Texts and Textiles

Texts and Textiles:

Affect, Synaesthesia and

Metaphor in Fiction

By

Diana Mary Eva Thomas

Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction

By Diana Mary Eva Thomas

This book first published 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2016 by Diana Mary Eva Thomas

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-0079-1

ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-0079-2
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations .................................................................................... vii

Acknowledgements .................................................................................... ix

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1

Chapter One ............................................................................................... 13

Touch and Memory

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 29

Synaesthesia and Synaesthetic Metaphor

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 49

Affect and Reading

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 69

Quilts and Quilt-making

Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 115

Knitting

Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 159

Embroidery

Conclusion ............................................................................................... 195

Appendix A: Sean Day’s word-list for electronic scanning .................... 201

Appendix B: Metaphors in quilting, knitting and embroidery fiction ..... 203
Appendix C: Synaesthetic metaphors in the texts.................................... 205
Appendix D: Novels listed by publication date ...................................... 209

Bibliography ............................................................................................ 213

 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. 1-1. Cover of Southerly Number 3 (1991).......................................... 27

Fig. 4-1. Tristan quilt, c.1359 ................................................................... 73
Fig. 4-2. The Rajah Quilt, 1841................................................................. 75
Fig. 5-1. The Sock Knitter 1915 by Grace Cossington Smith .................. 119
Fig. 5-2. The Buxtehude Madonna, late 1300s ........................................ 155
Fig. 5-3. Saint Mary Magdalene by Tilman Riemenschneider ................ 156
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the amazing support, assistance and

encouragement given by my PhD supervisors at The University of
Wollongong, Associate Professor Paul Sharrad and Associate Professor
Anne Collett, Professor Diana Wood Conroy and Dr Dorothy Jones.
Associate Professor Paul Sharrad was exceptional.

My family and friends are always supportive—I would particularly

like to thank Carol Stiles, Robin Monk, Belinda Simpson, Di Cato and
“The Librarians”, my friends—Carol, Janelle Smith and Cathy Anderson. I
owe a special debt to Lyn Hawkins, former Library Manager at
Shoalhaven City Library, whose initial encouragement created the impetus
for this work. My mother, Clarice Thomas (1917-1999), remains an
inspiration.

Special thanks go to Kate Grenville, Marele Day, Anne Bartlett and

Marion Halligan for allowing me to quote from their novels.
 INTRODUCTION

An ancient metaphor: thought is a thread, and the raconteur is a spinner of

yarns—but the true storyteller, the poet, is a weaver. The scribes made this
old and audible abstraction into a new and visible fact. After long practice,
their work took on such an even, flexible texture that they called the
written page a textus1, which means cloth. (Bringhurst 2004, 25)

The epigraph to this chapter succinctly draws together the affinity

between the woven word and the woven cloth. Furthermore, the origins of
the words “text” and “textile” underline the complexity of the connections
and interrelationships between the two concepts. The word “text” is
derived from “late Middle English: from Old Northern French texte, from
Latin textus ‘tissue, literary style’ … , from text— ‘woven’, from the verb
texere” (Oxford Dictionary of English 2010). Similarly, “textile” is
derived from “early 17th cent.: from Latin textilis, from text—‘woven’,
from the verb texere” (Oxford Dictionary of English 2010).

It is not only in Western cultures that these pairings are evident. In

China, poetry, painting and calligraphy traditionally stem from a common
root metaphor—wen. Wen can refer to:
physical markings, patterns on coloured woven silk and painted designs of
carriages as well as writing, literature and culture.… “Wen means
assembling various colours to form brocade or embroidery, assembling
words to form phrases and meanings like patterned embroidery”.
(Goldberg 1998)

These early shared roots survive in our everyday language in the many
words and phrases that link texts and textiles together. These include:
embroidering the truth, spinning a yarn, knitting together, weaving a story,
the warp of time, fabric and fabrication, the web of life, unravelling,
tangle, fray, loose ends and wool-gathering. Alternatively, examples of
tactile words that are usually applied to textiles but are linked with

1
All quotations are given exactly as they appear in the original text unless stated
otherwise, excluding quotation marks which have been adjusted in accordance
with Chicago Style practice.
2 Introduction

language and speech include: coarse language, velvet or silky-tongued,

cotton-mouthed speech, brittle laughter, firm tone and smooth or sharp-
tongued. This is not a modern union. Stevens points out that Roman
writers such as Cicero and Quintilian used tactile descriptors (Stevens
2008, 163) to indicate the social standing of their characters. There are
marked differences between city (smooth), country (rough) and foreign
language use:
Latin has a basic aesthetic distinction between “pleasant” and
“unpleasant.” The distinction is at root tactile: pleasant is “smooth” (lenis),
unpleasant is “rough” (asper). Thus Cicero writes that urban Latin lacks
“rustic roughness” (rusticam asperitatem), being smooth by implied
contrast, as well as “foreign insolence” (peregrinam insolentiam …).
(Stevens 2008, 167)

