64 pages • 2 hours read
Susan MeissnerThe Nature of Fragile Things
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Life On the Run: What Sophie and Martin Have in Common
While Sophie is clearly the heroine of the novel and Martin the antagonist, they share many qualities: They are both full of secrets, they have been involved in murder, and they are on the run from an old identity. The book’s structure begins and is punctuated by Logan’s investigation into Martin’s disappearance. From the outset, the marshal draws attention to the fact that both Sophie and Martin have been acting suspiciously—Martin by disappearing and Sophie by waiting six weeks to report his disappearance. Sophie initially tries to dismiss this fact, stating that the nature of Martin’s job made it difficult to trace his comings and goings. But her impatience with the detective’s inquiries alert readers to the fact that she has something to hide. Although as a federal investigator Logan is seeking to uncover the truth about Martin’s more severe crimes, he interrogates Sophie as though she is his accomplice.
As the narrative progresses, readers recognize that Sophie and Martin have much in common, as they try to cover up their shameful past and use similar techniques to do so. Both consult newspapers, the technology of the day, to seek advancement. For example, Sophie sees Martin’s advertisement in the New York Times as her ticket for escaping poverty and the sudden appearance of the girl from the neighboring village, who threatens to reveal her true identity. Martin consults a spread of California newspapers with a more sinister purpose: to find the obituaries of rich men who have recently died, woo their daughters, and seek his fortune through marriage. As Logan points out, Sophie’s lack of wealth, combined with the fact that she did not love Martin, sets her up as a suspect. Until readers discover the truth of why she answered a newspaper marriage advertisement and why Martin sought her out through one, she is not truly absolved of her complicity with him.
Furthermore, both Sophie and Martin use false names to cover up past crimes, adopting the innocent identity of the deceased. Martin, with his collection of birth and death certificates, does this in a coldly calculating manner. Each new name is accompanied by a different iteration of his story and the chance for a new beginning. When Belinda and Sophie compare the stories of his upbringing, there are differences in the timing of his work on a Colorado ranch. Moreover, he misrepresents Belinda as a cousin to Sophie, so that he can introduce the samples from Belinda’s goldmine to the home he shares with her. While Martin’s lies enable him to flow fluidly between multiple lives, the truth of his sadism with regard to his sister and first wife shows the extent of his ruthlessness. Martin’s apparent nonchalance about his life of lies reveals the advanced state of his psychopathy.
Martin’s story is echoed in Sophie’s use of her sister’s death certificate to begin anew after murdering her husband. She also relates to the ease with which he starts over: “[S]ome days I feel as though I’ve already lived several lifetimes and others as though I haven’t lived any kind of life at all, that I’m still waiting for it to start. Or waiting for it to start over” (10). Escaping Ireland and later New York primes her for a scenario of constant change. However, the feeling that life has not properly begun is frustrating to her. It makes her think that change is preventing her from feeling truly grounded and establishing bonds with others. Readers learn that her violent actions and subsequent subterfuge were the result of being forced out of motherhood and family by male violence. Sophie is not a compulsive liar like Martin, as she sacrifices elements of her secrecy to earn trust and make connections. For example, while it would be convenient to lie to her new neighbor Libby about how she met Martin, she does not want to do so in front of Kat, who already knows the truth and whose trust she wants to keep. Similarly, she divulges the truth of her stillbirth to Candance, to be compassionate and make this other woman feel less alone in her sorrow.
Ultimately, Meissner shows the injustices of a patriarchal society—given that a well-intentioned woman must resort to similar tactics as a psychopathic criminal in order to remedy the unjust laws that would have her imprisoned for defending herself and the innocent. Although Sophie imitates Martin in leaving two men for dead, she does this to protect others from the men’s crimes. Sophie’s capacity to lie and kill creates tension from a narrative perspective, as Logan spins the false but convincing story of Sophie as Martin’s partner in crime. Her act of removing Candace from a medical facility in dry, lung-friendly Tucson to damp Northern California makes it appear that she was precipitating the latter’s death, while gaining her trust and access to Kat’s fortune. The only way that Sophie can prove that she is not like Martin is by revealing the painful truth that forced her to imitate some of his behaviors.
While Martin continues his path of destruction for 20 years, Sophie’s recounting of the truth enables her to liberate herself from any association with him, even as she continues to mother Kat. Her ability to invite her mother to stay from Ireland and to move on with a new husband Sam signifies that she has married her past and present and found a sense of integrity and peace.
The Cyclical Nature of Time
Temporal shifts are intrinsic to the structure of Meissner’s novel. Logan’s November 6, 1906 investigation forces Sophie to look back on the events that occurred since her March 1905 marriage to Martin Hocking. However, the notion of time as a cyclical entity also features in Sophie’s personal experiences from the outset, as her new home in San Francisco reminds her of Donaghadee, Ireland, the place she was once happy and had to escape from. She experiences the ocean’s smell as “heady” and transporting, as she feels herself back in her Irish seaside town with her happy memories of her grandmother (7). This is a useful narrative device: Meissner lets readers know that Sophie, a woman who has thrown her happiness to chance in marrying a man she has never met, is from a concrete place where she had a strong sense of belonging. However, Sophie buries the memory: “I’ve spent too many hours pondering what I wouldn’t do to go back in time to Gram’s kitchen” (8). She ultimately concludes that “backward glances are of no use to me now” (8). This builds suspense about what drove her out of her happy home. It also shows her desire to control her narrative and stop the past from leaking into the present and sabotaging it. Still, the comparison between San Francisco’s maritime climate and Donaghadee’s persists, especially with respect to the fog which appears as “gauzy as grey silk and so very much like the approach of evening on the northern coast of Ireland” (17). The reference to fog, which obscures one vision, supports Meissner’s depiction of the slippage in time. As Sophie’s primary memories of home are happy ones, she continues to prefer damp, misty climates like Northern California’s as opposed to the scorching dry ones of Tucson. By the close of the novel, she constructs a home in fertile San Rafaela, which resembles her hometown both in its weather and in the presence of women who nurture children. In a sense, she has returned to the security and fulfillment of her grandmother’s house in an entirely different place.
