47 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanThe Invisible Hour
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “The Here and Now”
Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary: “All That I Need”
The story jumps forward 15 years and into Mia’s point of view as she begins to resist the Community’s rules and expectations. Mia has never been farther than the neighboring town, Blackwell, to work at the Saturday farmer’s market selling tomatoes, which are so good that they always sell out. She often works alongside her mother, Ivy, even though they aren’t supposed to acknowledge their familial relationship. Only Joel is acknowledged as the father of the Community and, by extension, the father of all the Community’s children.
As Mia works the stand, she thinks of various moments shared with her mother outside of the Community. When they have stolen moments of private time hunting mushrooms, sneaking off to swim, and now working side-by-side at the stall, Ivy tells Mia forbidden fairy tales and stories about Ivy’s life before the Community. Today, Mia asks about the library and asks if it’s the castle from their stories. Ivy tells Mia about the Athenaeum, a library that she visited regularly as a young girl, and allows Mia to sneak away to see the Blackwell Public Library. Mia finds a nursery rhyme, “West of the Moon,” that inspired Ivy’s quippy response when Mia asked where she was from. Mia is in awe of the masses of books and explores quickly and quietly. She finds an old, unobtrusive book and opens it, surprised to see a handwritten inscription seemingly made out to her. In shock, she replaces the book and rushes back to the market, terrified that Joel has discovered her and laid a trap. She tries to explain what she saw to her mother, saying that it was magic, but Ivy dismisses the concept of magic entirely.
Mia isn’t discovered, though, and on every trip back to town, she finds a way to sneak back to the library. She takes books one at a time with her, hidden away in her backpack. The librarian, Sarah Mott, gently shows her how to borrow and return books without stealing. Mia hides the books in the barn and reads them in secret moments when she can hike away and be hidden from view. Ivy picks up on Mia’s habits and warns her to keep her secrets hidden from Joel and the Community.
Mia’s risk taking in reading leads to larger risks. Although it’s forbidden to speak to anyone in town, she goes into town and explores shop windows, stops by the police station, and is invited into the Jack Straw Tavern by the young bartender, who gives her French fries. She meets Carrie Oldenfield’s cousin, who tells her that Joel ruined Carrie’s life. Mia begins to imagine what would have happened had Ivy not married Joel. She begins to dream of an escape for her and her mother. In the fall, Mia investigates Carrie’s past, learning about a ghost story in the process, which is portrayed in a play at the Founders’ Day Festival. While the Community is attending a meeting about crop yields, Mia sneaks away to see the play. Ivy finds her and is also entranced by the play, and she helps Mia sneak back to the Community, telling her that her birthday is March 16.
Soon after, one of Mia’s books, Pride and Prejudice, is discovered in the barn. Ivy comes forward and says that it was her book that she found in a trash can and that she only read some of it because it confused her. Joel punishes Ivy by cutting her long dark hair off nearly to the scalp for the sin of pride. Mia is enraged and runs into the woods, where her mother finds her. Mia tries to convince Ivy to run away, but Ivy says that it’s an impossible dream. When Ivy first married Joel, he told her that if she left, he’d keep Mia, and Ivy is unwilling to take the risk.
Part 1, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Foregone Conclusion”
In September, while the Community harvests apples, Ivy dies in an accident when a truck’s parking brake fails. Mia’s grief nearly destroys her. She refuses to leave Ivy’s grave and then refuses to work. Joel allows her to keep her mother’s red boots, but he punishes her by cutting her hair short. The next time she’s sent to town for the farmer’s market, she plans to die by suicide. She takes advantage of the newcomer working the stall with her to go to the library. She grabs a book and discovers that it is The Scarlet Letter, the same book she found on her first visit. She leaves the library and goes to the river, intending to fill her backpack with stones and drown herself. Before she does, she looks at The Scarlet Letter and begins to read. By late afternoon, she has read half the book and found her love of life again. She returns to the Community, telling Tom Miller that she had “female problems,” which keeps her secret.
A week later, Mia’s books are discovered. She is taken to the field, and Joel labels her with the letter A for “acts of wickedness” (80). Her books are burned in a bonfire. The men lock her in the barn, but she uses a hammer to escape. She flees to the library, where she calls Sarah. In the early morning, Sarah drives Mia to Concord to stay with Sarah’s girlfriend, Constance Allen. Constance fabricates a birth certificate for Mia, enrolls her in school, and keeps her safe from the Community. Joel fills out a missing person report on Mia, claiming that she’s his daughter and has run away. The police search the town and woods but then give up, figuring that Mia left for a reason. Joel confronts Sarah, giving her an apple tree leaf to give to Mia to show that she belongs to him. Mia worries, checking locks and waking in the middle of the night, but she remains safe in Concord.
Mia goes to high school but shies away from the other students. She becomes so obsessed with Nathaniel Hawthorne, his books, his life, his house, and his grave that she falls in love with him. While completing an author’s genealogy project on Hawthorne, Mia becomes interested in her own genealogy. She goes to the Jacobs’ house in Beacon Hill and is invited in by Helen Connelly. Ken Jacob has died, leaving his wife to develop alcoholism. When Mia meets her grandmother, Mrs. Jacob blames Mia for Ivy running away and her death. After an unpleasant confrontation, Helen shows Mia Ivy’s room. Helen tells her that Ivy should have had the freedom to choose for herself what she wanted. Helen gives her a letter from Ivy. The letter explains Ivy’s story and tells Mia that Joel is not her biological father.