The connections between text and textiles are also plainly seen in the
way ideas are passed on from one person to another, one culture to
another. To transmit a message that has longevity, text needs to be written
down onto a surface or incorporated into a textile. Stone, clay, bone,
bamboo, silk, wood, papyrus and parchment were the forerunners and
contemporaries of paper. Paper was first made from the papyrus plant in
Egypt and the word “paper” comes via Latin from the Greek “papuros”
(Oxford Dictionary of English 2010). The papyrus was sliced, interwoven,
pressed tightly, dried and polished to form an early version of the writing
material we know today as paper. Not only was good quality paper made
from rags (textiles) but good quality textiles (silks) were used to write on.
By the twelfth century the technology of paper and silk production had
travelled from the Islamic world to the rest of Europe (Ten Grotenhuis
2006, 10). This interchangeability of textile and paper to form the writing
material that carries the text provides another link within the text/textile
juxtapositioning. It has been argued that the Silk Road was the route used
to transport both silk and paper from China where both were made for
centuries before the West knew of either of their production techniques in
their entirety. Thus, silk and paper have a parallel history of secret
production, guarded jealously for thousands of years (Ten Grotenhuis
2006).

Christina Leitner remarks on the implicit qualities of paper in her book

Paper Textiles:
As the medium on which we write, it represents memory, human progress
and the dissemination of knowledge. In other documents, it creates
 Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction 3

identities and authorities. As money, it regulates the comparison of

products and services. (Leitner 2005, 9)

Leitner also compares the similarities between the uses of textiles and
paper and the ease with which one can be exchanged for the other. Hence,
textiles can also be used to write on, paper can be used as cloaks or floor
coverings (Leitner 2005, 11-12). She describes how the Japanese
Kamiko—or “paper shirt”—comes from kami (paper) and koromo
(monk’s robe). These were originally made by the Buddhist monks, so the
legend goes, from the pages of old Sutras (Leitner 2005, 18). The spiritual
implications of using holy scripts next to the skin as a means of
internalizing the words spread throughout the religious community and
into general use. Kamiko are also used as a metaphor for material poverty
and spiritual wealth in haiku poetry (Leitner 2005, 21). Another form of
paper cloth is Shifu. “Shi means paper, fu means cloth or weave. Shifu is
therefore ‘woven paper cloth’” (Leitner 2005, 22). The paper was cut into
strips which were traditionally twisted by hand or on a spinning wheel,
into very strong fibres that were woven and made into clothing. This type
of fibre is still used today for knitting into garments.

Texts are often also inherent in textiles. Textiles can tell a story,
communicate an idea or convey a narrative, meaning or emotion to the
viewer in a visual or a tactile way. There are many instances of this, from
the Bayeux Tapestry to the symbolism of designs on clothing in
Indigenous cultures. Australian fiction with textile motifs can be of the
straight narrative style, just telling a story, but other meanings can be
revealed through an exploration specifically of textile use, with its sensory
overtones, coupled with the activation of affect through synaesthetic2
writing. These aspects have only rarely been studied. The creating of
textile pieces involves, primarily, the sense of touch. The “sense” of touch
tells us about the “reality” of the fabric, the “knowing” of touch and its
immediacy stimulates memory. Because our hands hold the wool when we
knit, touch the fabric for quilting, cut with shears and scissors, pull thread
through linen or canvas, or move to the rhythm of the loom, we have
intimate first-hand knowledge of the tactility of the materials and the
procedure. Even people not engaged in the creative process know the feel
of a knitted jumper, a favourite quilt or an embroidered tablecloth.

2
The spelling of the word synaesthesia varies. I have used the “ae” spelling—
synaesthesia—throughout this study except in quotations where the alternate
spelling is used—synesthesia.
4 Introduction

My hypothesis is that the use of textiles in fiction allows novelists to

deploy synaesthetic writing so that an affective reaction is generated in the
reader in a pre-cognitive state, which is then augmented through cognitive
memories of learning and experience, particularly those of a sensory
nature. I will focus on quilted, knitted and embroidered textiles in
Australian fiction to demonstrate this theory. Questions that will make the
role of synaesthesia and synaesthetic metaphor in the creation of affect
clearer include:

• What is synaesthesia and the synaesthetic metaphor?

• What is affect and how is it created in the reader?
• How do synaesthetic metaphors intensify affect?
• How is affect created in Australian fiction that has an emphasis on
handcrafted textiles through the use of synaesthesia and
synaesthetic metaphors?
• Do authors who write about textiles in their fiction use synaesthetic
metaphors more often than other writers and do they make
reference to touch more frequently as the significant component of
the synaesthetic compound?

