The Sea

Connie Grace, the mother of the twins, plays a pivotal role in Max’s emotional journey in The Sea, especially complex feelings around his growing sexual awareness. Like all of the characters, she is known only through Max’s narrative and through the lens of how he feels her (consciously or unconsciously) to be significant.

At first, Max’s perception of Connie is characterized by idealization, driven by her allure as an unattainable figure. She is an adult and is married, rich, elegant, and of a higher social standing. Connie as a goddess-like figure is changed to “a mortal woman” in Max’s eyes after he secretly looks up her skirt on the beach (118). This transformation, marked by a shift in his feelings from reverence to contempt, reflects the obscurities of Max’s tumultuous childhood feelings. Connie, it seems clear to the reader if not to Max, is the repository of his feelings about himself; when he looks up her skirt, he sullies the idealized image he has created of her through his own taboo behavior. She is now associated with new uncomfortable feelings of lust, shame, and fear. While indicative of Max’s growing sexual curiosity, the narrative’s treatment of Connie reinforces that he is just a child: He has been playing at loving her but is disturbed by the adult future he has glimpsed by prying.

Connie exists both in Max’s memories of his childhood and in his adult reflections. This allows the narrative to show two Connies, as perceived by Max at different times, making her character a device in exploring the mutability of memory and Max’s ability to self-reflect and revise his attitudes. Retrospectively, Max considers Connie with a mix of fondness and compassion, acknowledging her humanity and imperfections. The phrase “the mortal she, and not the divine” encapsulates this retrospection (118), signifying Max's adult recognition of Connie as a real, flawed, human individual rather than the objectified, idealized-then-scorned figure of his childhood perception.

Carlo Grace is the patriarch of the Grace family. Initially, Carlo is associated with a potent and intimidating masculine sexuality, leaving a lasting impact on the young Max. Described vividly with “the great balled lump in his khaki shorts squeezed almost to bursting” (121), Carlo's physical presence evokes a mix of fascination and intimidation. Max links Carlo to various archetypal male identities, further adding layers to his character. Carlo is envisioned as a satyr, embodying both highly sexualized and animalistic qualities. Additionally, he is likened to Poseidon (123), the Greek god of the sea, and Shakespeare’s Prospero, adding ironic depth to the death of Carlo’s children at sea.

The Oedipal dimension of Max’s fantasies plays into a dark psychological aspect of his reflections. Max harbors fantasies of destruction and supplantation, vividly imagining physical confrontations (52). These fantasies suggest a primal struggle for dominance and a complex interplay of attraction and rivalry between Max and the patriarchal figure of Carlo. In essence, Carlo’s character becomes an exploration of masculinity, sexuality, and familial dynamics, contributing to the novel’s intricate tapestry of emotions and relationships.

Chloe supplants her mother, Connie, as the focus of Max’s affections. In contrast to the voluptuous adult femininity of Connie, Chloe is a child, sexually curious but not sexually developed. However, Max soon becomes acutely aware of her physical presence, which both attracts and repels him, describing her both positively and negatively. Max’s shift of affections to Chloe suggests a retreat into the childhood sphere in the face of the complexities and disappointments associated with adult relationships after he destroys his infatuation with Connie by looking up her skirt, frightening himself. Chloe, as his peer, seems a far more realistic object for his sexual and romantic curiosity, but his relationship with her is in fact far more conflicted than with Connie, precisely because it is more real.

Chloe’s mixture of availability and unattainability is a source of pain for Max and plays into his sense of personal and social inferiority. Her superior social standing is clearly a factor in Max’s attraction to her, and she takes advantage of this leverage to manipulate him. Chloe has a cruel streak and seems to enjoy inflicting physical pain on Myles, on other children, and on the grasshoppers that Max harvests and dismembers for her; she seems to enjoy the control she has over others. Max confesses that his memory of Chloe is partial, impressionistic, and intensely subjective (139). He expresses frustration that even though she now only exists in his memory, she still somehow eludes him. Her death, almost mythic in its strangeness, is a symbol of her permanent rejection of and distance from Max.

Myles Grace is Chloe’s nonverbal twin brother and her shadowy foil: Where she is vocal and assertive, he is silent and subservient to her. Myles’s webbed feet denote his otherness and align him to the sea, prefiguring his watery end. Max’s perception of him is ambivalent. He is likened to an enthusiastic dog, bounding after Max and Chloe and victimized by them both. However, he is also a “malignant sprite” participating in Chloe’s cruelty with a glee that is not quite human.

The closeness of the bond between the twins makes Max uncomfortable and jealous. Chloe says that she feels “manacled” to her brother and that they are “like two magnets turned the wrong way, pulling and pushing” (81). Their physical similarity undermines the gender difference between them, in part because they are still pre-pubescent. This complicates Max’s rigidly gendered mythologization of the family and the dynamics within it. There are hints of incest in Chloe’s relationship with Myles: As she experiments sexually with Max, she holds her brother’s hand. In disappearing into the sea together, the twins immortalize their bond in death.

Rose is the twins’ long-suffering governess, later the landlady of the Cedars. She is the only character who actually lives both in Max’s remembered past and in his present. Like Max, Rose is resentful of her lower-class origins and aspires to reinvent herself socially. Like Max, as an adult, she is known by a different name. She gives the impression that she is the owner of the Cedars and behaves as if the domestic tasks she performs for her paying guests are beneath her. Max seems to feel an affinity for her because she also feels the urge for social mobility and because she is the only living person who was part of his experience with the Graces. She is also a challenge to Max, as her recollections are an alternative narrative to his own.

Rose also creates conflict for Max through her gradually revealed sexual orientation. The young Max finds Rose attractive but does not romanticize her to the same extent as Chloe and her mother because, as a servant, she lacks the social glamor that both fascinates and tortures him. Max imagines that Rose is competing against Connie and, to a certain extent, Chloe for the attentions of Carlo, the family patriarch whom he has Oedipal fantasies of supplanting. Instead, Rose is either in love with or having an affair with Connie, a dynamic that excludes Max and does not occur to him, either because of his youthful ignorance regarding sexual orientation or because of the self-centeredness of his concerns. This highlights the fallibility of Max’s perceptions and the existence of multiple perspectives outside his narrative.