elettaria: (Shell quilt)
It occurred to me this morning that as far as I am aware, there are not any anthologies on the subject of needlecraft as it pops up in myth and literature, and it would be great fun to concoct one. I haven't the foggiest how I would actually get it up and published, and I suspect you need to be a published writer and/or academic to do so, but right now I just intend to have fun figuring out what I'd actually put in it. Please do let me know what you can think of, though try not to put in mammoth plot spoilers for those of us who haven't read the text.

Myths and fairy tales

* The three Fates - Greek and Roman myth, they "controlled the metaphorical thread of life of every mortal from birth to death." (yes, I'm tired, I'm quoting Wikipedia). Literary source?

* Arachne - foolishly got into a spinning contest with Artemis/Minerva, I think she won, and for her hubris was turned into a spider. This will be in Ovid's Metamorphoses somewhere.

* Ariadne - borderline one here, but she gave Theseus a ball of yarn to use in order to find his way out of the labyrinth, which he successfully did. Absolutely no idea where you find this originally, I remember Ariadne in that fiendishly long Poem LXIV by Catullus but that was later in her career.

* Penelope - put off having to remarry after her husband disappeared by telling the suitors she'd marry once she had finished weaving, er, something, and cheated by unpicking her work every night. This one will be in Homer's Odyssey somewhere.

* Lucretia (semi-historical, I think) - a bunch of idiotic Romans had a bet about whose wife was the chastest, and when they rode back to Rome to do a surprise checkup, only Lucretia was found virtuously weaving with her maids, the other women were all up to mischief. Unfortunately, Prince Tarquinius of Rome decided to rape her and she then killed herself, so Not A Cheery Story. Can't remember the original source, but I don't think Shakespeare deals with the weaving bit, he hops into the story just before the rape. The opera by Britten/Duncan, on the other hand, has a lovely scene where Lucretia and her maids are peacefully singing over their spinning, which might anthologise nicely.

* Rumpelstiltskin - German fairy tale. A miller claims his daughter can spin straw into gold, the local king marries her and then shuts her up to do the job, a strange creature helps her but demands her child in payment, and she narrowly escapes by managing to work out what his name is. This one is in Grimm, Wikipedia tells me, and perhaps there are other versions elsewhere which I'd prefer.

* Sleeping Beauty - French fairy tale this time, I'm told, though it sounds like there are variants. Young princess is cursed to prick her finger on a magical spinning wheel and die, her parents attempt to prevent this, it happens of course, then the rest of the story is about rescuing her from this fate. Perrault has this one. I really don't want to think about what the Freudians say about the lure of the spinning wheel.

* The Wild Swans - Danish, at least this version. Another princess, this time with the job of gathering churchyard nettles and turning them into shirts in order to save her twelve brothers from being permanently changed into wild swans. This one's in Andersen.

* The Sprightly Tailor - if I were a proper folklorist I'd know exactly how to classify this one, but anyway it's a sewing-against-the-clock tale, if by "clock" we mean "ravenous monster".

* The Brave Little Tailor - Grimm again, a story where a "little man" manages to pose as a hero through cunning and what you could call media manipulation, the medium in this case being stitchery! Amusingly enough, both this and the last story talk about stitch size - the Quilt Police have evidently been around for a good long while!

* The Emperor's New Clothes - another Andersen, and adopted as a highly popular parable.

I am really going to have to rifle through fairy tales and mythology properly, I bet there's loads out there.

Modern slants on myth

* Carol Ann Duffy, "Penelope" - nice poem about Penelope which is in the book my tutor borrowed from me years ago, The World's Wife. I think it has embroidery instead of weaving.

* Angela Carter, "Reflections" - weird and creepy short story which includes walking into mirrors and having the entire world reverse itself, and an intersex knitter who is a bit like the Fates all rolled into one person.

* Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness - there's a section in there where Marlow has an encounter with two women who are knitting in a very symbolic manner reminiscent of the Fates. It's a good decade since I read this book, I have to say that I loathe it, but I recall rather liking that bit. It includes the line, "Ave! Old knitter of black wool. Morituri te salutant."

