~ A Single Thread, by Tracy Chevalier ~
Another triumph by Chevalier. This is a beautifully worked piece almost in miniature, set in Winchester in the early 1930s, against the backdrop of a country still recovering from the great war and changing societal norms. Violet Speedwell is our protagonist; she has lived in Southampton for 38 years with her family – but now the great war has taken her elder brother George and her fiancée Laurence, her beloved father has died, Tom her younger brother returned from war, married, and has moved away, and she had to get away from her impossibly critical mother.
Right from the opening pages, it seems that every new person Violet encounters, checks her hand for a wedding ring, and she does the same to others. She and her society appear obsessed with each other’s marital status. Violet is one of the unkindly termed ‘surplus’ women, who will remain spinsters because there is such a lack of available men (two million fewer than women);
“left single as a result of the War and unlikely to marry – considered a tragedy, and a threat, in a society set up for marriage. Journalists seemed to relish the label, brandishing it like a pin pressed into the skin. Mostly was an annoyance; occasionally though, the pin penetrated the protective layers and drew blood. She had assumed it would hurt less as she grew older, and was surprised to find that even at thirty-eight – middle-aged – labels could still wound. But she had been called worse: hoyden, shrew, man-hater”
p22
1930s England is a rather formal and unforgiving place, it would seem, particularly for women who would be regarded as pitiable or deviant if they fail to marry and follow the conventions of their society.
Violet takes a typist job 12 miles away from her home, in the city of Winchester. It is the start of her new life, though at the very start, it is difficult, and penny pinching to add insult to injury. She is lonely in this new place, she has to budget as never before now she has to spend so much of her salary on rent and laundry and other things she never had to pay for before. She can only afford one hot dinner a week, and skimps so much on food that she is perpetually hungry. She is unable to afford new clothes and realises her clothes are increasingly shabby. It is a genteel poverty of course; she has to keep up appearances. Chevalier’s description of Violet’s sharing Gilda’s sandwiches really brings home Violet’s deprivations:
“Gilda’s sandwiches contained thick slices of ham and were spread generously with butter rather than the slick of cheap margarine and the meagre layer of fish paste Violet had used for her own. […] Violet bit into the ham. It was sweet and delicately smoked, and so delicious she almost cried. The only time she ate well was on the rare occasion she had Sunday lunch at Tom’s […] The succulent, abundant ham made her realise: she was starving. […] Violet couldn’t help it – she reached for another ham sandwich though it went against the usual etiquette of sharing where one alternated for an even distribution”
p60-61
But this stage, the reader already knows enough about Violet to know she’d only transgress etiquette and social rules when very hard pressed.
Her life changes when she notices a service being held in the Cathedral for ‘borderers’. This is a group of women who embroider kneelers, cushions and other essential items for use on the Cathedral. Despite an off-putting beginning, Violet takes classes and learns how to embroider. In the course of so doing, her social world opens up. She makes a new friend right away – Gilda – who introduces her to Arthur, a married man decades older than Violet but to whom she feels an instant attraction. There are some marvellous portrayals of Violet’s family life too, of Tom’s family and her mother and the intricate dynamics and interactions. Violet is pursued by a man who stalks her. She develops an interest in bellringing through Arthur. Her life in Winchester made her feel she
was coming back to life at last, like the shift between winter and spring. Or like a day in late spring when you know you can safely leave the house without a coat, when you can stop holding your body tight, clenched against the cold. When you will be warm.
p290
This novel is a simply wonderful portrayal of life for a single woman in 1930s in small town Britain. Violet smokes – which seems common place, even for nice women. Violet’s friend, Gilda, is a lesbian, and is eventually hounded by the society when her relationship with another woman is openly declared. Much of the novel attest to how Violet feels watched all the time, judged, in fact, and is always measuring her behaviour carefully, in line with what she knows is expected of her. What to say, when, how much to say, how much not to say, even when failing to say something would be considered rude. The rules are unwritten, and very exacting. Chevalier delivers a simply brilliant portrayal of this rather righteous, demanding set of societal rules and norms.
Violet often feels uneasy going to certain places by herself, as it is not done for women to walk by themselves, go to pubs by themselves, even eat in restaurants by themselves.
There were many reasons a man could be out on his own.Not so for women. Violet may be unmarried and seem to do things solo, but she was never really alone.
p114
She keeps her chin up and
never admitted that she was lonely, instead brightly claiming she was meeting all sorts of people and having the gayest time. She did not tell them about the nights she sat in her room smoking and reading Trollope or embroidering or searching her guidebook for one more hillfort she might walk to or church she had not yet visited.
p154
Only if she is staying at pub, does she feel comfortable going in for a meal on her own, justified, somehow. At other times,
Only at supper was it sometimes hard, when she was surrounded by people eating together and chatting and casting pitying looks at her. She tried bringing a book to the table, but it was too clear a signal of attempting not to care and caring dreadfully. A newspaper or magazine was better, as long as she didn’t read it in too absorbed a manner, but glanced at it casually. Sometimes curious people at neighbouring tables struck up conversations. It was not always pleasant: the women often seem threatened; the men, amused. “Where are you going? All alone? Gosh, isn’t it lonely?”
p154
Indeed, it is when she is taking a walking holiday on her own the first summer she has moved away, she is regarded as prey by a man who spots her walking alone through the corn fields, and stalks her thereafter, realising her vulnerability as a woman alone with no man to protect her, as he sees it.
15 months into her Winchester life, Violet is called home when her mother has what is probably a minor stroke, which they call a turn, apoplexy, or quite brilliantly, “a minor cerebral insult” [p263]. She looks after her very rapidly recovered mother for 2 weeks, then when her brother, Tom, although the sweetest and kindest of men, nevertheless expects her to move home to look after her mother because she is unmarried and has no family of her own, she resists strongly, “
“so what would we be saying if I did have a family? What would our options be then? Why can’t we discuss those options?”
p272
Violet uses both ingenuity and courage time and again, to make other arrangements instead, which would give her more choice, rather than caving in to expectations. She does of course pay the price for all this, knowing that women’s choices and actions are extremely circumscribed:
“But that’s what we women are trained for – to give to others, to make others comfortable, whatever we feel for ourselves. It can be tiring, thankless, to be so generous all of the time.”
p290-291
Even Violet’s redoubtable, efficient sister-in-law, Evelyn, feels this:
Violet understood her sigh. When a woman wants a cup of tea, usually she has to make it for herself, and for the others around her. There is no better taste than a cup of tea someone else had made for you.
p295
Violet tries to live her life with some measures of beauty and grace, seizing the rare chances for fulfilment and happiness when they present themselves, realistic about the limitations for women in this time and age and place. It is a splendid read, a real storyteller’s crafting, and the only dismay for the reader is finishing the book and having to wait a while for Chevalier’s next one.
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