Joel follows Sarah to Concord. He confronts Mia in front of the library and insists that she come home with him. She refuses, and he tells her lies about her mother. Constance yells for him to leave Mia alone, and Mia tells Joel that she knows he isn’t her father and that she’ll call the police if he doesn’t leave her alone. He releases her and drives away.
Sarah moves to Concord to live with Constance and Mia. Constance and Sarah are both librarians, and they take Mia on tours of famous libraries in the Northeast. She is accepted into New York University and feels safer from Joel because of the anonymity granted her in Manhattan. She finishes her library science degree and gets a job in the New York Public Library’s special collections division. Although she is professionally successful, she stays in the same apartment and has few friends and no dates. She is still haunted by Joel and the Community and is often afraid.
When Sarah and Constance meet Mia for her birthday at the Algonquin Hotel, Mia discovers that Constance is dying from cancer. When Mia comes back to Concord on weekends while Constance’s illness progresses, she walks through town in the evening, stopping at Hawthorne’s grave and the garden at his house, the Old Manse. One twilight, Constance takes advantage of a moment alone with Mia to encourage her to love real people and allow herself to take risks with her heart. She says that love allows life to flourish. A week later, Constance dies at home.
At Constance’s funeral, among the flowers, there is a jar of apple tree leaves, which Mia knows is a threat from Joel. After the funeral, Mia walks through the cemetery to Hawthorne’s grave. She places the edition of The Scarlet Letter with her name written in it on the grave and wishes that she could go back in time and know the man who saved her life. She feels a strange sensation, as if the earth is rotating too quickly, and as the sun rises, “everything Mia had ever wanted […] finally come[s] to be” (123).
Part 1, Chapters 2-3 Analysis
In this section, narrative techniques like image and structure emphasize the parallels between Ivy and Mia. The motif of the red boots is one such technique, with the boots shifting in meaning as they pass from mother to daughter. When Ivy dies, Joel allows Mia to keep the boots in memory of her mother, even though the children aren’t supposed to belong to any specific parents and no one in the Community is allowed to own property. Just as Joel bent the rules out of guilt when he gave the boots to Ivy, he bends the rules for Mia. Both Ivy and Mia are faced with an impossible loss and make a risky choice to run away as a result. Both Ivy and Mia have a woman outside of their family structure who offers them a key to escape in case of an emergency. However, here, the mother and daughter diverge: Ivy runs away to the Community rather than using the key Helen gives her, while Mia uses the key Sarah gives her to the library to pursue her own freedom. The images of fairy tales, woodland magic, and The False Security of Invisibility create a shared secret bond between Mia and Ivy. While Mia consistently resists the controls of the Community, it is only in her protection and love for Mia that Ivy is willing to transgress. For Mia to honor Ivy’s life and death, she must escape Joel and the Community and live the bravery that Ivy began to model for her.
Helen, Sarah, and Constance are savior figures connected through their care of Ivy and Mia. These women represent feminine power in the absence of a man. While Ivy is close to her father, it is Helen to whom she writes and Helen who is available to Mia when she comes searching for her heritage. Helen gives Mia Ivy’s letter, which ultimately frees her from Joel’s legal and paternal influence. Sarah gives Mia access to the library both before the escape and in the process of her escape. That access leads first to Mia’s choice to live rather than die by suicide and then to her successful escape. Sarah and Constance become secondary mothers to Mia, just as Helen was a secondary mother figure to Ivy.
The Liberating Power of Literature features prominently in the second and third chapters. Mia’s initial discovery of the library introduces her both physically and imaginatively to the world outside of the Community. It is after her initial secret visits to the library and her hidden reading sessions in the woods that she begins to explore the town. The books she reads and the stories Ivy shares with her present her with the potential of magic as well as the idea of living a free life, far from the Community. After Ivy’s death, it is The Scarlet Letter that frees Mia to live in a world without her mother and escape to a better, real life rather than die by suicide. Sarah and Constance, as mother figures and saviors to Mia, are also professional librarians—a profession Mia achieves in her own adulthood. Finally, The Scarlet Letter is the mystical key that allows Mia to travel back in time, where she meets Nathaniel Hawthorne and learns that relationships can be freeing rather than abusive. As Mia’s narrative arc continues to be shaped by literature, this section underscores how literature can be both a physical and a mental escape from an unhappy life.
Mia’s hidden treasures and her avoidance of relationships reflect The False Security of Invisibility. She leaves the Community with the painting and the book, both of which she keeps hidden even from Sarah and Constance. Her compulsion to hide her possessions is a holdover from the Community, but it also indicates the safety she senses in keeping the most precious parts of her identity hidden and invisible. When she goes to school and begins her career, she avoids friendships and romantic relationships because she is afraid of being seen too clearly. When she moves to Manhattan, the crowds make her feel safe, but Joel finds her anyway, and she begins to see that invisibility doesn’t guarantee safety. Mia’s character arc will demand that she relinquish her desire for invisibility and anonymity and embrace the vulnerabilities and joys inherent in being known.
Related Titles
By Alice Hoffman