* Ursula Le Guin, "Small Change", from The Compass Rose - short story that takes the Ariadne theme of following a ball of wool and makes it about journeying into death. Again, bit borderline. Has Le Guin written anything else usable?

* Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad - fairly sarky approach to Penelope's story, as you might expect, and the section on the fake weaving is great.

* Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest - based on the Wild Swans fairytale, set in Celtic Ireland. From a fantasy series.

* Mary Renault, The King Must Die - historical novel (if that's the term for myth) about Theseus, which has the Ariadne bit.

* Emma Donoghue, "The Tale of the Spinster" in Kissing the Witch - the book is a set of re-imaginings of fairy tales, stories passing between women as a participant in one becomes the narrator for the next. I only skimmed it so I'm not quite sure which fairy tale this story is taken from, probably Rumpelstiltskin.

Fiction in general (and poetry)

* Alfred Lord Tennyson, "The Lady of Shallot" - "There she weaves by night and day / A magic web with colours gay".

* Shakespeare, Othello - there's a big thing about a handkerchief, and at one point Othello makes a speech about how it came into being, "there's magic in the web of it" and so forth. It basically gets used as a way of reading female chastity, and more to the point, misreading.

* Adele Geras, Apricots at Midnight - haven't read this one but it sounds all about quilts and stories. Children's story.

* Carol Shields, Happenstance - novel about a quilter, so there are umpteen quotable bits. A while back, I put up a post with a quotation from a lecture someone gives at a quilting convention, which is a parody of OTT Freudian crit, so perhaps more than one extract here. The post also contains the text of the Duffy poem mentioned above.

* Susan Glaspell, "A Jury of her Peers" - short story about murder and quilting, in which quilting and domestic tasks are used as a code between women. Domestic abuse and solidarity between women are themes.

* Sara Maitland, "The Burning Times" - short story, set in the witch-burning times in Britain. The narrator is the young daughter of a lace-maker, who is rather too skilled at lace-making and rather too much of a free spirit for her community's comfort.

* Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace - more quilting with murder, although the quilting takes a fairly small role. That said, Atwood uses images of traditional quilt blocks at the start of every new section, often where their names will have resonance for the text. Imprisonment is a theme again here. Historical novel loosely based on fact, set in 19th c Canada.

* Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin - historical novel loosely based on fact, set in 17th c London and Wales. Young woman becomes a prostitute at 14, spends a winter in a Magdalen House where she discovers an aptitude for sewing, goes off to be an apprentice dressmaker, and of course, yet more murder. This novel includes a man who's involved with needlework, the dressmaker's husband who's a staymaker, so perhaps more than one extract, if this book were actually to happen and were to include a section on men.

* O'Brian, Clarissa Oakes - the Aubrey/Maturin series is almost entirely set at sea, with ships almost 100% populated by men, so they all sew beautifully. In this novel, a young woman sneaks on board, in men's clothing I think, and marries the young officer who brought her there. I seem to recall a rather charming section where the sailors all get together and make her a wedding dress, which I think is from fabric which the captain had originally bought for his wife.

* Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Ingleside - fairly sure it's this one, could be Rilla of Ingleside or one of the other Anne books though. Small child hides under a quilting frame or similar, women all come in for a quilting session and have a damn good gossip, including some rather hair-raising stories, and are appalled when they discover the hiding child has been listening. Not the best, but it's an example of quilting as a social activity.

* Jeannette Winterson, The Passion - two women have been involved in a heady and somewhat peculiar affair, and when they break up, one feels that she's bound in some way to the other. She and her new sort-of-lover break into the woman's mansion and find her heart in a jar, as well as a 3/4 finished tapestry of her which would have bound her entirely if finished. Unfortunately, the tapestry is a striking bit but a short one.

* Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate - minor but recurring bit, and when I was watching the film I think it may have been the point at which I realised this was magic realism. Young woman thwarted in love knits an enormous crocheted blanket to console herself, and magically does the entire thing in one night. Later on she becomes seriously mentally ill and takes the blanket with her when she goes for treatment, she's all wrapped up in it. There's a lovely shot in the film where she's being taken off in a wagon wrapped in the blanket, and the wagon goes further and further away in the shot but the blanket, which trails along the ground towards the camera, never ends. Can't remember if there's anything like that bit in the book.

* Louisa May Alcott, Little Women - there must be needlework of some sort in there at some point! Anyone?

* Muriel Spark, "The Dragon" - short story about a woman who is a professional seamstress, although she only does the stitching and considers the designing and cutting to be lesser work. Power struggles ensue.

* Alice Walker, The Color Purple - narrator has had a shitty life, finds love and her own personal creativity. In this case, she discovers that she has a talent for sewing trousers, and it has a beneficial effect not just on her but on her immediate community. There's also a short story somewhere where people are fighting over inheriting quilts, "Everyday Use".

* Ellen Galford, The Fires of Bride - set in an imaginary remote Scottish island, there's a minor character who's a weaver of traditional tweed. She's blind and feels the colours with her fingertips, and sings over her work, although when a bright-eyed ethnomusicologist is brought along to record her "traditional weaving songs", it's revealed after the woman's left that they were in fact various pop songs translated into Gaelic and sung as a joke. It's a relatively daft novel and one I'm fond of.

* Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House on the Prairie series - haven't read them but I gather there's quite a bit of needlecraft going on.

* Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford - couldn't get through it but apparently people sew and knit a lot to pass the time. I have a feeling that being an (apprentice?) dressmaker is a big thing in Ruth.

* Beryl Bainbridge, The Dressmaker - haven't read it, apparently it's chilling?

* John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany - haven't read it, apparently Chapter 3 is about home dressmaking.

* Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind - the bit when Scarlett turns her mother's velvet curtains into a snooty outfit in order to attempt to seduce Rhett into lending her money. Also the women all sit and sew frantically in order to look normal while their lovely, lovely men are out doing KKK stuff, and Scarlett doesn't have a clue what is going on but starts to twig because Melanie is producing really bad stitching.

* E.F. Benson, the six Lucia novels - Lucia's best friend Georgie is an expert at needlepoint, something which is brought up from time to time. Apparently it's fine quality, although the more manly men mock him for being a "fine little needlewoman" or words to that effect. Georgie also loves to play piano duets with Lucia, nurtures a completely platonic crush on an opera singer, and is generally markedly uninterested in women or sex, so the needlepoint is part of a code which suggests strongly that he's a closeted gay man (as indeed Benson was).

* Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass - the knitting sheep and her wool shop.

Historical

* Les tricoteuses - these knitters famously sat at the foot of the guillotine in revolutionary France, and I'm sure they turn up in a stirring novel somewhere, but I have no idea where. ETA: Aha, it's Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, thanks for that. (I have a nasty feeling they are in The Scarlet Pimpernel, but I really don't want to be including that rubbish!) Factual sources would be excellent as well.

* Bayeux tapestry - anywhere?

There were hundreds and hundreds of years in which one of the main things women did was to sew. There must surely be a good record of this in literature.

Genre

I'm aware that there's a fair amount of genre fiction, specifically murder mysteries, which features knitting or quilting heavily. While I'm talking about this dream book, I think a single good extract from one of those books wouldn't be a bad idea, though you'd probably want to keep it to one. Any suggestions?

Links

* Quilts in Literature - reminded me of the Walker, has links to a few short stories which I am now reading.

* List of children's books about quilting, mostly for ages 4-8 but it still sounds like there may be some interesting historical stuff in there.

* http://www.blogforbettersewing.com/2009/07/home-sewing-in-literature.html - nice blog discussion of this exact topic.

* Really good discussion on a forum about fairy tales, lots of things to follow up.

* List of knitting references in books.
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NB: I am editing this post as I find stuff, so keep an eye on it. Thank you to everyone who's made suggestions.

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elettaria

January 2014

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