Book discussion: Fire and Hemlock, Parts Three and Four (and Coda)

[shimotsuki]

Here is the second of two discussion posts for Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. This post is currently public, so that anyone interested can read and join in the discussion, but if any of my f-listers would prefer that I f-lock the post instead, let me know and I will do that.

What became blindingly obvious to me in the course of the first discussion post :) is that much of the fun of discussing this book will come from trying to figure out how the story builds up to the climax -- what all the stuff in the first half (and Part Three) means in the context of what we find out in the end. I will start things off with just one discussion topic, because this is the one that is driving me the most to distraction in trying to figure it out: ;)

Why Polly? What is it that gives Polly the potential to spring Tom from Laurel and the Fairy Court? I have to admit that I'm still working on my reread, so I haven't made it all the way through Parts Three and Four a second time and may therefore be missing clues that are obvious answers to this question. But some ideas I had about this are:

• Tom definitely latches onto Polly as if she is his only hope. We are reminded several times that even before Laurel's intervention, Polly would sometimes almost forget about her Mr. Lynn and the Hero Business, but Tom would always keep writing to her and sending her books; clearly he doesn't want her to forget about him, even before he starts sending books that are actually clues to his own situation.
  
• If Polly is Tom's only hope, why is it her? Is it because she is the only outsider to show up at Hunsdon House on the first Halloween? Or is it because she is the one who first brings up the idea of Being Things to Tom? When she and Tom both see the water in the empty pond, is that a sign that she is the one who can help him, or is it that event that makes her be able to help him? What role do the Nowhere Vases play in this, since (here I go beating a dead horse) Seb definitely accuses Polly of "working the vases" (even though she didn't really touch them herself)? -- and yet, the incident with the water in the pool happens before the vases, and may even be what causes Tom to show Polly the vases at all.
  
• Does Granny, or Granny's past, have anything to do with Polly being the one who can help Tom? Probably not; indeed, we know that Granny sends Tom packing at the point where he's about to go to Australia. But, still, how much does Granny know all along? I think right away she knows or suspects that Tom is the current young man in Laurel's clutches; she seems to relax when he tells her that he is a musician in London (so perhaps she understands that he is trying to extricate himself), and before the outing to Stow-on-the-Water, she tells Polly, "I'm not sure I like it, Polly, but if he's free to ask, I suppose he must want to see you." And yet, when Granny and Polly are working out what Polly has to do to try to save Tom, Granny says she wishes she'd known all that in time to save her own husband -- so when Polly was young and Tom was starting to befriend her, did Granny already know he would need a girl to help him break free (even if she hadn't known that in her own youth)? And if not, why was she willing to let Polly see Tom, despite her unease about him being from That House? (Pity is another possibility, I suppose.)
  
• What role do the two photos play in the magic that connects Polly with Tom? If I understood the ending correctly, the "Fire and Hemlock" photo is part of the magic that originally enslaved Tom to Laurel, so it must be significant that he gets it out of Hunsdon House and gives it to Polly. It also seems important that Polly is looking at that photo when she begins to recover the memories that Laurel, or Mr. Leroy, had taken away; is that (along with the changed version of the quartet's book?) part of why she is suddenly able to remember? Then there's the photo of Tom; some kind of magic let Polly see it in the mirror at Hunsdon House. Is that another consequence of the fact that she is the one who can save Tom? Or is some benign magic in Hunsdon House deliberately showing her that to help out? Surely it's significant that she takes the photo out of the house, even though Laurel or Mr. Leroy apparently steal it back later.

Now that I've started, it's hard to stop, heh. I have so many more questions, too, but I guess I'll raise those in a comment below, later tonight or tomorrow sometime.

So there are some questions to possibly start the discussion going, but don't feel you have to address those in order to post. Anything at all is fair game. What did you like or not like about the book? Are there any cool things you figured out about how the magic worked or about how the threads of the story came together? What questions do you still have about what happened? (I'm really hoping that as a group we can figure some stuff out.)

Finally, here are some extra links for fun and more information:

• Here's a link that gilpin25 found to an essay by DWJ about what her influences were in writing Fire and Hemlock (scroll down to links at bottom of that page). [I haven't had time to read this yet, so it's possible that I have just embarrassed myself completely and all the questions I tried to raise in this post have been neatly answered by DWJ already, heh.]
  
