Themes The Sirens Emilia Hart

Transformation and Monstrosity in The Sirens

Thematic Claim: Metamorphosis as Reclamation

In The Sirens, Emilia Hart reimagines physical transformation—scales, gills, webbed skin—not as a curse but as a radical act of self-reclamation. The body’s shift from human to sea-creature mirrors the characters’ rejection of labels like “freak,” “other,” or “monster,” imposed by a patriarchal, colonial society. Each metamorphosis is triggered by trauma and followed by a choice: to fear the change or to embrace it as a source of strength. By the novel’s end, transformation becomes the very mechanism that allows the Martin and Kissane women to heal, bond, and author their own stories.

Transformation Across the Plot

1. Mary Kissane: The Shipwreck Birth

On the night the convict ship Naiad is wrecked off the coast of New South Wales, Mary Kissane experiences her most dramatic metamorphosis. As the hull splinters and seawater floods the berth, she feels her neck split open, gills “blooming like flowers” and her spine bursting through her dress in spiked fins. She sees her hands become strangers, “pulse beating in the webbing between [her] fingers.”

This moment is described as “blooming into herself at last”—an explicit inversion of the earlier shame she felt about her body. Throughout the voyage, Mary had hidden the slits on her neck and the webbing between her toes, fearing they were symptoms of disease or a curse inherited from her mother. But the shipwreck forces her to surrender. The sea, personified as “greedy” and “cold and sweet,” becomes a birthing canal. Mary’s physical change is inseparable from her psychological release: she finally remembers her mother’s promise that “the water makes us strong.”

2. Eliza Kissane: The Gills Appear

Before the shipwreck, Eliza Kissane is the first sister to show clear signs of transformation. In the dark prison deck, Mary discovers two slits on Eliza’s neck that pulse with her breathing. Mary recoils, calling it a “sickness,” but Eliza insists, “It is not a sickness” and urges Mary to remember their mother’s stories.

The gills appear during a moment of extreme confinement—the women are chained, hungry, and terrified of what awaits in New South Wales. Eliza’s transformation is tied to her protective role. Earlier, when the man Byrne attacked Mary, Eliza killed him with a rock, an act that led to their exile. Eliza’s metamorphosis thus begins as a response to violence and the need to protect. Her gills are not wounds but tools, and she teaches Mary to see them as such. The transformation is gradual, appearing in dreams and mirrored in the shark-like shimmer of their skin, building toward the full release in the shipwreck.

3. Jess Martin: Drawing the Monster

In the contemporary timeline, Jess Martin wrestles with what happened to her in the cave. After giving birth to Lucy and suffering postpartum depression, Jess returns to art. She begins to draw Mary and Eliza not as conventional women but “with scaled skin and pulsing gills, with webbed hands and sinuous tails.”

This artistic act is itself a transformation. Jess had spent years repressing the memory of her own body changing during the cave encounter—the “skin splitting into ribbons” and the “webs of flesh sprouting between her fingers.” By depicting her ancestresses as overtly monstrous, Jess reappropriates the label. She incorporates a snakeskin into her canvas, symbolising the shedding of old selves. The centrepiece of her exhibition becomes a visual declaration that transformation is beautiful and powerful, not something to hide.

Jess’s journey culminates in her acceptance of Lucy’s own hybrid nature. When she gives Lucy a snakeskin as a child, she says, “You can grow a new skin too,” affirming that metamorphosis is an inheritance of strength.

Symbol Connections

  • Webbed skin and scales: These physical markers appear at moments of crisis and liberation. For Mary, the webbing emerges as the ship sinks, freeing her from the confinement of the berth. For Jess, the memory of webbed fingers links her to Lucy, who is born with webbed fingers and shimmering skin (Epilogue). The symbols are literal and metaphorical, representing the membrane between human and sea, self and other.

  • The cave: The seaside cave is the site of two transformative births: Lucy’s birth in the Prologue and the epilogue where Robert/Mike finds the baby. It is a liminal space between land and sea, where transformation is possible. The woman in the Prologue breathes in time with the tide, and the sea is “hungry and must be fed.” The cave is both womb and threat, the place where monstrosity is born and accepted.

