Kaleidoscopic
Claudia narrates, “My readers know the story, of course…The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history? I’ve always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresy. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of a myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water.” The metaphoric kaleidoscopic alludes to the non-chronological nature of Claudia’s plot. Claudia’s remembrance of her life is not systematic; it trails mixed-up accounts.
Palaeolithic
Claudia elucidates, “The Palaeolithic, for me, is just one shake of the pattern away from the nineteenth century-which first effectively noticed it, noticed upon what they were walking. Who could not be attracted to those majestic figures, striding about the beaches and hillsides, overdressed and bewhiskered, pondering immensities? Poor misguided Phillip Gosse, Hugh Miller and Lyell and Darwin himself. There seems a natural affinity between frock coats and beards and the resonances of the rocks-Mesozoic and Triassic, oolite and lias, Cornbrash and Greensand.” For Claudia, the nineteenth century is her archetypal Palaeolithic which she catalogues using the walking style the figures of bodies which were predominant during the century. Moreover, the ubiquity of “frock coats and beard’ is another distinguishing factor of Claudia’s Palaeolithic.
Rivals
Claudia recalls, “Long ago, when we were thirteen and fourteen and rivals in everything, we competed for the attention of a young man Mother hired one summer as tutor. He was supposed to coach Gordon in Greek and Latin.” The rhetorical rival accentuates the omnipresent competitiveness between Claudia and Gordon. Each one of them craves for the teacher’s devotion.
