The Invisible Hour

“Every time I had gone to town, I’d managed to sneak into the library. I knew there was magic there, and I knew they would do their best to destroy it.”

Mia’s early reflections on literature and the library continue to establish a dichotomy between the freedom that literature represents and the destructive power of the Community. Her conviction that there is “magic” in the library foreshadows the novel’s later magical twist when Mia will travel to the past thanks to a book she discovers at the library.

“She loved Thoreau for his rebellious thoughts, and the Brontës for their dark and tragic tales of love, and Toni Morrison, whose novels made her cry and feel as if she didn’t know the first thing about life.”

The Liberating Power of Literature is reflected in Ivy’s passion for literature early in her life. She finds freedom to feel and explore when she reads in the Boston Athenaeum. Ivy’s love of reading connects her to her daughter, whose initial characterization is also centered on literature.

“It was her body and her future they were discussing, but it seemed that it belonged to them, and they intended to take control of what they considered to be a disaster.”

Ivy’s decision to run away when faced with her choices about her pregnancy being co-opted by her parents reflects Choice’s Risks and Rewards; as with many difficult choices that characters make in the novel, Ivy seeks to make her own decisions about pregnancy and childbirth, indicating the novel’s thematic interest in bodily autonomy and motherhood. Ivy is willing to leave the only life she has ever known to keep her baby and make her own choice.

“[H]e’d gone to see what local people call the Tree of Life, planted by Johnny Appleseed himself on his way out west. One winter he discovered that the folklore about the tree was true, it really did bloom in winter. It was a wonder and a marvel, one that could make a person believe in magic, at least for a time.”

Magic is a recurring concept in the novel, reinforcing its engagement with magical realism. Magic touches everyone, even Ken, who initially seems too practical to accept or delight in magic.

“Love was everything, he said, as a transgressor was locked in the barn without food or water. Love was all they had in the world that they were building, and it would remain when the outside fell apart.”

Hoffman directly connects Joel’s rhetoric of control to The False Security of Invisibility: Joel weaponizes isolation, keeping the Community separate from the outside world and transgressors separate from the Community. He promises love and security but only through punishment and pain, reminiscent of the Puritan ethic that justified the witch trials.

“On the day Mia was born, there was a false spring. The lilacs bloomed all at once and the bees emerged from their hives, only to freeze when the cold, blue night fell. Petals turned black. Bees were found on window ledges, having frozen as they tried their best to reach the warm rooms inside.”

The natural imagery accompanying Mia’s birth metaphorically represents Ivy’s life and death. When Mia is born, Ivy feels an immediate brightness and love, but the cold of the Community intervenes, and eventually Ivy, like the bees, can’t survive in the absence of warmth.

“When she was younger and she’d walked through the woods with her mother looking for mushrooms, Ivy had recited folk tales and fairy tales that she knew by heart. Ssh, she would say, don’t tell anyone. That was the way her stories always began. She said she had lived in stories, once upon a time, and read a book a day.”

The Liberating Power of Literature is subtly evidenced in the bond between Ivy and Mia. Ivy secretly tells Mia stories, engendering an appreciation and love of literature that will eventually help Mia find freedom from the Community. Ivy’s stories highlight the connection between literature, imagination, and magic, all of which Mia will draw on to shape her choices as she ages.

“To Mia, If it was a dream, it was ours alone and you were mine.”

The inscription from Nathaniel to Mia in The Scarlet Letter is the catalyst for all of Mia’s choices. Nathaniel’s inscription has two meanings: Both Mia and the dream could be connected to the last phrase “and you were mine,” implying both that Mia was Nathaniel’s dream and that Mia belonged to Nathaniel when they were in the dream. The true meaning of the inscription is left ambiguous at this point in the novel, but it foreshadows a connection between Mia and the author of The Scarlet Letter.

“That was the hour that she decided she would never fall in love. Love tied you down, it made you pay, it demanded all you had to give and repaid you with despair. She would never get close to anyone and would remain invisible, a girl without a heart. She would be hidden even when she was in plain sight.”

Mia’s choice to reject romantic love because of Joel’s perversion of love is an element of the novel’s exploration of The False Security of Invisibility. She chooses to hide herself from others, which prevents real connection, in order to keep herself safe from the consequences of the kind of love Joel offers.

“She felt her heart hitting against her chest. She had been a sleepwalker, and now, on this afternoon when she meant to do away with herself, she had awakened with a start. Whether or not the inscription was directed to her, she felt as if the author knew her, and was speaking directly to her, for the tale he told of the Puritans and the story of life in the Community were so alike.”

The Liberating Power of Literature saves Mia’s life when she recognizes her own story in The Scarlet Letter. The sense that her pain and struggle have been understood by Hawthorne frees her from the desire to “do away with herself” and allows her to live, awake, in the world. The connection she sees between the novel and her own experience foreshadows the later revelation that Nathaniel based his story on Mia’s life.

“She’d thought her only choice was to leave this world, but now she had discovered how terribly alive she was. She’d had a tingling feeling, as if she’d been stung by bees. This was how it felt to want more than being invisible.”

Mia’s realization that she has more choices than to live in the Community or die highlights Choice’s Risks and Rewards as Mia is finally able to move beyond the limited choices that Joel has presented her. It also connects to the theme of The False Security of Invisibility in that choosing to live is also choosing to be visible and vibrant, possibly risking punishment or ridicule.

“He was breathing hard, and he was suddenly overcome with the conviction that he had best begin to live, and that time on earth was terribly limited; it passed in the blink of an eye. He had not lived his life, he merely existed.”