Some writing seems to activate the senses of the reader and in doing so
increases their involvement with the text. During my research I studied
novels and short stories that had textiles as a major component in them. I
read international as well as Australian literature to try to identify the
function of textiles in fiction beyond their use as straight metaphor. I
realized that I wanted to study the way in which textiles are used in fiction
to create a synaesthetic response in the reader that may or may not lead to
an affective reaction. My work concentrates on Australian fiction that
makes use of textiles in a major and meaningful way, using supporting
material drawn from international fiction. “Australian fiction” refers to
novels by Australian authors, rather than the settings of their works.

Analysis of three types of textile structure—quilting, knitting, and

embroidery—shows how synaesthesia is used similarly and differently in
the texts. There are novels that employ each of these three major groups of
textile making, to a greater or lesser degree. Quilting and knitting are well
represented in major works by Australian authors, embroidery less so, but
the instances of embroidery that do exist show how that technique can
reveal secrets and hidden meaning. Crochet, lace work and beadwork are
not included in this study as these are not textile arts used in a significant
way by Australian authors. Weaving has a rich and complex history in
fiction, myth and poetry but again Australian novels that contain weaving
 Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction 5

references are difficult to find, do not use textiles as a main motif and are
not plentiful enough to offer a worthwhile comparison or complement to
the works that I have chosen.

Aristotle (384-322BC) concluded in De Anima (1952, 656) that there

are five senses perceived by human beings—sight, hearing, smell, taste
and touch. These categories continue to be the way in which we describe
our senses today, although his classification of the senses is a cultural
rather than a scientific one. But which of the five commonly accepted
senses are relevant to this study? Vision and touch are the obvious main
senses that translate the appeal of fabric to the human self. The sight of a
fabric excites our aesthetic appreciation through the play of colour, pattern
and weave or repels us if it uses unappealing materials and combinations
of them. The tactile qualities of fabric go hand in hand with the visual
qualities, whether it be the pleasing feel of the surface of the fabric or the
unpleasant texture of a coarse cloth. Smell and hearing can also play a part
in our appreciation of textiles. The odour of a fabric can be pleasant or
unpleasant to the nose, evoking memories of a favourite scent or floral
fragrance, or take us back to an unsavoury moment, and the auditory
qualities of some fabrics can have the same effect.

When two or more of these senses provide our brains with information
to evaluate, the cross-modal nature of this transaction is said to be
“synaesthetic”. The word “synaesthesia”, literally means “joined
sensation” according to Richard Cytowic, a leading researcher in the field:
It comes from the Greek syn, union + aesthesis, sensation. It denotes the
rare capacity to hear colors, taste shapes, or experience other equally
strange sensory fusions whose quality seems difficult for the rest of us to
imagine. For example, my voice would be not just something that is heard,
but also felt, seen, or tasted. (Cytowic 2002, 2)

A true synaesthete has the ability to experience two sensory events at the
same time. An example of this phenomenon would be a person who
perceives colours while listening to music, or sees coloured letters as they
read. Only a small percentage of human beings have this gift but everyone
experiences cross-modal sensations as we gather information from visual,
tactile, auditory, olfactory and taste sources simultaneously.

There are, in the interrelationship between text and textile,

opportunities for the construction of several types of metaphor. On the
most elementary level, the straightforward metaphor of thread and text,
equates to textile creation and story. There are the text/textile metaphors
6 Introduction

that have been supported and extended into modern use from the myths
and legends of Greece and Rome (Penelope, Ariadne, Arachne, Philomela,
etc.) to works such as Tennyson’s “The Lady of Shalott”. There is also the
connection between the textile arts and women’s work that make it a
fruitful source for fiction and particularly for fiction about women. Also
there are the metaphors that express the concept of how a life is lived or
how a community unites to overcome the problems of its members.
However, there are more than just straightforward metaphors in the
intertwining of text and textile.

A “synaesthetic metaphor” is one that employs two or more senses or

sense words to deliver metaphors such as “loud colour”, “soft sound” or
the more unusual examples of “yellow smoothness” or “soft sight”, that
bring together touch and vision. A synaesthetic metaphor goes further than
a simple metaphor, by heightening the sensual qualities of the writing, to
make a familiar language exciting with a new twist and connection with
the sensory memory of the reader. It is the multiple evocations made
possible with a synaesthetic metaphor that makes it so powerful and
arresting. Keats and Byron used synaesthetic metaphors extensively in
their poetry. Fogle notes when writing of synaesthetic metaphor in the
work of Keats: “It frequently appears as a tendency to ally sense-images
with the sense of touch in order to make them stronger and more concrete”
(1964, 41) and it assists with the compressed and compact nature of his
poetry by conveying his meaning and its sensory implications in a few
words. The same intensity that these metaphors bring to poetry is found in
fiction. A synaesthetic metaphor that appeals to the senses of the reader
uses a universal language and summons a collective consciousness.
Research into the relationship between advertising and synaesthetic
metaphor (Nelson and Hitchon 1999) has shown that in some
circumstances cross-sensory advertisements are perceived to be more
pleasant than literal advertisements as our sensory imagination can add
intensity. The vigour and freshness that synaesthetic metaphors bring to
fiction can result in, or at least, contribute to, the “affect” response in the
reader.

