# Mother Carey — The Water-Babies character guide

> Mother Carey in The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley.

**Role:** supporting

**First appearance:** 0006-v

## Snapshot

The great fairy who rules the water-babies and everything else besides, dispensing wisdom, weather, and a justice too large for human comfort.

## Who they are

Mother Carey is the quiet sovereign of the novel's moral universe, the figure the other fairies answer to and the one who reads the Waterproof Gazette each morning to keep track of her charges. She is not warm in the way a human mother is warm; she is vast, patient, and exact, and her lessons arrive as weather and consequence rather than as comfort. For Tom, she represents the end of the journey he does not yet know he is on — the possibility that a naughty little sweep might, after much swimming, be found fit for something more.

## Relationships

### [Tom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/tom)

_psychological_

Mother Carey is a powerful, mysterious creator figure who tests and transforms Tom through her cosmic authority.

### [Prometheus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/prometheus)

_professional_

Mother Carey and Prometheus are both mythic figures associated with creation and knowledge, working in parallel domains.

### [Tom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/tom)

_psychological_

Mother Carey is a powerful, mysterious creator figure who tests and transforms Tom through her cosmic authority.

### [Tom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/tom)

_psychological_

Mother Carey is a powerful, mysterious creator figure who tests and transforms Tom through her cosmic authority.

### [Prometheus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/prometheus)

_professional_

Mother Carey and Prometheus are both mythic figures associated with creation and knowledge, working in parallel domains.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mother_carey
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters