The Hand That First Held Mine

Setting is important throughout The Hand That First Held Mine, often supporting the novel’s exploration of The Transformative Power of Art; for example, the narrator’s bird’s-eye descriptions have a cinematic quality that associates them with Ted’s work as a film editor. The particularities of each setting are likewise important. The London neighborhood of Soho was a hub of art and counterculture in the 1950s; Mrs. Collins says that Soho is “full of bohemians and inebriates” (69), which was the dominant view of the area at the time. Elsewhere’s offices are located in Soho, and therefore the start of Lexie’s relationship with Innes and the start of her career in journalism are centered in the same neighborhood. However, Lexie’s experiences there diverge dramatically from Mrs. Collins’s description; she discovers a vibrant nightlife that matches her passion both for journalism and Innes himself. The descriptions of Soho are kinetic, reflecting both Lexie’s burgeoning identity and Soho’s electric artistic atmosphere:

Innes and Lexie ricocheted like metal balls in a pin-machine, arguing over the matter of where she lived and why, from the settee in Bayton Street, to jazz clubs, to eating houses, to Innes’s flat, to gallery openings, to Jimmy’s on Frith Street, to poetry nights in a smoke-hung basement where thin girls with black polo-necks and parted hair circled like moths around the poets with beard and pints (116).

It is the energetic character of Soho, evoked here in a catalog of its attractions, that defines this period in Lexie’s life.

The red scarf that triggered Elina’s memory in the previous section returns as a symbol in the beginning of Chapter 7. This time the scarf symbolizes Lexie’s independence rather than Elina’s trauma, but though it serves different rhetorical purposes in each case, the symbol of the scarf links the women across time. Lexie’s characterization as an assertive woman who is invested in her freedom is also clear in the decisions she makes, as well as the language used to describe her. For example, when Lexie arrives late at Mrs. Collins’s boarding house to find Innes waiting for her, Innes says of her that “there was some talk of [her] being abducted but [he] said [she was] the kind of girl who could see off any potential abductors” (66). Unlike the women at the boarding house, Lexie exudes the fearlessness and confidence necessary to maintain her independence as well as her safety. Even with Innes, with whom she falls deeply in love, she is in control and insists on maintaining her boundaries—shouting at him in the car, vehemently arguing against moving in together until she’s ready, and clashing over design choices in the office. Although the couple argues often, Innes’s gift of blue stockings—a colloquial term for an intellectual woman (though usually with negative connotations)—demonstrates that he respects Lexie for who she is.

The tense shift in the middle of Chapter 9 is an indication that Lexie and Innes’s story has an end. The novel uses present tense until the moment in the Elsewhere office when Lexie says they should go to bed instead of going out. The next sentence reads “Innes became very brisk, very efficient” (109); the narration stays in past tense until the point of view shifts, and the narration of Lexie and Innes’s story stays in past tense for the remainder of Part 1. This stylistic choice underscores the significance of Lexie’s decision by framing it as something like a historical event; entering a relationship with Innes sets the course for her own future and (indirectly) the future of the novel’s other characters.

The Effect of Trauma on Memory intensifies for Ted even as Elina begins to recall more details of her birth trauma. His spells of dizziness and disorientation are connected to his childhood and to the new experience and responsibility of fatherhood. He has spent most of his life suppressing the memories of his biological mother, and the trauma of that loss is manifesting physically. Ted’s angry reaction to Elina’s questions about giving birth also reveals that Ted is avoiding memories of his trauma. Elina, in contrast, actively reaches for memories of her past with Ted to recement her identity and their relationship amid her fears about Ted’s health and the division new parenthood is creating between them.

Margot’s visit exacerbates these tensions and establishes her as an antagonist. Ted pushes back against his mother’s biases, including her disapproval of his and Elina’s unwed state, echoing Innes’s egalitarian relationship with Lexie. However, the most significant element of the scene is Margot’s frustration that the baby bears Elina’s last name. Given the intense maternal bond that Margot herself formed with Ted, her disapproval is deeply ironic. It is only appropriate that a child’s name would derive from what the novel suggests is the most important relationship in their life.