54 pages • 1-hour read
By a Thread
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Themes
Balancing Personal and Professional Responsibilities
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes references to sexual harassment and child abandonment.
By a Thread is a romantic comedy that embraces the workplace romance plot to explore the complications of balancing one’s personal and professional responsibilities. When Ally Morales and Dominic Russo first begin working together at Label, they are antagonistic. Although neither likes the other, each has a personal stake in working at Label, which compels them to maintain professionalism despite their discomfort: Ally needs the job to pay for her dad’s care, renovate his house, and support herself, while Dominic is determined to “[p]rotect [his family’s] name at all costs” (29). However, the more attracted they become to one another, the more difficult it is for them to manage their duties without giving in to their desires. Ally and Dominic’s dynamic is the novel’s primary conflict, underscoring the social complexities of workplace spheres. Ultimately, they achieve balance between their personal and professional lives by embracing open communication with each other, their bosses, and their colleagues.
Ally’s storyline further comments on the challenge of establishing work-life balance. In Ally’s chapters, Score highlights the difficulty of finding time for oneself while attempting to make ends meet, care for family, and pursue one’s dreams. Ever since leaving Colorado, Ally has been stretched between competing obligations: “If [she doesn’t] schedule every single task, it might fall off [her] plate and get kicked under some piece of metaphorical furniture only to be remembered months later in the middle of the night” (65). She teaches dance glass, bartends, serves, does freelance graphic design work, renovates her dad’s house, visits her dad at the nursing home, and works at Label. She has so many responsibilities that she lives in constant fear of forgetting something or disappointing someone. Her fear in turn inspires her to neglect her personal needs: She declines offers to go out or dismisses chances at romance because she doesn’t have time; worse, she forgoes heat and food to pay her bills. These facets of Ally’s storyline show how contemporary single women are expected to fulfill an impossible number of roles without help. It is not until Dominic assumes a more central role in Ally’s life that her personal and professional lives become more cohesive and manageable. Dominic symbolizes stability and takes on a protector and caretaker role in Ally’s story. He doesn’t disempower her by helping her; rather, he lets her enjoy her life again by alleviating some of her personal and professional strain.
Overcoming Personal Demons
Both Ally and Dominic have fraught pasts that shadow their lives in the present. Because neither has overtly confronted the past, these wounds continue to fester. For Ally, the past is defined by her complicated relationship with her absent mother and the life she was forced to leave behind in Colorado. Ally is a self-possessed woman who is determined to find happiness in spite of her familial, economic, and work stressors. However, her unresolved sorrow over her mother’s decision to abandon the family and to steal from her dad complicates Ally’s personal growth. Over the course of the novel, her relationship with Dominic encourages her to face the hurt she’s experienced and to move beyond it.
Dominic’s past trauma is even more severe. His narrative chapters convey through internal monologues how badly his father has hurt him. In the narrative present, Dominic feels forced to maintain an austere, controlled demeanor. He is terrified of behaving the way his father did—having inappropriate and exploitative sexual relationships with employees—so Dominic tries to completely repress all traces of his personality to prove that “unlike [his] father,” he “ha[s] self-control” (75). For this reason, Dominic tries to stave off his feelings for Ally. He sees his attraction to her as a fundamental mark against his character. Because of Paul’s history of sexual harassment and abuse, Dominic sees sexual desire in the workplace as synonymous with moral depravity. He repeatedly refuses to enter a relationship with Ally because he believes he needs “to prove to [him]self that [he isn’t] anything like [Paul]” (136). Even after he and Ally begin their sexual and romantic relationship, Dominic’s inner demons continue to threaten his emotional stability. Dominic becomes convinced that Ally is cheating on and using him—projecting unresolved anger onto her as it clouds his perception of reality. Only when he faces the ways Paul and ex-girlfriend Elena harmed him can Dominic develop a healthy dynamic with Ally.
Dominic and Ally’s reunion at the novel’s end shows how letting go of past demons can make room for a more sustainable future. In particular, Score uses Dominic’s emails to Ally to reify his work to confront and reconcile with his experiences. In the emails, he shares more specifics about his trauma. By opening up, he is acknowledging his pain and putting it in its place so it can’t control him. In turn, he’s able to make more overt external changes—helping Ally and repairing workplace morale.
Communication and Vulnerability in Relationships
The ups and downs of Ally and Dominic’s enemies-to-lovers romance reveal the importance of embracing communication and vulnerability in intimate relationships. When Ally and Dominic first meet, they’re at odds. Ally sees Dominic as entitled and arrogant and has no interest in trying to endear herself to him. Dominic sees Ally as bad-mannered and hot-tempered and shows her little kindness or sympathy. However, once they start working together at Label, they begin to enjoy one another’s company—a revelation largely inspired by their physical attraction and the high they get from verbally sparring. Over time they must learn to open up to each other to translate this initial passion into more sustainable, reciprocal companionship.
The author uses dialogue and intimate settings to capture how the protagonists work to be vulnerable and communicate with each other. When Ally and Dominic are inside Dominic’s office at Label, spend time at Dominic’s house, drive in the car, or visit Ally’s house, they have more authentic interactions. These settings are insular and contained. They’re also private. Being protected from the public scrutiny of the workplace encourages Ally and Dominic to be more emotionally authentic.
For Dominic, the road to vulnerability and open communication is longer than for Ally because his personal growth journey is more complex. For example, when Ally begs him to stop “go[ing] into some shame spiral” (247) every time they’re together and to open up to her about his feelings, Dominic lapses into silence. In his subsequent internal monologue, he admits his self-flagellation and his fear of revealing the truth to her: “I hated myself. I wanted to tell her why. To tell her everything. How it was all my fault that my father had free rein to inflict the damage he’d done. But I couldn’t unpack that. Not to her. Not to anyone. Russos didn’t air their dirty laundry” (247). Dominic’s conflicted inner state shows that he cares for Ally but still sees vulnerability as a sign of weakness.
Over the course of weeks, he learns to own his emotional experience and no longer sees having been the victim of others as a moral failing. Simultaneously, Ally’s openness with Dominic encourages him to be open, too. The emails he sends Ally at the novel’s end reify his work to pursue vulnerability and honest communication so that he and Ally can achieve a balanced, healthy dynamic.
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