Published Paper Details:

This research examines the convergence of Blue Victorianism, gender dynamics, and water symbolism in two lesser-studied yet thematically significant Victorian novels: The Octoroon (1861) by William Gilmore Simms, also known as Mayne Reid, and The Odd Women (1893) by George Gissing. Engaging with interdisciplinary critical frameworks--including blue Victorian and ecocriticism the study argues that water in these texts functions not merely as a setting but as an active symbolic force that reflects and shapes the conditions of women's lives in Victorian society. The concept of Blue Victorianism, encompassing affective states such as melancholy, nostalgia, and aesthetic estrangement, is employed to examine how fluid spaces such as rivers, oceans, and coastal landscapes become metaphors for female subjectivity, social instability, and resistance to normative gender roles. In The Octoroon, the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean emerge as charged and paradoxical spaces--sites where ideologies of race, gender, and colonialism intersect. The novel's mixed-race heroine, Zoe, is positioned at the confluence of freedom and constraint, where water signifies both escape and fatal entrapment. In contrast, The Odd Women presents water in more domestic and introspective forms: coastal fog, rain, and reflective seascapes that parallel the emotional and social displacement of unmarried, economically precarious women. In both novels, water mediates themes of marginality, transition, and emotional isolation, rendering it central to the construction of gendered space and narrative movement. By offering a comparative reading of these two novels through the lens of water symbolism and Blue Victorian aesthetics, this study contributes to broader scholarly conversations surrounding gendered spatiality, ecofeminist criticism, and Victorian representations of emotional and social transgression. However, it argues that water operates as a transformative and often destabilising narrative force--simultaneously marking boundaries and enabling resistance--within the gendered imaginaries of nineteenth-century fiction.