I recently
finished Tracy Chevalier’s A Single
Thread. The protagonist, Violet, was a “surplus” woman, one of tens of
thousands marooned in their lives in post-WWI England, widowed or without
prospects of marriage resulting from the war’s carnage. Set in 1932, the story
reveals the cramped, restrictive lives forced on these manless women. Often relegated to living in financial poverty, they
were further impoverished by societal restrictions. Unaccompanied by a man,
they couldn’t enter a pub, the center of British social life, without
accompanying judgment as to their intentions. Men and women tended too often to treat them as suspect. In cities,
without family support, they were required to live in boarding houses for women
only, their freedoms subject to the Victorian whims of the women proprietors.
Ultimately, they were excluded from almost all facets of British life.
If I’d been
passingly aware of the surplus women,
my awareness was now a fleshed-out memory, embedded within my consciousness by
the fictional palette painted by Chevalier. It reminded me of the trove of
potential learning offered by fiction, especially when the writer is faithful
to the historical context in which she has set her story. Presented
contextually, I believe historical facts (or the facts of almost any body of
knowledge) are more impactful, more easily remembered. To a teacher, I would
say: if you want to land a lesson, historical or otherwise, present it not as a
linear progression, but as a mosaic, a tapestry designed to elicit attention.
A close friend
of mine, ironically a history major in college, claims he only reads
non-fiction. (In the case of my fiction and on the basis of our friendship, he
offers me dispensation.) I have suggested to him how one might better learn
from and retain historical knowledge from fiction by the way it stimulates
thinking about historical context in a way that non-fiction often does not. Not
atypically, non-fiction states its theme, then, delivers the message along its
promised route. Fiction allows one’s thinking to diverge, to branch in unexpected
ways, while simultaneously solidifying memory embedded in a context other than
itself. The linkage to memory is further etched by the sensory experiences
evoked by fiction.
An exception
to this premise is narrative
non-fiction. But then the writer is using a fictive method, creating a storied
atmosphere, utilizing the scaffolding of a story, to deliver the message.
Of course, this is what I think. How about you? What are your thoughts?
A Single Thread: A Novel: Chevalier, Tracy: 9780525558248: Amazon.com: Books
