“I am a hollow bone.”
This is a metaphorical self-portrait that one of the book’s many narrators uses to describe herself. She has enjoyed the benefits of the fight for suffrage which is the book’s opening identifying issue and at a point in the 21st century—a century since the vote was won—she realizes she is still struggling vainly to encounter history with the same energy and devotion as her forebears. She is a hollow bone, elaborating to explain how she feels “as if I echo or…feel in myself an absence.”
“Women are the housekeepers of the world.”
The fight to win women the vote is the central pressing issue for much of the narration which is set in the past and, of course, it still resonates in those sections set within a less distant past. A philosopher of the time, Benjamin Kidd, is credited with coining one of those metaphors which define an era by becoming a rallying cry for change.
“The Woman Question”
The demand for the right to vote is really just the semi-solid nugget within a much broader and expansive concept of equal rights. “Equal rights” for women was rebranded by the patriarchy to suit their distinctive purposes as “The Woman Question.” As in: what to do about women who think they are men’s equals. Give them the right to vote and the next thing you know they'll be wanting to wear trousers. In public, yet!
Eugenics
During those narratives set around the turn of the 20th century, eugenics was historically viewed as an actual science. Even some who were otherwise absolutely brilliant on nearly every major issue of the day managed somehow to get sucked in by the snake oil salesman selling the idea including Helen Keller and H.G. Wells. Admittedly, for many at the time and for anyone of any sense today, eugenic is no longer associated with science at all and been allowed to lapse into the realm of metaphor for misguided attempts to improve the human race base on racial prejudice, gender bias and a general attitude of dismissal towards both the physical and mentally impaired. Of course, it also carries a strong metaphorical connotation with horrendous Nazi experiments, the imposition of mandatory sterility for entire groups and the Holocaust. How Helen Keller managed to get herself mixed up with it is one of life’s unsolved mysteries.
The Hackneyed Metaphor
One of the narrators passes judgment on a simile engaged by another:
“Sachiyo de Pauling demonstrated how with a simple piece of copper wire and patience, one could train bamboo to spiral upward, she said, like a dancer spinning to the heavens. The metaphor felt a bit hackneyed, or maybe first generation, Dorothy will say to Charles later, but compelling nonetheless.”
That’s part of the genius of the metaphor, its unexpected ability to be effective even when it attains a level of triteness. Of course, one might well argue that the image of a dancer spinning to heaven really doesn’t feel all that familiar.