Time also proves cyclical in the natural phenomena and instantaneous choices that have little to do with Sophie’s day-to-day life. For example, her decision to leave injured Martin to the mercy of the earthquake and the resulting fires becomes a mirror of what happened when she left a concussed Colm to drown in the ocean. The simile comparing the “deafening roar” of the earthquake to “a gale over the ocean” allows readers to connect the dispatching of each husband, as life forces Sophie to revisit the scene of her repressed deed (152). Still, as Sophie realizes that “I know it is not just for me the world is shaking,” the collective experience of the earthquake conceals her crime and temporarily creates distance between her actions toward Martin and her actions toward Colm (152). It is only after the earthquake that Sophie is forced by Logan to acknowledge the similarity of the two incidents and take responsibility for her actions.
Another natural phenomenon causing Sophie to revisit the past is Belinda’s childbirth. When Belinda’s water breaks after the earthquake, Sophie remembers the buried story of her own premature childbirth, as her husband’s beatings caused her daughter to be born before she was ready. When Belinda complains of labor pains, Sophie tells her, “I do know it hurts,” though she sweeps “the remembrance away,” consecrating it to “another life, another time” (163). This represents Sophie’s effort to distance herself from the painful memory and her helplessness at the time. Meissner shows how Sophie experiences the happier occasion of Belinda’s successful childbirth somatically. For example, when Belinda feeds her child, Sophie finds that “my own breasts ache with how beautiful it is” (202). This bittersweet image shows the visceral nature of her empathy, even though motherhood was taken away from her. Mothering non-biological children, both in baby Sarah and especially in Kat, enables Sophie to reclaim her thwarted desire to become a mother. Similarly, Kat, who asks whether Sarah will be “my baby, too?,” wants to redeem the lack of love she received from her parents. In an effort to bend time, Kat seeks to love a baby as she would have wished to be loved (120). The matriarchal blended family at the end of Meissner’s novel revisits the characters’ primary desires for love, returning it to them in an altered form.
Ultimately, the cyclical experiences of time allow Sophie to process her traumatic past and to acknowledge the desperate decisions she made, rather than be ashamed of them. In taking this risk, she can attain true intimacy and make a grounded new beginning—one that will not be taken away from her like her lives in New York and San Francisco were.
Matriarchy and Female Solidarity
While patriarchal property laws come out in favor of the nuclear family, dictating that children belong to one couple, the matriarchal vision of happiness in Meissner’s book challenges this. Her vision promotes the view that children thrive in a loving environment where they can enjoy the support of various mothers.
A version of this model is present in Sophie’s happy childhood in Donaghadee, as she enjoys the attentions of a loving grandmother as well as her parents. She has fond memories of helping her mother care for “the wee ones” whose own mothers worked at the docks (143). Sophie adds that she used to pretend these non-biological children “were mine. I loved pretending they were mine” (143). Here, Meissner creates sympathy for Sophie, who wants to be a mother more than anything. She has been dispossessed of her wish—first by male violence, which caused her to lose her baby and her fertility, and then by male property laws, which dictate that children belong to their biological parents. Sophie initially tries to approach motherhood by entering the institution of marriage through Martin’s advertisement for a wife and mother. Although she is suspicious of Martin from the outset, she conforms to his wishes for privacy like a good wife, believing that if she placates him, she will be able to remain Kat’s mother.
However, when Martin lets her down and Candace’s continued existence threatens her maternity over Kat, Sophie must embark on a different model of motherhood. Although she initially thinks that it might be in Kat’s interest to form a nuclear unit with her biological mother, Sophie soon learns that Kat wishes for an inclusive tribe which unites all her maternal figures, along with baby Sarah, the infant she feels precociously maternal toward. In such an environment, shy Kat can recover her speech and embrace the challenge of attending school with her peers. The adult women also thrive in this environment. This is evident when Sophie reflects that “introducing Candace to Belinda is not as awkward as I thought it might be […]. [T]he three of us have traveled the same journey […] and we’ve a kinship that strangely unites us” (272). The metaphor of the shared journey creates a familial bond, and Sophie even declares that Martin has made them “a beautiful family […] despite himself” (273). The irony of this statement acknowledges Martin’s paternity over Sarah and Kat, in addition to his exploitation of their mothers and Sophie. He is thus a procreative destroyer, while the women have a more reparative role. Importantly, the female collective is not misandrist or exclusive, as Elliot and later Sam are invited into the family in a vision of life where everyone benefits equally.
As a setting, the Loralei Inn benefits from the gloss of the California myth of starting again in a fertile, Edenic land. Belinda’s male ancestors initially landed on the plot in hopes of finding a goldmine, joining the macho quest for wealth and advancement. While the women also pursue their own utopian dream on the land, it becomes a restorative space, where profit is never pursued at the expense of human advancement. Moreover, the image of grounding oneself in the land, surrounded by a group of other women, challenges the fanciful trope that Martin and Colm represent, whereby romantic love and sex are used as an escape from past trauma and unresolved grief. Instead, the men and women who are invited to live on the plot help the heroines become more themselves, thereby creating a consistent narrative between their past and future.
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