The Shivering Sands -- Megan Kowalewich

Rosanna Spearman, a reformed thief hired upon release from a Reformatory as a housemaid by Lady Verinder is a multi-faceted character. Her character tends to stand out as very mysterious and morose. She is continuously feeling drawn to the piece of nature (the sands) that reflects her personality and thoughts relative to the shame of her past life. The shivering sands that shift with the tide suggest to the reader the many different trials or life challenges Rosanna Spearman faces.
Collins effectively uses descriptions of nature to arouse emotion in the minds of his readers. There is significance with reference to the shivering sands that relates to Rosanna’s character. The idea of shivering creates a sense of anxiety or fear associated with suspiciousness. Rosanna seems to be socially and biologically uncertain - where did she belong? It seems as though she did not have a true sense of self once she entered the Reformatory and later when hired as a housemaid. “It’s more lonely to me to be among the other servants, knowing I am not what they are.” (page 25). Rosanna seems to possess a fear of returning to her old ways, in essence, going back to what she knows best. The uncertainty and insecurities about her new direction in life are apparent in her profession of loneliness and fear of being discovered for the person she had been in her past.
Most often the image that accompanies shivering is the body’s self-warming mechanism. Another, is shivering associated with sexuality, in this case female sexuality to be specific. “A smile on his face that might have set the Shivering Sand itself smiling at him in return.” (page 26). Franklin Blake’s arrival is described as having an effect on the Shivering Sand but actually was the reflected reactions of nervousness and excitement on the part of Rosanna Spearman. Most women of her age at that time in history were expected to have been married and settled within their own social class. Functioning as a woman who has been accused of and sentenced for a crime that she had committed probably made conventional courtship and subsequent entry into a committed relationship highly improbable due to the social norms of the time.
The idea of the Shivering Sand portrays a disturbing hidden meaning. Rosanna Spearman, a twenty-five year old young woman comments on her thoughts: “Sometimes Mr. Betteredge, I think that my grave is waiting for me here.” (page 25). The image of sand is often used to symbolize the passage of time such as in an hour glass. As she is patiently watching the tides shift, the author is drawing a parallel of an apparently seamless passage of time and space. Rosanna is attempting to distance herself from her past as easily as the tide erases footprints from the sand. As the tide changes, so does the appearance of the beach surface much like the changes made to Rosanna’s life. “It looks as if it had hundreds of suffocating people under it - all struggling to get to the surface, and all sinking lower and lower in the dreadful deeps! Throw a stone in, Mr. Betteredge! Throw a stone in , and let’s see the sand suck it down!” (page 25) It may seem as though she wanted to end her life, but it was only the death of her old ways and the start of a new and improved Rosanna Spearman.