The novel is replete with images of bodies of water. They symbolize movement and relate to the theme of The Struggle for Independence. Not surprisingly, Margaret is plagued by a recurring nightmare in which she finds herself drowning. While this terrifying experience presages the way she dies, it also symbolizes her struggle to surface her intellectual and ideological aspirations in a world that discourages women from pursuing such aspirations. Despite her aversion to water in her dreams, Margaret actively seeks locales that include a water feature. She walks by the river in Concord with Waldo and has many meaningful conversations with him there. She goes boating with Hawthorne on the same river. She watches the sun rise over Walden Pond and visits it many times in the company of Thoreau and Waldo. In each of these instances, her communication with the Transcendentalists helps her assert her independence in a world determined to stamp it out.

Early in her overseas junket, she visits poet William Wordsworth at his home in the English Lake District. Once she arrives in Rome, she spends many hours strolling beside the Tiber River in Giovanni’s company. Margaret’s failed struggle for freedom is mirrored in Rome’s capitulation to an invading French army.