Sisterhood and Family Bonds in The Sirens: From Sisters to Mothers

Sisterhood in Emilia Hart’s The Sirens is not a static relationship; it is a transformative force that bends, breaks, and reforges itself across generations. The novel juxtaposes two pairs of sisters—modern-day Lucy and Jess Martin and nineteenth-century Mary and Eliza Kissane —to argue that true sisterhood can weather any revelation, even the collapse of biological kinship. More than that, the bond ultimately becomes a maternal one, as each sister learns to mother the other and, by extension, the vulnerable women who come after them. This analysis traces the thematic claim across three distinct plot arcs, examines character and symbol connections, and confronts the complexity of these bonds.

The Twin Bond: Mary and Eliza’s Sibling Care

Mary and Eliza’s relationship is the novel’s emotional anchor. From the start, Mary acts as protector, while Eliza embodies a fearless, almost otherworldly connection to water and song. In the Irish stream at night, Mary leads her blind sister away from danger, enforcing a promise never to let the water touch their skin. Yet Mary treasures these secret excursions because they allow the twins to speak freely about the future—Mary’s longing to be a mother, Eliza’s quiet determination to find their missing mother. The arrangement already blurs sisterly companionship with maternal care: Mary’s vigilance mimics a parent’s.

Tension arises when Mary’s resentment spills out. In Chapter 18, after Eliza speaks of the tír fo thuinn (the land beneath the waves) and their mother, Mary hurls words meant to wound: "Just because you cannot see what is in front of you… does not make you special. Only broken." Eliza flees to the stream, and Mary is forced to rescue her again, wading into freezing water to drag her sister back. The conflict reveals the strain of caring for a sibling who seems to live in a different world. Yet Mary’s apology—"I didn’t mean it"—and Eliza’s acceptance show the resilience of their bond. They protect each other not only from external threats but from the damage they can inflict on each other.

On the Naiad, their interdependence deepens. In the dark hold, Eliza teaches Mary to "learn the voices" of the other convict women, turning chaos into connection. This shared act of listening becomes a survival strategy, and when they finally help the other women escape on a raft, Mary realizes she and Eliza belong to a separate world—the merrow world of their mother. The final promise Mary makes is both sisterly and maternal: "Together she and Eliza would mother all the girls who came to this place… We will keep you safe." The twin bond has expanded into a vow to protect every future daughter.

Lucy and Jess: Sisterhood After the Truth

Lucy and Jess’s relationship is shaped by distance and secrecy. When Lucy arrives in Comber Bay, she is hurt by Jess’s silence and jealous of how Jess has excluded her from her life. The Christmas memory from Chapter 4 shows a fragile truce, with Lucy hoping Jess’s absence is only temporary. But the central crisis comes in Chapter 23, when Lucy discovers that Jess is not her biological sister: Jess is Baby Hope, the infant found by Robert Wilson in a cave. The legal fiction of sisterhood crumbles.

Yet Lucy refuses to let the revelation sever them. She feels a connection “in every cell,” rooted in their shared skin condition, the identical whelks of their ears, and the dreams that have left “fingerprints inside [her] brain.” The shared world of Mary and Eliza’s memories, which both sisters experience as visions, becomes a stronger claim than DNA. Lucy’s response is not to reject Jess but to deepen her commitment: she decides not to return to university, to stay in Comber Bay, and to write the stories of the Naiad women. In doing so, she takes on a maternal role—preserving their history and, by extension, her sister’s legacy.

Jess’s apology in Chapter 48—“She apologizes for lying about Lucy’s origins, and Lucy affirms their bond”—marks the completion of this transformation. The bond that began as sisterhood has become something akin to mother-daughter: Lucy nurtures Jess’s artistic and ancestral truth, while Jess’s secrets were an attempt to protect Lucy from the same pain. This new configuration echoes Mary and Eliza’s final promise: one sister mothers the other, and through that act, mothers all the lost girls.

