The Invisible Hour

Each major choice in the novel involves a significant risk and a potential reward, and many of the choices are ones between life and either death or simple survival. Ivy’s sense that her pregnancy, and therefore her body and her child, are being co-opted by her parents leads her to run away to the Community. Joel, as the head of the Community, reduces choices to following or breaking the rules, and Kayla’s pregnancy demonstrates what happens when neither option is possible. Similarly, the hill Elizabeth shows to Mia represents the impossibly difficult choices of women in the 19th century. Mia chooses to escape rather than die by suicide; however, her most important choice is whether to live for the future or allow herself to disappear into the past. Each of these choices carries a risk or promises a potential reward. Through exploring decisions that the characters are—and aren’t—able to make, the novel suggests that true choice can only be found when characters are able to imaginatively move past societal limitations.

One of Joel’s primary methods of control is to reduce choices to following his rules or breaking them. He creates a society in which there is only right and wrong, and his rules are strict and absolute. As a result, the members of the Community have only one choice: follow Joel or receive punishment. Joel claims that this strictness demonstrates that in every action of life, they are all equal and worthy of love. One of the primary rules is the prohibition against terminating pregnancies. When Kayla becomes pregnant with Joel’s baby, she says, “I can’t have it, and I’m not allowed to get rid of it, so where does that leave me?” (30). If she breaks the rules and attempts to visit the clinic, she’ll be branded. If she proceeds with her pregnancy, it will become clear that she’s acted immorally and will be branded. She makes the only choice she thinks she has: She tries to terminate the pregnancy with herbs, which kills her. Joel takes away her choice by selecting her for his sexual attention and then refuses to acknowledge her conflict, leading to her death. Kayla’s decision underscores the difficulty and danger of taking agency in a world where choice is constrained, revealing both the effectiveness and the cruelty of Joel’s form of control.

Kayla’s early death is a microcosm of the novel’s broader exploration of women’s choices involving pregnancy. Elizabeth tells Mia of a 19th-century mother and daughter who froze to death because the woman could not be part of society if she gave birth to a child out of wedlock; that mother chose to give birth but was prevented by societal rules from providing for her daughter. Other women in the novel choose to terminate their pregnancies with herbs, as Kayla did, risking their lives in the process but preserving their societal status and freedom. The two names of the hill on which women pick herbs for abortion—“the Hill of Death” and “Salvation Point” (167)—demonstrate the mixed feelings associated with unplanned pregnancy. Ivy chooses to keep her child but must run away from home and loses herself in the Community as a result. Helen says to Mia that when Ivy became pregnant, “it was an especially different time for women and girls” (98). She reflects, “I fear that time is with us once again, and women don’t have the right to make decisions about their own bodies” (98), referencing laws like the Community’s prohibition on abortion. However, Mia’s choice to keep her baby and to use her daughter’s existence as a justification for refusing invisibility and embracing strength indicates a hopeful portrait of increased choices in the future.

Mia and Nathaniel both make the choice to live rather than die or sleepwalk through life, a choice that requires both imagination and faith in the future. The Scarlet Letter offers Mia an alternative to drowning in the river, and although she arrives at the riverbank believing that her only choice is to bend to Joel or die by suicide, she conceives of a different choice. The risk of that choice is that she could be caught and brought back, and the actual consequence of the choice to escape is that she spends many years afraid of Joel. Her escape isn’t complete until the end of the novel when she chooses to trick and trap Joel to reclaim her life and her future, a creative act that allows her to build a more hopeful future. Nathaniel’s heartbreak and dark moods lead him to hide from life. When Elizabeth brings him home from the tavern, he says to her, “We do not live in our house […] we only vegetate” (184). She tells him firmly, “You could easily walk away and leave that haunted room of yours” (184), highlighting how many choices he does have, regardless of his perception. Mia finally convinces Nathaniel to choose literature and life because of the beauty inherent in life. He risks further heartbreak, but the rewards are his novels, his happy marriage, and his children.