The concept of “affect” changes its meaning depending on whether it is

being used in the context of psychology, the arts or cultural and literary
theory, but in this study it refers to the narrow definitions and work of
Silvan Tomkins and Brian Massumi. Tomkins explored the theory of
human drives and affects focusing on their physical manifestations,
whereas Massumi concentrated on the interaction of the event and the
body and linked affect with synaesthesia, textiles and literature.
 Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction 7

This work does not exist in a vacuum. In the field of textile theory the
book Cloth and Human Experience edited by Annette Weiner and Jane
Schneider is a starting point for any study on the interaction between cloth
and society. It traces the social and political meanings of cloth, its
production, trade and value in a commercial and a spiritual context. Most
importantly the book systematically catalogues the importance of cloth in
ritual and everyday life across a broad range of societies. The symbolic
and metaphorical nature of cloth and design is made abundantly clear as
the evidence repeats itself in one culture after another. Prehistoric Textiles
(Barber 1991) has proven to be an invaluable source of information on the
history of textile production, although its emphasis is on weaving,
spinning and dyeing. In recent years (2012) The Textile Reader edited by
Jessica Hemmings has brought together essays and extracts on Touch,
Memory, Structure, Politics, Production and Use. While some chapters are
reprints of previous articles and stories (there are extracts from The Scarlet
Letter and “Everyday Use”) the selection includes the work of Isak
Dinesen, Deleuze and Guattari, Italo Calvino, Anni Albers, Rozsika
Parker, Elaine Showalter and Elizabeth Wayland Barber. In Australia,
much study has been made of the connections between written works and
the visual arts. Between Literature and Painting: Three Australian Women
Writers by Roberta Buffi studies the work of Janine Burke, Beverley
Farmer and Drusilla Modjeska to investigate the way that women writers
relate to their surroundings in a visual way as they explore self-image and
experience. The manner in which one art form can influence another is
examined in the book Patrick White, Painter Manqué: Paintings, painters
and their influence on his writing by Helen Verity Hewitt. She uncovers
Patrick White’s pivotal relationships with Australian visual artists whose
work influenced and created an echo in his writing. However, there has
been less attention given to literary connections to textiles until recently
(see Bartlett (2005), Brennan (1997), Jones (1997, 2000, 2001, 2002,
2011), Sharrad (2004)).

Internationally, while there are many books on the theory of dress,

costume and fashion in fiction (Hughes 2006, Kortsch 2009, Kuhn 2005,
Ribeiro 2005), there are few major works about the history of quilting,
knitting and embroidery in fiction. There are an increasing number of
“how to” manuals and pattern books but few that analyse fiction texts that
employ handcrafted textiles. Most of the theory written about textiles and
textiles in fiction has concentrated on quilts and quilting. There is the
impressive The Patchwork Quilt: Ideas of Community in Nineteenth-
Century American Women’s Fiction (Shepard 2005) which focuses on the
metaphor of the quilt and quilt-making in the building of community as
8 Introduction

reflected in contemporary fiction. Two other books Quilt Culture: Tracing

the Pattern (Torsney and Elsley 1994) and Quilts as Text[iles]: The
Semiotics of Quilting (Elsley 1996) contain collections of previously
published articles ranging from essays on the significance of the quilt in
Walker’s The Color Purple and Morrison’s Beloved: A Novel to political
aspects of the AIDS Quilt. There are also significant articles in journals,
such as "Historical Figures and Paradoxical Patterns: The Quilting
Metaphor in Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace" (Murray 2001). However,
these all speak to the metaphor of quilts and quilt-making rather than to
the synaesthetic and affective impact of them—interest lies in the thematic
and structural use of textiles rather than the way in which the writing itself
impacts on the reader. There is even less written about knitting and
embroidery in fiction and little about any of them in fiction coupled with
their synaesthetic qualities or the affect that they can create. Further
critical works about the three types of textiles will be discussed as they
arise in relevant chapters.

