Siri Hudsvedt's 'The Summer without Men' and its Visual Narrative

Quite recently, the fiction class I am in has finished looking at Siri Hudsvedt's The Summer without Men and nobody but myself had bothered to mention the visual narrative contained within the text, which in itself tells the story contained but in a short burst of four illustrations.

 This disappointed me, as I am disappointed in any other form of literary analysis where the inclusion of visual elements is evident. The author, in this case, has most certainly placed those illustrations there on purpose thus you cannot entirely unpack and analyse the story itself alone because there within it lies an entire different narrative, not different of course in terms of the context, but certainly different in terms of the way in which the context is presented - visually.

And they preach about catering for the needs of varied intelligences of students within a classroom setting yet they do not perform this. I am a visual person, and if my teacher had come into class that day and told us about the exciting visual narrative contained within The Summer without Men then I would have most definitely paid more attention than I did that day. And I cannot help it. Though, I did mention it in a class discussion and it seemed foreign to my teacher and classmates. It honestly upset me. 

I did, however, sneakily include the analysis of these four illustrations in my essay response to the text and another text, right before the conclusion. I am yet to know how my teacher will react to this but I surely hope she does not react the same way as she did in class that day. What I said is not entirely foreign to my peers, either, so I am failing to understand why they treated the idea that I imposed like it were. All I mentioned was that The Summer without Men contains an alternate narrative in its four illustrations. Now, I know that most of my peers have not read the text, but out of the ones that did, did they just merely pass each illustration without thinking more of it? How could they just ignore each of them? The meaning contained within each is humungous, and when analysed by myself, did play out the text visually.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with the text, it follows the mental breakdown and transformation of the protagonist, Mia, whose husband of thirty years, Boris, decides to have a 'pause' in their marriage to pursue a younger French co-worker. He has an affair with this co-worker, and decides to try to come back to Mia, who in the meanwhile, was admitted into a psychiatric facility and ends up spending her summer indeed, with no men in sight. It is in interesting story, delivered in a very intellectual manner, and contains aspects of feminism which work to liberate females from their stereotypical roles.

This first image, located early on in the book, shows the protagonist 'boxed in', per se, and drowning in the box that she is caught in. She is stretching out her two hands, in attempt to receive help, in the same likeness that a drowning person would. This would perhaps suggest that at this stage, she is drowning in her mental agitation, or perhaps even her situation which had completely stumped her, seeing as her husband is quite a rational person - what had caused him to behave so irrationally?

 The second image, above, shows Mia slyly coming out of the box which had her imprisoned for quite some time. The look on her face suggests that she is far more comfortable in the situation now, compared to the previous look where she appeared to be panicky. She is now studying the world outside of the bow that had encapsulated her, and is about to take flight.

This third illustration brings in another character, who I think to be Abigail - in the novel, Abigail is an old lady who is part of Mia's mother's friendship group, 'The Swans', and secretly embroiders women acting against the social norms of females, for example performing masturbatory activities, within her craftworks. Now, judging by that and judging by the fact that Abigail allowed only Mia to see these craftworks makes me think that this is her in the image, showing Mia the different ways women should be able to thrive, and Mia taking it into account, now fully out of the box.

The final image is not only the most important, but the most liberating, because that is indeed what is being portrayed - Mia is liberated utterly from the box of norms, of troubles, of agitation, and is now floating in serenity. This could also suggest that she has a freer headspace, and now does not take the situation she is in as really bad.

From these images, one could create an entirely new narrative, or having read the text, can align it with the narrative provided. This is why I was ashamed when nobody took them into account. They do indeed tell another story and should not be flicked away like a read page in a book. The saying 'a picture tells a thousand words' indeed applies to this, and as a person highly interested in art as I am in literature, I agree to this with no hesitation. Art, any form of art, has meaning, and this one cannot be ignored. I highly recommend the reading of this text, and the noticing of its four key drawings.