Liquid Corporeality, Femininity, and Fluid Time in V. H. Leslie's Bodies of Water

V. H. Leslie’s neo-Victorian gothic novel Bodies of Water (2016) is set in the Wakewater House at the River Thames; aquatic hauntings are experienced both by the inhabitants of the nineteenth-century hydropathic institution and of the contemporary apartment complex. The novel abounds in figures of watery feminine bodies, from Opheliac drowned women of the Victorian era to mythical Melusine and rusalkas. Leslie’s novel makes a clear connection between liquid embodiment, the surrounding watery landscape, and the fluidity of time binding together its two temporal settings. Drawing on the concepts of transcorporeality, hydrofeminism, and polytemporality, this article proposes to read the Thames in the novel as a feminine, atemporal embodiment that becomes a queer archive of liminal bodies.