The Epilogue’s Reversal: A Father’s Secret

The epilogue, set thirty-seven years earlier, rewrites the origin story. Robert Wilson (later Mike Martin) finds a baby with webbed fingers and shimmering skin in a cave—Jess. His vow “never to let her go” sets in motion the lies that will define his daughters’ lives. The scene is a mirror of Mary’s vow to protect, but here the bond is not sisterly but paternal and possessive. The webbed skin and scales, symbols of the sisters’ merrow heritage, are present at Jess’s discovery, linking her directly to Mary and Eliza’s world.

This revelation complicates the theme of family bonds. Robert’s love for Jess is real, but built on a foundation of falsehood. The sisters’ bond, by contrast, endures even when the truth is exposed. The epilogue shows that biological family can be a story, while chosen bonds—built on shared dreamscapes and mutual protection—are the ones that last.

Symbols: The Cave, Webbed Skin, and the Siren Song

The symbols of the novel reinforce the sisterhood theme. The cave, where babies are born and found, is a womb-like space that holds both beginning and abandonment. Mary delivers her own child there; Robert finds Jess there. It is a locus of maternal sacrifice and rebirth. The webbed skin and scales mark both Lucy and Jess as descendants of merrows, connecting them physically to Mary and Eliza. This shared trait becomes a visible sign of an invisible bond.

The siren song—the voices heard from the waves—haunts the shoreline. In Chapter 13, a local warns Lucy that some believe the drowned women’s voices still sing. That song is the call of ancestors, luring the sisters toward their heritage. Lucy uses it as a creative force, choosing to tell the stories rather than be consumed by them. Finally, Jess’s painting The Sirens visually unites the two girls of the Naiad with the modern sisters. It is a deliberate act of reclamation: Jess paints the shipwreck and the mermaid figurehead, making visible the lineage that ties her and Lucy to Mary and Eliza.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel refuses to idealize sisterhood. Mary’s jealousy of Eliza’s obsession with their mother leads to cruel words. Lucy’s resentment of Jess’s distance is palpable. The bonds are tested by trauma: Ben’s assault and the subsequent institutional betrayal that Lucy experiences; the starvation and violence on the Naiad that splits the convict women into factions. Yet each test ultimately strengthens the bond. Mary and Eliza survive because they stay side by side; Lucy and Jess find each other again because Jess’s painting—her own version of the siren song—draws Lucy to Comber Bay.

A darker complexity lies in the mother-daughter turn. When Mary vows to mother all the girls, she is also accepting that she can never be a biological mother in the human world. The sister bond thus demands a renunciation of traditional motherhood while creating a different kind of lineage. Similarly, Lucy’s decision to write the Naiad women’s stories is a form of spiritual adoption: she becomes the keeper of their voices. The family bond expands beyond blood to embrace the entire community of women harmed by patriarchal violence.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the relationship between Mary and Eliza shift from sisterhood to motherhood?
   Mary begins as a protective older twin but gradually takes on a maternal role, particularly in the Naiad hold and during the escape. Her final promise to “mother all the girls” transforms sibling care into a collective, generational duty to protect vulnerable women.

2. Why does Lucy refuse to let Jess’s adoption change their bond?
   Lucy insists that their shared dreams, physical resemblance, and emotional history create a stronger tie than biology. She tells Jess that they are sisters because they belong together, not because of a DNA match. The supernatural link of the merrow lineage cements this choice.

3. What role does the cave play in the theme of family bonds?
   The cave serves as a site of birth (Mary delivers her child) and discovery (Robert finds Baby Hope). It symbolizes the hidden, primal origins of family—where bonds are forged outside of social structures, in the raw space of water and rock. It is both a place of abandonment and of beginning.

4. How do symbols like webbed skin and the siren song reinforce the connection between the two sister pairs?
   The webbed skin marks Lucy and Jess as descendants of merrows, visually tying them to Mary and Eliza. The siren song—the voices of drowned women—calls both sisters to Comber Bay and to their ancestral story. Jess’s painting literalizes this connection by depicting the Naiad girls as part of her own past.

5. What is the significance of Lucy choosing to write the Naiad women’s stories at the end of the novel?
   Lucy’s decision turns her from a passive receiver of dreams into an active guardian of memory. By writing, she mothers the lost women in the same way Mary and Eliza promised to mother all future girls. It completes the transformation of sisterhood into a sustaining, creative force that outlasts the characters’ own lives.