  
• I really wanted to post a link to the Steeleye Span version of the "Tam Lin" ballad (from "Tonight's the Night Live"), but it doesn't seem to be online anywhere. :( Here are a couple of other versions:
  • Tam Lin - Fairport Convention (classic folk-rock version)
    
  • The Tale of Tam Lin - Bill Jones (vocal and piano; reminds me of Kate Rusby, or a less-lushly-produced Loreena McKennitt)
    
  • Bonus extra link -- there's also an instrumental Irish/Scottish trad reel called "Tam Lin," which my Irish session group plays, and I found a version on cello ;) (it takes her a little while to get the tune up to "normal" speed; start listening at 1:30 to get a taste)

Let me close by saying that I really enjoyed reading this book, and that would have been fun on its own, but it made it even more fun to have a bunch of people on LJ to read and discuss it with. Thanks, all. ♥
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Comments

[jobey-in-error.livejournal.com]

That's a good idea.

Tangentially, I was thinking a lot about the fairy tales I already knew. One motif that came out very strongly for me was Polly using the magic to "see" Tom (and Laurel!) even though she sensed it was wrong.

When I TA'd for a fairy tale course, we saw this motif in a lot of stories across Europe/Russia -- it goes all the way back, of course, to at least Psyche and Cupid. One lover looks upon the other, or destroys their cover, too soon, and loses the lover, usually with the "wronged" lover (but (s)he's not indignant, just matter-of-fact + sad) saying something like, "If you had only waited one year, I would have been yours forever."

It's been niggling at me because, in the psychological (especially Freudian) interpretation, which for once made a lot of sense, the message or truth was that the lover with something to hide was still growing somehow*, but you can't force people's development -- even if the alternative is you being maddeningly patient, that's the only way; it has to come at their own time or you disrupt and maybe even derail it. And then it's almost impossible (although of course in fairy stories you find a way) to make good the damage you've done to the person -- and your relationship with them.

And, of course, "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" is one of those tales.

Anyway, this may very well be a digression, but I've been going about wondering if it's fair to apply this interpretation to Polly and Tom, or whether this more fleshed-out version of the motif doesn't lend itself.

I guess it mostly fits -- it has the extra detail of giving a mechanism (Laurel) to explain why the violation of privacy results in the separation -- but the implication was that Polly might have been able to wriggle Tom loose from Hunsdon House the way they were going. Except Tom had pushed her away. And I'm still not sure what would have happened in those four years that would have made the difference if Polly hadn't "looked" and given themselves away to Laurel. How else, exactly, were Hero and Tan Coul becoming less Hunsdon-y?

[shimotsuki.livejournal.com]

it goes all the way back, of course, to at least Psyche and Cupid

Ooh, you're very good. I just read the DWJ essay, and she considers the story of Cupid and Psyche to be a sort of subterranean influence on F&H. (Apparently she once pointed out to her editor that Tom is nearly blind, and works with a bow -- I can't help a little eyeroll at that, but the point is a good one, about the recurring theme of failing by trying to look at what you're not supposed to see.)

I've been going about wondering if it's fair to apply this interpretation to Polly and Tom, or whether this more fleshed-out version of the motif doesn't lend itself.

Despite Polly being the one who "looked," you'd almost think she would be in the role of the one who wasn't finished growing yet, since she was the one who was still a child! For all that the four years' separation must have been brutally hard on Tom, especially if that got him re-ensnared, it does manage to make the idea of a romance between these characters less squicky, since Polly is (more or less) grown up by the time they meet again.

And I'm still not sure what would have happened in those four years that would have made the difference if Polly hadn't "looked" and given themselves away to Laurel. How else, exactly, were Hero and Tan Coul becoming less Hunsdon-y?

That's something I still really don't understand. Maybe part of it was that Tom was increasingly doing, and achieving, things on his own, like the quartet? If so, the conversation between Tom and Mr. Leroy that Polly magically overhears, where Mr. Leroy is trying (unsuccessfully) to force Tom to accept financial backing from Hunsdon House, would certainly make a lot of sense. But Polly must have been at the heart of the process, since it was the connection with her, and not (say) the quartet, that Tom lost as a result of Polly's meddling.