants wishes but demands a terrible price. Through the interlocking stories of Ethel, Maggie, Rita, Lexie, and Jax, McMahon demonstrates that secrets are passed down like heirlooms, and that the refusal to confront the past only ensures its repetition. The pool, the house, and the symbols that surround them—the sparrow, the peacock, the rose garden—become repositories of hidden truths, while the characters’ attempts to protect their loved ones by withholding information ultimately doom them.

The Origin: Ethel’s Secret Bargain

The theme begins with Ethel O’Shay Monroe, whose diary entries from 1929 to 1931 reveal the foundational secret of the family. In her first entry, Ethel describes herself as “a great keeper of secrets” and admits to self-harm—pricking herself with pins to ward off evil (chapter 2). This habit, which she continues throughout her life, is a physical manifestation of the trauma she carries but never speaks of. The secret itself emerges when her infant daughter Margaret (Maggie) falls ill, and Ethel and Will discover that the water from the Brandenburg Springs can heal her. In the August 1930 entry, Ethel records that as long as Margaret consumes the water daily, she thrives, but without it, her health declines. Will cannot explain the phenomenon, but Ethel knows intuitively that the water is not a simple cure—it is a force that expects something in return.

When Will wins the land from Benson Harding in a poker game and builds Sparrow Crest around the pool, Ethel’s fear intensifies. She sees the pool as a living entity, and her diary entries are filled with dread: “I’m afraid of what I might see there in the heart of it; of what might be waiting on the bench inside the overgrown gazebo” (chapter 26). Her fear is justified, as the pool’s power is tied to death—the drowned girl Martha Woodcock, the hotel fire, and the mysterious Eliza Harding. Ethel’s secret is that she knowingly made a bargain: she used the water to save her daughter, but she never told anyone about the cost. This silence becomes the template for the family’s behavior.

The construction of Sparrow Crest itself is an act of concealment. Ethel describes the house as “a great stone fortress” that seems to have “risen up right out of the rocky soil” (chapter 30). The house and the pool are inseparable, and Ethel’s attempt to keep her fears hidden—she tells Will she is fine, while internally she is “crushed by a giant fist”—mirrors the way the family will later bury its traumas. Her self-harm, which she hides under her clothes, is a secret within a secret, a way of externalizing the pain she cannot voice.

The Inheritance: Maggie’s Blame and Rita’s Death

The next generation inherits not only the secret but also the guilt and anger that come with it. In the 1972 chapter, Ethel, now ninety-five, reflects on her life and her granddaughter Rita, who claims to have a friend named Martha who lives at the bottom of the pool. Ethel warns Rita to stay away, but her warning is too late. When Rita drowns, Maggie confronts her mother with a devastating accusation: “If you had never come to this place, if you had let me die when I was an infant…” (chapter 34). Maggie’s words reveal that she knows the secret—that her life was saved at a cost—and she blames Ethel for the price. This is inherited trauma in its most direct form: Maggie’s grief and rage are directed at the source of her own survival, and she passes that bitterness to her children.

The family’s response to Rita’s death is to bury it. Diane, the aunt who later finds Lexie’s body, articulates the family’s unspoken rule: “If we didn’t talk about something, it was like it didn’t happen” (chapter 27). This is the mechanism by which trauma is transmitted. By refusing to acknowledge the pool’s power or the circumstances of Rita’s death, the family ensures that the next generation will encounter the same dangers without understanding them. The children—Lexie and Jax—are told only that Rita drowned, but not why, and not that the pool is anything more than a natural spring. This ignorance is a form of protection, but it is also a curse, because it leaves them vulnerable to the pool’s pull.

The Contemporary Reckoning: Jax and Lexie

The novel’s present-day narrative, set in 2019, shows the consequences of this inherited silence. Jax, now a child therapist, is confronted with her own buried secret: as a child, she whispered a wish into the pool that something bad would happen to her sister Lexie (chapter 1). This wish, made in a moment of jealousy, is a secret she has carried for decades. When Lexie dies in the pool, Jax is consumed by guilt, and the novel suggests that her wish may have been granted. The pool, as Lexie later explains, grants wishes but takes lives in return. Jax’s secret is not just a childhood fantasy; it is a real act that has consequences.

Lexie, meanwhile, has spent her adult life trying to uncover the family’s history. Her sketchbook, which Jax discovers, contains drawings of the pool, the house, and a mysterious dark-haired woman—Eliza Harding, the daughter of the hotel owner who survived the fire. Lexie’s research into the drownings and the pool’s power is an attempt to break the cycle of silence, but it also leads to her obsession and ultimately her death. In her journal, she writes, “The key to understanding the present is to look at the past” (chapter 21). This is the novel’s central thesis, but Lexie’s pursuit of the truth is also her undoing. She becomes one of the pool’s victims, joining the ranks of the drowned.

