“On the Ark, time doesn’t work normally and nor do clocks: all the stories, from past present and future, are here, rubbing shoulders in the dark.”
Those looking for a simplistic sort of women-centric retelling of the story of Noah and the flood ala the Steve Carell comedy Evan Almighty are in for a disappointment. Despite what the title may imply, this is not even close to a parody or satire. It is a deeply committed and profoundly complex re-examination of the familiarities of myth which explore the absence of the feminine through investigation and reorientation. Noah is not even named Noah and the Ark in question is metaphorical. This aspect is made clear enough through the language of this quote: what Mrs. Noah pursues is not a vessel in which animals are made the focus, but a vessel in which women are diminished if not actually absent.
“There’s Hildegard of Bingen discussing gardening with Christina de Pisan and Marie de France. There’s the Mills and the Boon cohort alertly discussing structuralism with George Eliot. There’s Madame de Sevigne offering the milk just to the Catherine of Siena. There’s Anne Bradstreet scribbling poems on the tablecloth. Grazia Deledda playing cats-cradle with Simone de Beauvoir.”
The names here are likely unfamiliar to many people; probably more familiar to readers of the novel. They are women authors through history—actual historical figures—whose work has often suffered demonization at the hands of the patriarchal control of publishing. While perhaps some may be more famous others—Eliot and Bradstreet more than de Pisan and Deledda, for example—they are all authors for whom a strong claim can be made that they should be more broadly recognized than they are. The Ark is a metaphorical vessel that seeks to gather two by two not the animals of the world to ensure future preservation, but the lost stories of women of the history to introduce to future generations.
“History doesn’t make sense without you, he cries: too many so-definitive anthologies, compiled by men of course, leave you out. The idea of a canon is a con. The great tradition is a fake.”
Like the quote and, indeed, like much of the entire book, this vision is a fantasy existing only in the mind of Mrs. Noah. The novel is symbolic and allegorical to the point of almost existing entirely within that frame. The Gaffer is an enigmatic character—the only real male character of significance and that includes the Noah figure—who claims to have written the Bible. He is currently suffering writer’s block and intrudes upon the women in the Mrs. Noah’s circle looking for a solution to that condition. But it is not really the Gaffer’s ideas here. Rather that is a fantasy vision that Mrs. Noah entertains as a logical endgame to the Gaffer’s intrusion which, in typical fantasy mode, plays out as redemption and reversal. The quote is another example of readers approaching this novel should be wary of its serious purpose and not assume from its misleading title that it is something more whimsical or playful.
