Patterns, Puzzles, and the Feminine
Mind
In this day of gender equality,
why do so many writers fall back upon feminine crafts as occupations for their
female detectives? Does the creative nature of a craft indicate an intuitive
aspect of a woman’s mind? Does the repetition of craft work free a woman’s mind
to solve puzzles? Do the nimble fingers
of women manipulate needles better than the male brain surgeons wield scalpels?
Or can women really multitask, crocheting a comforter or cooking a quiche while
corralling a crook?
Notice how many women cozy
writers segue from one craft to another without any noticeable change in literary
skills. Some dash from one form of craft
work to another subgenre of the same form—from knitting to crocheting or from
cookie-making to cake decorating or quilting to applique. More adventurous ones are equally deft at
jumping time periods or delving into entirely unrelated settings. Some have two or three different series going
on at the same time featuring different crafts.
Talk about Superwomen.
Amanda Lee (aka Gayle Trent) has
two series going currently—Daphne Martin is a cake-decorating business owner
and Marcy Singer runs an embroidery shop, the Seven Year Stitch. Notice Marcy’s significant last
name—Singer—certainly a name well known to sewers as a major work-saving
device. Even if the technologically
knowledgeable Marcy does know how to sew a fine seam with or without a sewing
machine, the author needs her to be an expert in the fine art of embroidery for
several reasons. The author lets her
heroine Marcy use three important patterns.
The most important of these in Thread Upon Arrival is the lattice
pattern on the Faberge egg that Marcy is making for her mother for Easter. Having “uploaded the image into my cross
stitch software,” Marcy analyzes the pattern “pale green background with baby
pink roses and golden branches, sporting darker green leaves. The trellis was silver and inlaid with tiny
diamonds.” She sees that she can
recreate the effect of the crossed trellis work with silver ribbon and the
roses with pink ribbon but knows that the photographic copy on her computer
software is too complicated to translate into a workable counted cross stitch
pattern of an embroidered egg. So Marcy
simplifies the pattern to fit the egg shape. This, in part, describes the author’s writing
style itself—factual, direct, and unencumbered by lengthy descriptions—which
allows the image of the trellis or lattice work to serve as an observable
pattern.
This pattern, where one thread
crosses over another, creates a cross or a “pick” or jointure. If the threads are twisted onto the bias, the
effect makes a diamond-shaped design.
Within each “diamond” space each clue is isolated just as the pink roses
are centered in the egg’s lattice work.
The highlighting of these clues causes the detective to figure out the
final solution just as the final embellishment of the cross-stitched egg
finishes the craft piece. The author
lets each clue takes its rightful place in the heroine’s “diamond.”
Lee’s novel involves a second pattern appearing in an antique tapestry/treasure
map. The tapestry itself is “dark brown
wools [which] were often indicative of textiles from the Civil War era.” In literary studies, most plays have one
physical object that represents the major theme; for example, Othello would not have the impact it
does without Desdemona’s loss of the handkerchief Othello gave her. In this novel, the tapestry serves this
function. The tapestry causes disharmony
within a family and eventually causes some greedy people to murder for the
map. The restoration of the tapestry to
itself rightful owner, along with the promise that its “treasure” might be made
from a TV production of its history rather than in its retrieval of riches from
the ocean, makes the tapestry an important item.
To the embroiderer, however, researching the nature of tapestry causes
her to recognize the skill of the weaver.
Marcy exclaims at the woman’s making a “pattern called a mise en carte, and then…transcribing the
colors and contours prior to weaving. To
imagine someone doing all that and then hand weaving a treasure map for her
children…was simply mind-boggling.” The
two patterns come together when the villainess is in Marcy’s shop and
compliments Marcy’s unfinished egg.
“There wasn’t even enough of the pattern developed yet that anyone could
tell what it was going to be but she told me it was pretty.” The villainess then steers the conversation
back to the whereabouts of the tapestry and the treasure map.
The third pattern is that of the value of a sewing circle. The reader learns at the end of the novel
that all the clues have been foreshadowed or planted within the members of the
embroidery class offered for abused women.
One of the organizers admits that “victims find it’s easier to open up and
talk with the other members of the group if their hands are busy and they
aren’t looking at the other’s faces.” The
members of the embroidery group are reduced to the level of the heroine of the
early romance novel who starts out as an isolated loner with no relatives, no
support group of friends, little money or marketable skills with which to make
her way in the world.
The convention of a female support group is standard in cozy mysteries
where the town acts as a character in the action. The nature of cozy mysteries,
of course, involves a restricted and genial landscape of a small town with a
restricted set of local eccentrics, best friends, stable employment, and a
never-ending influx of suspicious characters that may or may not be killers. An outsider coming to a small town becomes the
irritant in the oyster which (or more properly, who) must be surrounded and
nourished by the town’s inhabitants until her rough edges are smoothed off and
she becomes “one of us,” surely a pearl of great price.
These three patterns mimic the action of the human brain cells answering
a question or solving a problem. Where
ideas meet, cross, or conflict, new ideas are spawned. Those ideas beget newer
ideas until patterns become recognizable.
In essence, the patterns resemble puzzles which cannot be completed
until the last piece is in place. So
also with Lee’s use of the lattice, the tapestry, and the craft circle of
women, the interaction of the three patterns allows the heroine-detective to
solve the puzzle. But then most crafters
know how to follow patterns or directions or recipes, don’t they? Surely this is a human trait, rather than just
a feminine phenomenon.
Anne K. Kaler aka QuiltHunter