Research about textiles in Australian fiction has been limited. Two

chapters in Sue Rowley’s 1997 collection of essays, Craft and
Contemporary Theory, are significant (Rowley 1997). Anne Brennan’s
essay (1997) tells about her research into the stories of the indigent women
who were residents of Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney between 1848 and
1886. The archaeological record mostly consists of fragments of clothing
and sewing. Brennan and Anne Ferran tried to find out what happened to
these women during and after their stay, but apart from a few official
records, most of them had faded into history, unrecorded. The two
researchers argue that the “lack” of record was as important as the
existence of written traces, and that the scraps of sewing were the
unvoiced stories of the women and their connection to the present. The
body posture of the women and the repetitive nature of the stitching on the
fabric corresponded with the physical effort of writing their stories by the
researchers, forming a repetition of process. The second relevant essay
(1997) in the same collection is by Dorothy Jones, who has been interested
in the interaction of text and textile for over thirty years. Jones has written
much about the connections between the Greek myths and weaving as well
as the use of textiles by Virginia Woolf, Margaret Atwood, and knitting
and embroidery in the novels of Australian authors such as Jessica
Anderson and Marion Halligan. Paul Sharrad’s writing on the importance
of textiles in the writing of Salman Rushdie and about tapa cloth in fiction,
are also significant.
 Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction 9

I will be carrying out close readings of selected Australian novels to

determine how textile motifs are used. My reading will be guided by
theories of affect (Thrift, Tomkins, Massumi) and synaesthesia (Cytowic,
Marks, Ramachandran), touch (Paterson, Rodaway), metaphor (Lakoff and
Johnson), synaesthetic metaphor (Sean Day), reading and memory, textiles
and text (Weagel, Minugh) and gender and the creative arts (Parker). Each
of the three categories of textile allows a different way of looking at how
they are used in texts, because each of the textiles is constructed using
different methods, although there is some overlap in the way they are
produced. A quilt is made of pieces cut from purchased or recycled fabric
and re-sewn together in a multitude of patterns, whereas a knitted garment
is created by working with (usually) one piece of yarn at a time and with
very different tools—knitting needles as opposed to a sewing needle.
Embroidery uses the surface of an already constructed cloth and
embellishes that surface.

This study is structured so that the reader is guided through the

definitions and theories needed to fully understand an investigation into
fiction texts that contain the three textile types—quilting, knitting and
embroidery. Chapter One will explain the importance of touch in everyday
life and how haptics operate to enrich our lives. This prefaces discussion
of the way in which touch connects to memory and how it can conjure
personal and collective memories from the past through fabric and text.

In Chapter Two, an in-depth exploration of what synaesthesia is and

how it works both from a psychological perspective and a literary
perspective, will be followed by how synaesthesia and particularly the
combinations of vision and touch combine to work in fiction texts.
Synaesthetic metaphor will form a major part of this discussion as it is a
manifestation of synaesthesia in text and is particularly relevant when
vision, touch and textile/texture come together.

By exploring and explaining the theories of affect in Chapter Three,

particularly as formulated by Silvan Tomkins and Brian Massumi, and by
gaining an understanding of the act of reading, a basis will be established
to look at each of the three types of textiles. Once theories of synaesthesia
and affect are understood, we can then analyse and appreciate how they
combine in the text to create affect in the reader. The interrelationship
between textiles and text needs to be set against a background of why
readers read and how they read. This will help to explain why the senses
are so important when we read and how and why the reader experiences
affect. The place of the aesthetic qualities of the text, including the
10 Introduction

aesthetics of the physical word on the page, the beauty of the language and
the idea of the plaisir du texte and the space that the reader inhabits are
also discussed. At the same time, an understanding of the qualities of
textiles is essential if we are to comprehend how authors use these
qualities to manipulate the reader during the reading process.

Chapter Four concentrates on quilts, quilt-making and the quilter. I will

first make a brief survey of the history of world quilt-making (particularly
in the United Kingdom and the United States) and quilt history in
Australia, to emphasise the social and cultural traditions of the technique.
Then I will examine quilt-making in fiction internationally and the use of
metaphors that quilts and quilt-making provide, to create a context in
which Kate Grenville’s work The Idea of Perfection can be discussed. This
is followed by an investigation into The Idea of Perfection by Kate
Grenville, which will show how she employs quilts to skilfully bring to
mind the memories of the characters and, by proxy, those of the reader.
The role of synaesthetic metaphors in Grenville’s writing will be explored
to evaluate their use and frequency and compared with the results of the
studies in Chapter Two to show how her emphasis on textiles changes the
normal frequency of use for types of synaesthetic metaphor. Kate
Grenville’s work is used to test the idea that knowingly or unknowingly
she includes more than average cross-modal sense-related metaphors and
that these metaphors are predominantly associated with touch.

