‘Muddy depths’: The Thames in Gissing’s Fiction

Abstract

Although Gissing’s work certainly does not signal the literary discovery of the Thames, his fictional river, at once a static and a dynamic feature, a natural and an urban sign, a legible environment and a symbolically charged milieu, testifies to the author’s abiding concern with London, the world capital. Because Gissing posits the metropolis overwhelmingly as the main locale of his novels of contemporary life, the river is given the place of honour as a centring device and an adequate emblem. Will Warburton proudly settles in ‘the city on the Thames’, the periphrasis intimating that (a) London, the hub of the British Empire, is first and foremost a great port, the world’s trade focus, the Thames epitomising its brisk commercial activity; (b) the river is also London’s structural backbone and spatial core. More exactly the city’s heart is located on Westminster Bridge, as indicated by the milestone in Sutton where the Mumfords live in The Paying Guest, the bridge also being London’s great meeting-point, for parties of ‘jubilants’ to start public rejoicings from, for instance.