The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Gaiman loves fantasy, fables, and myths, and draws on old European folktales for his stories. One myth from the ancient Celtics of Ireland is the banshee, a Triple Goddess—the maiden, the mother, and the crone—and Gaiman embeds this concept into The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Three of the novel’s main characters are the Hempstocks—a girl, Lettie; her mother, Ginnie; and her grandmother, Old Mrs. Hempstock. All three have unusual powers and abilities. At the story’s end, it’s revealed that the three female characters are aspects of one woman, centered on Old Mrs. Hempstock.

The Triple Goddess is similar to the old Celtic idea of the Morrigan, goddess of fate, war, and death. The Hempstocks discuss death and fate with the story’s narrator, and make war against his childhood enemies. Another European version of the Morrigan is the Matres, whose three members presided over fertility, life, and death, and were depicted in small statues common in homes. (Beckett, Mickayla. “How Banshees Relate to Triple Goddesses.” University of Cincinnati, 2023). Triple Goddesses have roots in ancient Indo-European cultures. The Greeks, for example, saw one of their deities, Hecate, as a combination of Artemis, goddess of the hunt and nature; Persephone, goddess of springtime and the underworld; and Selene, goddess of the moon. Other myths equated a Triple Goddess with the earth, sea, and sky. Overall, the Triple Goddess is a concept meant to illustrate abstract matters of importance to their respective civilizations.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane depicts the Hempstocks as a three-in-one being with immense powers, who befriends a young boy and protects him from evil supernatural creatures. The three female characters appear to him as individuals of different ages, and each has her own ideas and skills, but they arise, as needed, from one central being, a deity of massive power who stands guard over Earthly beings, protecting them from evil things that might escape from their world to Earth. The Hempstocks embody and employ different forms of female strength in defeating these evils, with Lettie being the fearless spirit of a young girl, Ginnie being a caring mother, and Old Mrs. Hempstock being an all-knowing grandmother.

In many ways, the novel is a meditation on the power of women. Most of the novel’s characters are female, and the Hempstocks deliver the narrator, the protagonist and main male character, from death. This subverts the classic plot point of men rescuing women, and suggests that creative power (the power to give life and protect) among humans might ultimately rest not with men, but women. This is very much in line with the framing of women as mothers, reinforced by Old Mrs. Hempstock being the “mother” of Ginnie, who is the “mother” of Lettie.