Chapter Five begins with an overview of the history of knitting

internationally and in Australia and of its use in fiction. The texts chosen
to examine this work’s hypothesis for knitting and the knitter in the novel
are Lambs of God by Marele Day and Knitting by Anne Bartlett. These
two novels are preoccupied with religion and religious ritual and
particularly with the idea of Grace. Some of the concerns of these novels
will mirror those of the previous chapter, but these texts also have their
own characteristics as the knitting process is unique. The pulling out of
yarn, the knotting, completing and advancing of the work, the interplay of
plain and fancy stitches that may be dropped or twisted or created with a
variety of thin cottons or thick wools are all aspects of the making of a
textile and of a text. The meditative process in making the textile, working
as a community or individually, the role of identity, of warmth, caring and
comfort that knitted textiles possess, will also be a part of this chapter.

Chapter Six will focus on embroidery and the embroiderer in the

novels Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson and Spider Cup by
Marion Halligan. This is prefaced with a history of world embroidery and
 Texts and Textiles: Affect, Synaesthesia and Metaphor in Fiction 11

Australian embroidery and the use of embroidery in international and

Australian fiction. Embroidery can be used as a surface texture, in white or
colours, worked from the front or the back of the work. It can be a thread
that runs through the text, through the cloth, backwards or forwards,
covering the entire surface or some of it, making holes in it, gathering it,
puckering it or simply embellishing it.

The final chapter will give an overview of the findings and the
conclusions of the work, and propose questions for further research.
 CHAPTER ONE

TOUCH AND MEMORY

So touch, like vision, articulates an equally rich, complex world, a world of

movement and exploration, of non-verbal social communication. It is a
carnal world, with its pleasures of feeling and being felt, of tasting and
touching the textures of flesh and of food. And equally it is a profound
world of philosophical verification, of the communication of presence and
empathy with others, of the co-implication of body, flesh and world.
(Paterson 2007, 2)

In this chapter I will outline the way in which Western culture

understands touch, the way that vision and touch work together, and their
importance in our everyday lives. Human beings need the sense of touch
to gather information, to position themselves in their surrounds and to
appreciate the intrinsic pleasure of the material world. Memory is a
significant co-contributor with touch in creating the reading experience, so
I will also describe the way that memory functions and how personal and
collective memory combine with our senses to intensify our response to
textiles in fiction.

Aristotle’s five human senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch

(1952, 656)—continue to be the way in which we describe our senses in
Western culture today. However, the idea that there are a set number of
senses is a social construct. Other cultures recognise a greater or lesser
number of senses, for example, the Hausa of Nigeria divide the senses into
two and Buddhist cultures recognise six senses, the sixth being “the mind”
(Classen 1993, 2). Twenty-one senses have been identified by Durie
(2005). Aristotle also suggested a standard ranking of the senses—sight,
hearing, smell, taste and then touch. An alternate hierarchy orders each
sense depending on its distance from the body. So taste (inside the mouth),
touch (skin, usually hands), smell (from a short distance from the body),
hearing and sight (near or far away from the body) (Rodaway 1994, 26-
27).

The term “sense” which comes from the root sent, to go, to find out
(Classen 1993, 72), has two definitions. It can mean “making sense”
14 Chapter One

which implies understanding and it can also refer to “the senses”, those
five senses listed above, which are used in the context of feeling and
sensation. As Rodaway explains:
These two aspects are closely related and often implied by each other. The
sense(s) is (are) both a reaching out to the world as a source of information
and an understanding of that world so gathered. This sensuous experience
and understanding is grounded in previous experience and expectation,
each dependent on sensual and sensory capacities and educational training
and cultural conditioning. (Rodaway 1994, 5)

Rodaway’s “reaching out to the world” and Classen’s “find out” are
particularly relevant when discussing the sense of touch. Our hands “reach
out” to evaluate, orientate, gain knowledge, and this “sense of touch”
combined with vision is what is important when we assess textiles and
read about them.

Vision and touch are the two senses that primarily carry the appeal of
fabric to our brains, although the other senses may play a part. The sight of
a fabric excites our aesthetic appreciation through the beauty of colour,
pattern or weave or jars our sensibilities with discordant elements. The
tactile qualities of fabric include the feel of the surface of the cloth
between our fingers or as it drapes across our body but an unpleasant
sensation may result from contact with a coarse or unclean cloth. The
smell of a fabric may evoke memories of people or events from the past
through the odour of mothballs, old musty blankets, of babies and
mother’s milk, or the offensive odours of blood or faeces caught in the
weave. The auditory qualities of some fabrics, such as the rustle of silk or
satin or the electrical crackling of nylon or man-made fabrics, may join
with the sound of scissors cutting through the cloth, ripping fabric, rolls
thudding on the counter or the noise of the sewing machine, to recall
memories from the past.

