The Hand That First Held Mine

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-9

Part 1, Chapters 10-14

Part 2, Chapters 15-18

Part 2, Chapters 19-24

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Gazing

Content Warning: This section references traumatic childbirth.

Connected to the theme of The Transformative Power of Art, the motif of gazing begins with Innes peering through the hedge to observe Lexie. Gazing is distinct from watching, looking, or seeing in that it is steady and intentional. O’Farrell uses the word “gaze” or “gazing” 26 times in the novel, and that sense of the gaze is present even when the word is absent. Ted watches Elina work through the window of her studio and knows then that she will be okay. Lexie leans out of her window peering into the night in Devon, and she watches London from the window in her first room in London, in Innes’s bedroom, and in her own home. Elina searches for Ted at the seaside by climbing a hill and then surveying her surroundings. This gazing motif represents the eye of an artist on the world, which O’Farrell figures in terms of colors, shapes, and composition rather than individual people. O’Farrell is also subverting the literary trope of the male gaze, which is typically aggressive and rooted in a desire for power. In the novel, the women are often the ones gazing, especially at the world around them or at their sons in admiration and love. Even when Ted and Innes seem to be instruments of the male gaze, it is the women they gaze at who hold power over them.

Scarves

Scarves symbolize different things for different characters. Scarves for Lexie are symbols of her relationship to Innes. She wears a yellow scarf that catches his eye when he first sees her. She is wearing the red scarf of her department store uniform when he sweeps her away to his offices, resulting in the commencement of their love affair. She clings to Innes’s scarf as an object of comfort and a symbol of their relationship after his death. Daphne uses the same cashmere scarf to snap Lexie out of her immediate grief and begin to move forward.

For Elina, scarves are more threatening; a red scarf brings the memory of her caesarian rushing back to her, and her desire for her mother “tightens like a scarf around her throat” (202). What for Lexie is a symbol of comfort and independence is for Elina a symbol of violence and threat. Although the scarf symbol connects the two characters, it also indicates an important difference between them. While Lexie embraces her individuality, Elina is still searching for a sense of comfort within herself.

Red

The color red conventionally symbolizes blood and passion. This is true of The Hand That First Held Mine, where it is a recurring motif that illustrates the connections between Innes, Lexie, Elina, and Ted. A red scarf on a white floor triggers Elina’s memory of her traumatic experience of labor. Lexie wears a red scarf for her job at the department store—a symbol of her independence and passionate nature. At Lexie’s first lunch with Innes, she wishes for red high-heeled shoes, suggesting a desire to stand out. Ted’s memories of Lexie center on a red dress—the scarlet dress she wore at his third birthday, where he blew out red candles. The description of the tiles in Felix and Margot’s house cements, through color, the connections leading from Innes to Jonah: “It was Innes who damaged the tiles […] on a wet day in the late 1920s […] there was a lot of blood on the tiles that day, red among the blue and white” (329-30). As a color that evokes the connections between the characters—particularly blood relationships—red is the most vivid and consistently appearing color in the novel.

Blue Stockings

The blue stocking motif reflects both Lexie’s personality and the connection between Lexie’s story and a larger narrative of feminism in England. The term “bluestocking” originated in the mid-18th century in connection with a group of English women who organized intellectual gatherings focused on literature and art; the word later broadened to refer to any woman interested in intellectual pursuits, and as these had traditionally been the purview of men, it became associated (sometimes pejoratively) with women’s rights. Innes uses it in a more complimentary sense when he buys Lexie blue stockings, saying, “You are a blue stocking […] so you might as well wear them” (118). Innes admires Lexie’s intellect and rebellious character. Others use the term more critically: “A ‘blue stocking’, one of her would-be suitors dubbed her, which was the one time she snapped, was ungracious” (221). What was a term of endearment from Innes is here an insult, and Lexie responds accordingly.