The epilogue reveals that Jax, too, has died in the pool, and that she and Lexie are now together in the water. The narrator, who is Jax, says, “I realized that both she and I got our wishes when she drowned” (epilogue). This is a chilling resolution: the sisters’ childhood wishes—Lexie’s wish to have Jax back, and Jax’s wish for something bad to happen to Lexie—are both fulfilled, but only in death. The cycle of trauma is not broken; it is perpetuated. The family’s secrets have become so deeply embedded in the pool that they are now part of its fabric.

Symbols of Concealment and Revelation

The novel uses recurring symbols to reinforce the theme of hidden truths. The sparrow, which appears as Maggie’s nickname (“little sparrow”) and in the epigraph’s rhyme, represents fragility and the family’s attempts to protect its most vulnerable members. Ethel calls Maggie her “delicate little sparrow,” and the image of a bird trapped or drowning evokes the characters’ inability to escape their inheritance. The peacock, which Lexie paints in her sketchbook, is a more ambiguous symbol. Its iridescent feathers and “terrifying eyes” suggest vanity and the watchful presence of the past. Lexie’s painting of a peacock with its beak open in a scream (chapter 21) is a visual representation of the family’s suppressed cries for help.

The rose garden, which Ethel avoids and which Jax and her father prune in the present day, is another symbol of the past’s beauty and danger. Ethel’s fear of the garden—she cannot bring herself to enter it—mirrors her fear of the pool. The roses are beautiful but untamed, and they conceal the gazebo where Ethel once saw shadows. In the 1930 entry, Ethel notes that the garden “seems to say, ‘Come closer,’” but she resists. This is the same temptation the pool offers: the promise of healing or wish fulfillment, but at a cost. The garden, like the family’s secrets, is something that must be tended to or it will overgrow and consume everything.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel complicates the theme by suggesting that secrets are not always harmful. Ethel’s decision to keep the water’s power a secret was motivated by love—she wanted to protect Maggie from the knowledge that her life was bought with a price. Similarly, the family’s silence about Rita’s death is an attempt to shield the children from fear. But this protective silence backfires, because it leaves the children unprepared for the pool’s dangers. The water itself is a contradiction: it heals and grants wishes, but it also kills and traps souls. The novel suggests that the truth is not inherently liberating; it can be as dangerous as the lies it replaces. Lexie’s pursuit of the truth leads to her death, and Jax’s acknowledgment of her wish does not save her. The only way to break the cycle, the novel implies, is to confront the past openly and accept its costs—but none of the characters are able to do this fully.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Ethel’s self-harm reflect the theme of inherited trauma?

Ethel’s habit of pricking herself with pins or blades is a physical manifestation of the emotional pain she cannot express. It is a secret she keeps even from her husband, and it becomes a pattern that echoes in later generations—Lexie’s obsessive research and Jax’s guilt are similarly internalized. The self-harm is a way of controlling the trauma, but it also symbolizes the way the family inflicts wounds on itself to avoid facing the truth.

2. What role does the pool play in transmitting family secrets?

The pool is both a witness and an active participant in the family’s history. It grants wishes, but it also takes lives, and it holds the souls of the drowned, including Martha, Rita, and eventually Lexie and Jax. The pool’s power is tied to the secrets that are whispered into it—Ethel’s bargain, Jax’s wish, Lexie’s research. It is a repository of hidden truths, and it forces the characters to confront what they have tried to bury.

3. How does the novel show that silence is a form of inheritance?

Diane’s statement that “if we didn’t talk about something, it was like it didn’t happen” is the family’s explicit policy. This silence is passed from Ethel to Maggie to Diane and to the next generation. It is a learned behavior that prevents the characters from processing grief or understanding the pool’s danger. The novel suggests that this silence is more damaging than the secrets themselves, because it leaves the characters vulnerable to repetition.

4. What is the significance of the sparrow and the peacock in relation to the theme?

The sparrow represents the vulnerable child—Maggie, Rita, and even Lexie and Jax—who is protected but also trapped by the family’s secrets. The peacock, with its many eyes, symbolizes the watchful past that cannot be ignored. Lexie’s painting of a screaming peacock suggests that the family’s hidden truths are trying to break free, but are suppressed. Both symbols highlight the tension between concealment and revelation.

5. Does the novel offer any hope of breaking the cycle of inherited trauma?

The novel is largely pessimistic. The epilogue shows Jax and Lexie together in the pool, having both gotten their wishes, but this is a tragic fulfillment. The cycle continues because the characters are unable to fully confront the past. However, Jax’s role as a therapist and her acknowledgment of her own secret suggest a potential for healing, but it comes too late. The novel implies that breaking the cycle requires not just uncovering secrets, but accepting the cost of doing so—a cost that none of the characters are willing to pay.