Jess’s Painting ‘The Sirens’: Symbol Analysis

What Is the Painting?

In Emilia Hart’s The Sirens, the title refers to a large-scale artwork created by the character Jess Martin. The painting depicts two nude young women with pale hair, walking hand-in-hand into a raging sea. In the distance, a ship approaches—the Naiad—with a mermaid figurehead at its bow. Jess incorporates actual materials into the work, including beeswax paste, sand, and a snakeskin, to give the figures an iridescent, scale-like texture. The painting is the centerpiece of Jess’s solo exhibition, also titled “The Sirens,” scheduled for February 2019 at the Rookery in Batemans Bay.

Where Does the Motif Recur?

The painting first appears when Lucy arrives at Cliff House in Chapter 5. She sees the enormous canvas on an easel and recognises the ship from her own dreams. Later, in Chapter 10, Lucy discovers the exhibition invitation, which features a close-up of the sisters’ clasped hands from the same painting. In Chapter 35, Jess recounts her creative process—mixing paint with beeswax and sand, and later sewing a childhood snakeskin into the canvas to capture the texture of scales. The painting is also mentioned indirectly through other characters: Ryan, the local man, tells Lucy that Jess has been painting the Naiad and that townspeople are uneasy about it. The motif recurs not through multiple sightings of the same object but through the evolving layers of meaning that Jess builds into it as her own understanding of the past deepens.

How Does Its Meaning Change?

Initially, the painting appears to Lucy as a disturbing echo of her own unconscious visions—an eerie coincidence that suggests a shared dream world. Lucy feels “frightened” by its resemblance to the ship from her nightmares. For Jess, the work begins as an act of summoning: she paints the women “to let them know that she was there” and to invite their presence into her waking life. Over time, as Jess incorporates the snakeskin—a talisman from Lucy’s childhood—the painting transforms into a bridge between the sisters. The snakeskin, which Lucy once asked about as a child, becomes a physical record of the sisters’ bond. By the end of the novel, the painting symbolises the genetic memory that connects Jess, Lucy, Mary, and Eliza across centuries. It no longer represents just the convict women’s drowning but also the enduring sisterhood that survives trauma. Lucy’s decision to write the women’s stories after the exhibition suggests that the painting’s meaning has passed from visual art into narrative.

Character and Theme Connections

Character Links

• Jess Martin: The creator. The painting is her attempt to understand the visions that have haunted her since adolescence. It also represents her struggle to reconcile with her own abandonment of Lucy after giving birth.
• Lucy Martin: The primary observer in the novel. Her reaction to the painting reveals the deep, unspoken connection between the sisters. Lucy later uses the painting as a key to unlock her own past and the history of the Naiad women.
• Mary Kissane: One of the convict sisters. She is one of the two figures in the painting, and her dream of her mother as a merrow-like creature (Chapter 31) parallels the imagery Jess paints.
• Eliza Kissane: The other figure. In Mary’s memory, Eliza sings to calm her, and the painting captures their clasped hands as they walk into the sea.
• Melody: A neighbour who supports Jess’s work and helps care for her cat. She represents the local community’s ambivalence toward the themes of the painting.
• Cameron Hennessey: Though not directly linked to the painting, his death and the police inquiry underscore the real-world consequences of the supernatural forces that Jess’s art channels.

Theme Connections

• Sisterhood and Family Bonds: The clasped hands are the painting’s central emotional detail. The sisters in the painting mirror Jess and Lucy, as well as Mary and Eliza.
• Identity and Self-Discovery: Jess finds her artistic voice through the painting; Lucy discovers her heritage and her own capacity for violence and healing.
• Trauma and Memory: The painting gives form to the fragmented, inherited trauma of the convict women and the Martin family secrets.
• Colonization and Oppression: The Naiad was a convict ship, and the women depicted were victims of transport and forced labour. The memorial to the shipwreck (mentioned in Chapter 13) is controversial, reflecting how colonial history is suppressed.
• Transformation and Monstrosity: Jess’s figures are not merely human; their scaled skin and the snakeskin embedded in the canvas blur the line between woman and sea-creature. This echoes Mary’s dream of her mother as a barnacle-covered being and the epilogue’s introduction of Mare, a mermaid-like entity.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Jess incorporate a snakeskin into the painting? How does this action affect the symbolism of the artwork?

Jess finds the snakeskin that Lucy presented to her as a child and physically attaches it to the canvas. The snakeskin represents the idea of shedding an old self and growing new skin—a metaphor the young Lucy instinctively understood. By embedding it in the painting of the sisters, Jess binds the work to her real relationship with Lucy. The snakeskin becomes a material link between the sisters’ shared past and the ancestral past of Mary and Eliza. It also reinforces the theme of transformation: just as a snake sheds its skin, the women in the painting—and Jess herself—are becoming something other than human.

2. In what ways does Lucy’s perception of the painting change over the course of the novel? What causes this shift?

Initially, Lucy is terrified by the painting because it mirrors her own nightmares. She sees it as evidence of a supernatural infection linking the Martin women. After she learns more about Jess’s process and the history of the Naiad, Lucy begins to view the painting as a shared memory rather than a curse. By the epilogue, Lucy decides to write the stories of the shipwrecked women, implying that the painting has inspired her to reclaim the past. The shift occurs because Lucy recognises the painting as an act of love—Jess’s attempt to make visible the connections that silence had hidden.

3. How does the painting function as a symbol of genetic memory in the novel?

The painting depicts the convict sisters Mary and Eliza, but it is Jess—a descendant living two centuries later—who produces the image without ever having seen a photograph of them. Her dreams supply the visual details. This suggests that the memory of the Naiad women is inherited, passed down through the female line. Jess’s painting makes this invisible inheritance tangible. Lucy, too, experiences dreams of the same ship, confirming that the memory is shared across the generations. The painting thus becomes a concrete representation of a genetic or psychic link that the novel asserts exists between the women of this family.

4. What is the significance of the painting’s title, “The Sirens”? How does it relate to the themes of voice and danger in the novel?

The title “The Sirens” evokes the mythological creatures who lured sailors to their deaths with song. In the novel, the painting shows the sisters walking toward the ship, not away from it, reversing the traditional siren narrative. The sisters are not temptresses but victims; the danger is the sea itself, not their voices. However, the novel also includes references to women’s voices heard from the waves (Chapter 13) and to Mary and Eliza singing in the hold of the ship (Chapter 31). The title thus plays with the idea of female voice as both dangerous and salvific. For Jess, painting the sirens is an act of reclaiming a story in which women are agents, not mere figures of folklore. The exhibition invitation itself features the sisters’ clasped hands, emphasising solidarity over seduction.