[issybird]

I think the problem of innocence involves both the moral and legal concepts, which are different matters. One can be innocent in one and not the other.

And on an entirely different issue, one of my dissatisfactions with the book involved motifs where I didn't see the point or find them successful. Upthread, I said that I thought the frequent references to blowing veils and cloths as well as tree limbs could have involved hanging. Of course it also referenced the notion of concealment. That was fine.

However, there was a persistent water motif and frankly, it beats the heck out of me. I won't give my very long list of water references but only cite a few: Grace as fish (and Simon as angler), her mother's internment at sea, the baby snatched out of the river, Simon's dream of walking down the corridor to plunge into the sea, the woman on the cliff, crossing the water three times.... And then there's Dr. Jordan's name itself. What does that particular river mean in this context?*

I'm asking because I couldn't come up with a good explanation for this and ended up ascribing it to the same motivation that gave us such tedious detail about life in a Victorian house: because Atwood wanted to and not because it served a real purpose.

*I did wonder if this could be a tangential reference to the famous neurologist Dr. W.H.R. Rivers who treated shellshock victims during the Great War; I think that's reaching a bit but not impossible.