In Silence the Strands Unravel

CAFRA is pleased to note that “In Silence the Strands Unravel” has become a textbook for the Social Science Course at Mc Master University, Toronto, Canada, for the second consecutive semester.

When CAFRA launched this book in February 2000 its author Sybil Seaforth was commended for breaking the silence on an aspect of Domestic Violence that it has become norm to hide.

In assessing the importance of the work, Professor Geraldine Voros points to the book’s reference to women living in denial, masking their pain, and presenting to the world a stable loving relationship, living in silence, minimising the abuse, and entering into self victimisation.

“In Silence the Strands Unravel” gives important lessons towards cultivating the vital tool of communication.

We reprint here the article in our January – June 2000 issue of CAFRA NEWS.

REVIEW In Silence the Strands Unravel By Anne-Louise Tam

“In Silence the Strands Unravel” is Sybil Seaforth’s fourth novel. It is however her first adult novel. It is a courageous attempt by Mrs. Seaforth who undertakes a quasi-psychological incursion into the psyche of professional Cantillean men in order to find the rationale for their marital infidelity and ultimate abandonment of their middle aged and menopausal wives.

The main character of the novel is Jessica Bright, long suffering wife of 30 years to Lionel Bright, a professional man. Jessica is the classic victim of the Cinderella Complex.

These are the women who have been socialised to believe that marriage will bring the ultimate fulfilment. They wait for their knight in shining armour to come along, and then willingly commit the ultimate sacrifice, abandoning career and self in order to serve their lord and master. She is of the old school that taught the duty of the wife is to serve and be submissive to the husband’s will. “Wither thou goest I go”. Jessica sacrifices for her husband’s career, mother his three children and gives 30 years of unpaid labour, but loses more than her independence in the process. She loses her self-esteem, and her self-image and self-respect are in jeopardy.

It is at this point the novel begins. Throughout, Jessica ruminates and reflects, albeit going over the same ground over and over again, much as someone looking for a precious lost item would go over the same ground; trying to create some meaning, or hoping to discover the cause of the failure of the relationship.

The motif of male infidelity and abandonment of the wife is heavily embroidered in the main fabric of the novel, as well as its borders, by revealing the parallel lives of at least two other couples, whose marriages and relationships are undergoing the same strain as Jessica’s. Ruth and Norma write letters and have conversations on the telephone that echo Jessica’s anguish. They agonise over their husbands’ betrayal, and their insensitive and cruel treatment.

The form of the novel is, for the main part, dialogue or letters and sometimes entries in Jessica’s diary. This facilitates the introspective nature of the book. At times however the narrative voices becomes a bit nebulous, as for example in the shift from third person to the first person narrative. Nonetheless, the immediacy of the experience is captured.

What may indeed be a flaw, can almost be accepted as a cinematographic technique. The story starts off as having a narrator, and then the camera moves in a close-up of the real life character actually living out the story. Jessica becomes the analyst observing Lionel’s behaviour, herself and the relationship from outside, almost clinically, trying to be objective, but not always succeeding. Her emotions overpower her and sentimentality clouds her reasoning. Sometimes what we must remember, though, is that we can only measure and interpret our experiences by our own values and sensibilities, and Jessica is doing the best she knows how. Thus while we feel sympathy for her, we are also a little impatient for her to move on.

It is a fear of independence, sentimentality and low self-esteem that keep her clinging to a marriage that seems long over. For a long time she has lived as an appendage of Lionel, and he has the power to crush her and destroy her but only because she gives it to him. This he does over and over, using silence as a weapon to negate her, until she is in danger of becoming invisible.

The writer, in searching for answers to this universal problem of the male/female relationship, and the dissolution of marriage, presents some very interesting theories in the book. Could Cantillean men’s abandonment of their menopausal wives have something to do with a transference of their resentment of the mother, or female figure; a negative consequence of being raised in a matrifocal and matriarchal society. And is the fear of intimacy (outside the sexual arena) in the Cantillean male linked to a deep psychic wound that they have suffered from not having fathers play a nurturing role in their lives?

The book is certainly worth reading, if we as a society are serious in looking for answers to these questions. If there are some syntactic flaws in the novel, it is redeemed by some beautifully painted passages of brilliant colour and poetic synthesis.

The women in “In Silence the Strands Unravel” are melodramatic, very intense, romantic, but they possess an inner spiritual strength that saves them and helps them to reclaim and reshape their lives. Jessica, reflective and cautious, holds on to her values refusing to compromise, or to submit to the New World order of extra marital affairs. We are reminded of D.H. Lawrence’s female character, Anna Brangwen in “The Rainbow”, who thinks that in giving of her body she gives of the kernel of her being. Soul, body, mind and spirit.

In the end, we cheer as Jessica and the other women finally manage to disentangle their battered and mangled spirits and empower themselves to resurrect abandoned careers, moving on to achieve academic and professional success and international acclamation. The book is a valuable testimony for the many women who unfortunately cannot give voice to their pain and triumph in dealing with their own broken relationships. The book is certainly worth a read. ♀