Bouquet is a work of Literary Fiction – words, patiently selected and meditatively arranged for the author’s pleasure.
She may not fit well, she may be bruised even broken, this is her experience. Life is like this, a Bouquet.
Some Themes in Bouquet
Loss – of loved ones.
Histories have been lost, doubts about the past weigh heavily upon the soul.
There is a searching for answers; a longing for peace, healing, freedom, and knowledge.
Narratives are arranged from fragmented memories. Bits from here – bits from there. How do you tell someone what should not be said? Who would believe you anyway?
Nothing is simply one thing: there are usually other meanings, (stories within stories; a single window made with four-panes each pane having its own perspective).
Why is some material included in Bouquet?
Virginia Woolf notes in A Room of One’s Own
‘…the values of women differ very often from the values, which have been made by the other sex…Yet it is the masculine values that prevail…sport is ‘important’… buying clothes ‘trivial’… This is an important book because it deals with war…This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in the drawing room…A scene in a battlefield is more important than a scene in a shop.’
In response to Virginia Woolf’s observation, Bouquet includes things ‘she’ values. While something is still trivialized, it is not yet equal.
Bouquet, though, is not a trivial text and as Sarah notes in her diary,
‘Here, convalescent’s minds are stimulated by the weighing of ideas: health, religion, philosophy, politics, the place of women in society, these are all discussed openly between us… (Bouquet page 44.)’
Moriah’s contribution to Bouquet should not be ignored. It was she who chose a budding stem from a lovely old wicker basket of freshly cut flowers, a few cuttings, and some calla lily leaves to be the centre support to which Bouquet is arranged.
Chava’s study notes,
were included to reacquaint the reader with the past, so that the present may be reconsidered.
‘…allowing Lillian to survey in a new light what had been vaguely seen on her arrival (Bouquet p 165.)’
‘…allowing Eugenia to survey her husband in a new light… (Bouquet p 351.)’
Chava’s study notes were also included because many, my mother included, still creep behind the pattern (The Yellow Wallpaper) and live in the shadow of their husband.
Chava’s study notes are like an artist’s vanishing point; a reference by which we measure our current position.
Why is there religion in a piece of literary fiction, when our academic training taught us to avoid this subject?
From Hildegard of Bingen to Charlotte Brontë, from Emily Brontë to Ann Radcliffe, religion/the church is to be found and a deeper understanding of their texts cannot be realised without reference to the way religion manifests itself in those texts.
In middle-class society ‘she’ was the moral custodian, the one who policed morality in the home and ensured her own morals were exemplary.
While there are many who want to ignore, even destroy important monuments from history; the fact remains that the feminist movement has its roots in early social reform movements; and early social reform movements were rooted in moral reform movements; moral reform started with people like Grace who read the Christian bible for themselves in English. Moral reform, for Grace and Clare, became social reform.
While each wave that came ashore has contributed to reform, the shift in focus from the ‘other’ to the ‘self’ has left a deep trough where drifts an unravelling bouquet.
Authors who influenced this arrangement
- Virginia Woolf
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- Janet Frame
Bouquet: Target Reader
Bouquet is, unapologetically, a work of Literary Fiction.
The back cover blurb suggests that there may be a flower or two which are not the reader’s favorites. Flowers which, they believe, should not be included. Flowers whose scent the reader does not like. Some of the flowers they may consider bruised, others they may notice are damaged while some, the reader feels, are past their best.
The reader who can sit back and consider Bouquet in its entirety, they are the target reader.