Nathaniel’s realization leads him to walk into the field where he discovers Mia and parallels Mia’s own realization that she can escape the Community without dying. Just as Mia chooses to live and venture into the unknown, feeling that she is finally awake, Nathaniel feels the pressure of mortality pressing him to experience life to its fullest.

“But today there seemed to be a scrim of magic over the landscape, for everything he knew looked different, as if the world itself had opened to allow him to see what he’d never seen before. He was here and nowhere else, not in the midst of a story he was planning, or in the grip of an article he was to write for a journal, or plotting out a novel. He was in this field, and he could hear the bees.”

Mia’s appearance in Nathaniel’s life brings him solidly into his own present. The description of his new sight is reminiscent of the description of Mia’s birth—sudden spring bursting life and color into a gray winter. It also parallels the moment of Mia’s decision to escape the Community through the shared motif of bees: Mia’s desire to be alive makes her feel like she has been stung by bees, and Nathaniel’s newfound awareness of the present is auditorily marked by the sound of bees buzzing.

“Some call it the Hill of Death, others call it Salvation Point. This is where women come to bury their babies, the ones they can’t have for one reason or another, the ones who haven’t quickened, and the ones who have. The herb you see all around is rue; it’s dangerous but it’s worth the risk for many, for it causes contractions and miscarriage. Women you would least expect to come here find their way to the hill, those who are too young, who are unmarried, or who have been taken by force, those that have made a single mistake never speak of it again.”

Elizabeth’s description of the Hill of Death demonstrates the challenges that women have endured throughout history. The description also shows that the limitations of choice are indiscriminate to class or background, as “women you would least expect […] find their way to the hill.”

“She was no longer that girl with black rocks in her pockets; she wasn’t invisible anymore. Right now, she had what she had always wanted, the man whose words had saved her, the story that let her know she could save herself.”

Nathaniel’s love, in sharp contrast to Joel’s punishment dressed as love, allows Mia to begin to break away from The False Security of Invisibility. Just as she has seen his writing and felt seen in it, his ability to see her allows her to feel safe while visible.

“Ebe wished she could dress as a boy, and sneak onto that ship, and live a life of freedom in the masquerade that a false identity would allow. She longed to do as she pleased, as her brother said his imaginary woman from another time had done. How she wished that she, too, could dress without care, walk the streets late at night, write and read as she pleased, and not be judged as a woman.”

Elizabeth’s desire to have the kind of freedom her brother takes for granted underscores the historical limitations of women, adding complexity to the novel’s exploration of choice. Elizabeth, or Ebe, as her brother calls her, could choose to behave as her brother does, but she knows it would harm her reputation and consequently ruin her life.

“She would go as far as she needed and she would never be found. She would walk invisible into a world in which impossible things had happened and would most certainly happen again.”

The syntax foreshadows the novel’s ending, where Mia decides to walk away from her past and into the real world. The primary difference between the passages is the elimination of the concept of invisibility at the end of the novel—when she is still trying to escape Joel instead of letting him go, she desires invisibility, but when she accepts her past, she lets go of the need to hide.

“The word tree could be anything and everything. An apple tree in a shaft of sunlight. A conifer where crows were nesting. A sapling bent over the river, its roots turning a mossy green. A rosebush outside the inn, the crimson flowers tumbling down. This was how it began, with a world that was as real as a river, even though it was made of nothing but words.”

The Liberating Power of Literature is reflected in Nathaniel’s rediscovery of the world-building power of words. The power of language allows Nathaniel the freedom to create entire worlds—worlds that will one day save Mia.

“Mia tried to imagine her daughter living in this world, and all she could see were the confines of the Community. You cannot walk barefoot down the street, or cut your hair short, or do as you please. You will do as others expect you to do. She crossed the green and stood in the doorway of the library. But you would always have this, the place where there were a thousand keys to a thousand doors.”

The limitations on women—from the 19th century to the present day—are highlighted in the comparison of the expectations of Nathaniel’s time with Mia’s experience in the Community. The motif of the library highlights an alternative path to freedom through imagination and knowledge: Mia suggests that by learning about different possibilities, women have the chance to enact them.

“Mia now understood that Joel was well aware that once a girl walked into a library she could never be controlled again.”

Here, the library motif is directly connected to The Liberating Power of Literature. Joel prohibited novel reading to control the imaginations and minds of the women in the Community. Mia’s realization resonates with the loss of freedom her mother experienced when she sacrificed literature for a position in the Community.

“Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human.”

The length and lyricism of this single sentence rhetorically reinforces the concept that an entire life can be lived in a single moment. This extended sentence thematically connects the novel’s primary messages with an inherent humanity that exists in a shared moment that feels like a lifetime.

“She and Ivy should have made a vow to walk into the future; they should have left the past behind. If you hold on to it, it will only haunt you, it will wrap its arms around you and pull you down.”

Mia recognizes that Ivy’s mistake was not in joining the Community or running away from home but in her willingness to sacrifice a potential future for a safe present. The False Security of Invisibility prevented Ivy and Mia from pursuing a life that they could share as a journey into the future.

“The story would begin with a woman who was not allowed to control her own body or her own fate. It happened all the time. It happened above the burying hill in Salem, a place men knew nothing of, and it happened now in Mia’s time. In the story there would be a man who didn’t have the courage to declare himself, and another man who didn’t care if he brought a woman to ruin, but there was also a love that couldn’t be broken, the love was never invisible, the heart of the story, the love of a mother for her child.”

Ivy’s letter inspiring The Scarlet Letter highlights the similarities between the limited choices available to both modern-day and 19th-century women. The love between mother and child, in contrast, offers hope in its timelessness.