As Aristotle (1952, 654) pointed out when he wrote about the senses,
there are more variations and qualities to the touch experience than are
involved with the other senses. These range from hot/cold, rough/smooth,
hard/soft, dry/moist, etc. on a primary level, to the physical and emotional
arousal of the body by the touch of a lover. Just as love can be indicated
and received through touch, pain is another aspect of its spectrum. Heller
notes that touch is a warning mechanism and allows us to manoeuvre in
the world (Heller 1991, 2). Although we may think of the hand as the main
source for gathering tactile information, our whole body is monitoring our
surroundings at all times and we rely on it unconsciously in every aspect
 Touch and Memory 15

of our lives. Heller comments that our skin feels the textures that come in
contact with it, and that our movements are often motivated by responses
to the world around us that we feel on and through our skin.
More to the point, many of the most important events in our lives involve
the sense of touch. Touch has a powerful affective component as well as a
cognitive one. We feel pain and pleasure, and these seem essential to
existence. One can’t conceive of human life devoid of the sense of touch.
Imagine one’s entire skin surface always under anesthesia [sic]! (Heller
1991, 3)

Paterson, in the epigraph to this chapter, reinforces this idea, summing up

the intricate and elaborate meaning that accompanies the word “touch”,
encompassing both its “carnal” and “philosophical” aspects.

The importance of touch as one of the body’s main information

gathering tools for decision-making is undeniable. Montagu notes that
touch is the very first sensation that a foetus registers in the womb
(Montagu 1971, 1). Young children are encouraged to experience and
learn about the surfaces around them, to touch and feel in order to
acclimatise themselves to the world. Books and toys have been
specifically developed to help them explore their surroundings. There are
board books for counting that have illustrations showing the meaning of
each number as well as having the number indented on each page so that
the child can feel as well as see them (Making Numbers 2006). Some
board books have shapes cut out of the pictures on the page and fabric
inserted so that children can feel the difference between rough, smooth,
silky, furry and fluffy textures (Watt 2007). The importance of touching
and being touched in childhood is now fully realised after many years of
research (Carlson 2006, 11). As an example, studies have shown how
important touching is for premature babies:
Massaged babies gain weight as much as 50 percent faster than
unmassaged babies. They’re more active, alert, and responsive, more
aware of their surroundings, better able to tolerate noise, and they orient
themselves faster and are emotionally more in control…. In a follow-up
examination, eight months later, the massaged preemies were found to be
bigger in general, with larger heads and fewer physical problems.
(Ackerman 1990, 73)

The positive attributes of touch need not have a human catalyst. A

study at Maternity Hospital, Cambridge, England, showed that, if
premature babies were left on a lamb’s-wool blanket for a day they gained
an average of fifteen grams more than usual. The tactile stimulation of
16 Chapter One

wrapping the baby tightly in a blanket or other fabric, decreased the heart
rate and relaxed the baby (Ackerman 1990, 78).

This need for touch and its efficacious effects seems to continue into
adulthood as two experiments cited by Ackerman suggest. In the first
study a librarian lightly brushed the hand of half the patrons as they were
being served. The half that were subconsciously brushed were much more
satisfied with the library service and life in general than those who
weren’t. In a second study, diners at a restaurant in Oxford, Mississippi
were lightly touched on the hand or shoulder by the waitress. Those
touched consistently gave the waitress a larger tip (Ackerman 1990, 122-
23).

The inexplicable benefits of touching others goes some way to

explaining our need to touch textiles. It seems that as human beings we
have always sort the certainty of touch. Tactility involves physical
materiality, a quality that the other senses do not have. The phrase
“Doubting Thomas” is used to describe a person who needs physical
evidence to believe that something is true. It derives from an incident in
The Bible (John 20:24-29) when Thomas the Apostle, doubting the
resurrection of Jesus, needs to touch His wounds before he will believe
that it is truly Him.
24 But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them
when Jesus came.

25 The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But
he said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and
put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I
will not believe.

27 Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands;
and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless,
but believing.

28 And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.

29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast
believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. (Holy
Bible 1958)

Diderot’s Letter on the Blind (1749) reinforces the example of “Doubting

Thomas”. When a blind man was asked if he would like to have his sight
 Touch and Memory 17

he replied that he would rather have longer arms as touch was a much
more reliable sense than vision (quoted in Morgan 1977, 35).

But there is another side to touch and its predominantly pleasant

outcomes. Pain administered to human flesh creates a response throughout
the entire body. Sweat is generated, pupils dilate and blood pressure rises
(Ackerman 1990, 107-8). Pain may also lead to a distortion of the face or
the body, to violent arm gestures, writhing and, in severe cases, the
addition of sound—moans, grunts or screams.

Children learn which objects shouldn’t be touched through the

experience of pain and as adults we decide for ourselves what to touch and
what to leave untouched. But at art galleries, museums and quilt shows our
ability to touch is restricted by “no touching” signs. At quilt shows,
touching the displayed quilts is particularly frowned on. The forbidden
coverings, valued for their tactile qualities and associated with warmth and
comfort, lose these essential aspects. Although past experience informs us
how the quilt will feel, there is still a strong urge to touch it, a feeling that
can be so overwhelming that some viewers will lean forward and touch,
unable to restrain themselves despite the signs. The tactile qualities of the
quilts draw us to them—the visual sense does not satisfy all our needs. It
seems a primal urge exists, making it imperative that the fabric be touched.

