The Bookbinder
56 pages • 1-hour read
Pip WilliamsThe Bookbinder
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Symbols & Motifs
Content Warning: This section features discussion of graphic wartime violence and death of a child.
Calliope
Calliope is the narrowboat that Peggy lives on, but she also comes to symbolize Peggy’s world, her background, and the ideas that surround her. Calliope was named by Peggy’s mother after the ancient Greek muse of poetry, the muse that inspired Homer (Peggy’s Ma, Helen Penelope Jones, is named after the major female characters of both epic poems attributed to Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey). The very name Calliope thus alludes to a source of inspiration, and that is what Ma’s library (and the books Peggy adds to it) means to her. When Gwen observes that Peggy has nearly all of the books she’ll need for the Somerville entrance exam available to her already, this only shows how rich Peggy’s life has been in terms of story, ideas, and imagination, all provided for and nurtured in her by her mother. Calliope, or more correctly Calliope’s library, thus becomes the muse that leads Peggy to follow her dream of applying to Somerville College.
At the same time, this is Peggy’s home, and the tightness of the space provides its own symbol: Narrowboats were designed to navigate the canals of Britain, transporting goods faster than wagons and roads. The lack of a stick-built home puts Peggy at the bottom of the socioeconomic class system in terms of wealth, stature, and therefore class, and she feels this will become a literal narrowness that will close her out of opportunities like being a scholar, traveling, or even living independently. Calliope also represents Peggy’s obligations to her family, which is now Maude. Peggy initially feels that responsibility is a tether, just as Calliope, though designed to be a vessel of travel, stays in one place. In this way, Calliope represents both the anchor that holds Peggy in place and the sphere in which she finds it possible to long for more in her life.
Women’s Words
The dictionary that Peggy helps Mr. Owen create for his sweetheart, Esme, comes to symbolize the value of women’s ideas and women’s accomplishments that have traditionally been undervalued in Peggy’s experience. In Peggy’s world, workplaces, universities, the political sphere, and even domestic spaces all tend to be segregated by gender. For instance, Rosie Rowntree stays in one place to care for her children—as indicated by the name of her narrowboat, the Staying Put—while her husband, Oberon, travels for his work. As the issue of suffrage (the right to vote) shows, men’s voices and ideas are more frequently privileged over women’s. Peggy notes this is true of literature as well: There are far fewer women in the established canon of English literature than men. Tilda notes of the war effort that men’s labor is discussed in terms of valor and heroics, while women’s work of nursing, care, and filling in is simply expected.
Peeking into Women’s Words, which makes a legitimate dictionary out of words that have a special meaning and valence for women, feels to Peggy almost like a magical secret—the possibility that women’s ideas and contributions could matter and be equally valued. This is personally inspiring to her because she wants to study those ideas and contribute her own someday. In its examination of the physical process of making books and the legacy they leave for readers, The Bookbinder asks if words might belong to gender-segregated places as well—and questions whether they should. This continues a theme raised in Williams’s debut novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, in which Esme Nicoll is the protagonist.
St. Sepulchre’s Cemetery
St. Sepulchre’s Cemetery, as a burial ground, symbolizes what is lost and provides an opportunity for different characters to come to terms with their losses and sources of grief. Bastiaan, who undergoes an explicit journey of healing and recovery, becomes the ally and mentor who helps Peggy come to terms with the loss of her mother and, more broadly, the choices Peggy has made around her family.
Bastiaan initially seeks the cemetery because it is a place of quiet and isolation from the living, and he is self-conscious about the reaction other people have to his scars. Bastiaan is also visiting the graves because he is looking for a way to deal with the trauma he has experienced, both in what he witnessed during the Sack of Louvain and the personal injuries, mental and physical, that he sustained in fighting. By making a metaphorical association of his own ghosts befriending a resident of St. Sepulchre’s, Bastiaan imagines he is giving what haunts him a place to rest, letting him heal and be free.
Peggy experiences her own healing when she visits her mother’s grave and sees the inscriptions. Since she is ashamed that she couldn’t bear to witness her mother’s death or burial, Peggy has not given herself space to grieve or fully acknowledge her mother’s advice and hopes for her. Confronting her sense of failure for not being admitted to Somerville College on her first try leads Peggy to finally admit how she has held herself back and limited her own opportunities, using Maude as an excuse. In finally admitting her own dreams to herself as well as seeing her place in their family more clearly, Peggy lays her own ghosts to rest and is able to make peace with her various losses and griefs.
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