  • The siren song: Eliza’s song on the ship—the old ballad about a maiden who lures a captain—is a form of power. The siren song transforms the women’s fear into collective strength, “lifting the ship above the waves.” Later, Jess hums the same tune to comfort herself. The song is a verbal metamorphosis, turning weakness into agency.

  • Jess’s painting The Sirens: The artwork that Jess finally completes incorporates the snakeskin, grounding the fantastical in the real. It becomes a centrepiece that forces both the art world and the reader to confront the transformative power of the monstrous. The painting is the final act of reclamation, turning trauma into creation.

Complexity and Contradiction

Hart does not present transformation as uncomplicated liberation. Mary initially resists, calling Eliza’s gills a “sickness” and remembering her mother’s barnacle-crusted face with horror. For Lucy Martin, the metamorphosis is expressed in her skin condition (called “Flakes”)—a mundane analogue to the supernatural scales, which is both a source of shame and a marker of identity.

Furthermore, the transformation is tied to violence. The women’s power is born from assault (Byrne’s attack, the shipwreck) and from killing. Mare admits to killing local men. The transformation does not erase the trauma; it repurposes it. Jess initially fears that her changed body will harm Lucy, and she isolates herself. The novel acknowledges that embracing monstrosity is a painful, ongoing process, not a single triumphant moment.

Yet the epilogue offers a counterpoint: Robert, terrified that he is losing his wife Judy, finds the transformed baby Lucy and “knew he would never let her go.” The baby’s webbed fingers and scaled skin do not repel him; they compel his devotion. This suggests that the societal rejection of the monstrous is not inevitable—it is learned, and can be unlearned through love.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does Mary’s transformation during the shipwreck invert her earlier feelings of being a “freak”?

Early in the voyage, Mary hides her changing body, fearing it is a disease or punishment. The slits on her neck and webbing between her toes make her feel “stunted.” But during the shipwreck, the same features are described as “blooming”—she becomes “no longer freakish, no longer stunted.” The water that once terrified her now feels “cold and good and sweet.” The metamorphosis redefines her physical otherness as strength, not weakness.

2. In what ways does Eliza’s response to her own transformation differ from Mary’s, and what does this reveal about agency?

Eliza accepts her gills immediately, telling Mary it is “not a sickness” and urging her to remember their mother. Eliza’s transformation is tied to her protective violence: she killed a man to save Mary. She uses her changed body to lead Mary through the shipwreck. This shows that agency comes from embracing change as a tool, while Mary’s initial resistance costs her time and peace.

3. How does Jess’s art serve as a form of transformation in the novel’s contemporary timeline?

Jess paints Mary and Eliza with scaled skin, gills, and webbed hands—precisely the features she once feared in herself. By rendering them as monstrous, she reclaims that label. She incorporates a real snakeskin into the canvas, symbolising her own shedding of shame. The act of creating art transforms her trauma into public expression, allowing her to accept her daughter and her own body.

4. Why is the cave a significant setting for transformation, and how does it connect Lucy’s birth to the earlier sea births?

The cave is a liminal space between land and sea, where human and creature meet. It is the site of Lucy’s birth (Prologue) and where Robert finds her as a baby (Epilogue). The woman in the Prologue times her breathing with the tide, and the sea is a hungry force. This mirrors Mary’s birth into the sea during the shipwreck—both are violent, necessary passages. The cave is a literal and figurative womb where monstrosity is born into the world.

5. How does the novel complicate the idea that transformation is purely empowering?

Transformation is often accompanied by pain, fear, and loss. Mary initially experiences it as nightmare (her mother’s barnacled face). Jess struggles with postpartum depression and the fear that she is “cursed.” Even after accepting their bodies, the women face social rejection—Mary is transported as a convict, Jess hides her past. The epilogue shows that love can override rejection, but the journey is never simple. Hart suggests that empowerment comes not from avoiding pain but from claiming it as part of one’s story.