Market research shows that part of the experience of touching an item

is the result of the “autotelic factor”—“central to defining the domain of
autotelic touch are its hedonics (e.g., enjoyment and affect) and the
compulsive or irresistible need to engage in exploratory variety seeking
via touch (e.g., lack of control and indiscriminate processing)” (Peck and
Childers 2003a, 431). A desire exists for sensory stimulation and
enjoyment for its own sake that creates in us a preconscious compulsion.

The importance of the tactile qualities of objects to the visually

impaired exemplified in the use of Braille, has broadened in recent years
to include exhibitions and programmes that have tactile elements
incorporated into them. For example, Vision Australia used a Dr Seuss
picture book kit to advertise its services and itself in 2007. The suitcase
pictured in the advertisement contains “braille and audio storybooks along
with toys and tactile objects that help to bring the magical world of the
stories to life” (VisionAustralia 2007).
18 Chapter One

Museums and Art Galleries around the world have regular sessions for
disabled visitors. The Art Gallery of New South Wales, for example, has
developed a series of “touch tours”:
To support the touch tours, the Gallery is developing a sensory trolley so
that people visiting Frederick McCubbin’s On the Wallaby Track, for
instance, can smell eucalyptus leaves, swing a billycan and feel samples of
the fabrics worn by the early settlers in this iconic painting. (Art Gallery
Society of New South Wales 2007, 33)

Touch galleries have been designed not only for the enjoyment of the
visually impaired but also to allow the general public tactile access to
exhibits. Opportunities are provided to touch museum items at the Victoria
and Albert, Tate Modern etc. and at dedicated Touch galleries such as
Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the Chicago Art Institute. “Touch Me”,
an exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2005,
explored how touch related to contemporary design. Various designers
contributed “existing products, prototypes, artists’ projects that simulate
new product launches …” (Arning 2006, 151). About fifty percent of the
exhibits were able to be touched, although by the end of the exhibition
many no longer worked. The importance of the autotelic factor to our
appreciation of art is increasingly recognised.

Textile artists are not always worried about damage to the art works
they produce. Gabriella Verstraeten who works mostly with machine
embroidery combined with fabric manipulation (e.g. appliqué, layering,
cutback, padding and sculpting) actively encourages tactile interaction:
I love it when people want to reach out and touch the embroidery. To be
fascinated by the surface. These kind of feelings and attractions do not
occur when we look at paintings or drawings. With embroidery there is
more and I want to exploit it. (Original italics) (Rogers 1992, 53)

Some artists play with the qualities of touch, fooling us into thinking
that there is a further dimension to their work when none exists. Vik
Muniz, an artist born in Brazil but currently based in New York, uses
string to create intricate pictures on a light box and then photographs the
pictures. These photographs become his exhibition pieces. His work
extends beyond the sense of touch and is really a tricking of the senses, of
turning the tactile into the visual (Plummer 2007).

An art work entitled Tickle Salon (Dekker and van Saaze 2005, 119-
20) developed by Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen consists of a
small brush hanging from the ceiling and connected to a motor which in
 Touch and Memory 19

turn is connected to a computer. A guest is asked to lie on a bed beneath

the brush and as the brush strokes the body the contours are reflected in a
3D computer drawing on the screen. The machine creates a visual
representation of the body through touch.

The importance of our sense of touch is easily demonstrated, but how

does it figure in combination with vision to provide information to us?
Heller carried out three experiments to investigate the intermodal
relationships between vision and touch in the perception of texture. By
using different grades of sandpaper in blind and sighted touch tests, he
found that the best judgements were made in the bimodal visual and haptic
experiments as opposed to a single perceptual modality. This raised
questions about bimodality—do subjects “add together” the information to
acquire more information or do we usually use senses in a cooperative
manner and by being restricted to one sense the subject is deprived of
information:
The results of the experiments suggest that texture perception may
normally be multi-modal. The restriction of an observer to a single
modality degrades performance in texture-perception tasks. (Heller 1982,
343)

Heller found that when perceiving texture, the brain uses information from
both available senses but that:
Haptic cues may be more perceptually salient than visual texture cues
when both sources of information are available and redundant. (Heller
1982, 343)

Touch is more important than vision, according to Heller, because it

allows us to feel very fine textures or surface variation, including hardness
and softness and hot and cold (1991, 4).

Words that describe touch reflect this surface variation and are
onomatopoeic. Texture words, such as “soft”, “smooth”, “velvet” and
“satin”, as opposed to “rough”, “harsh”, “coarse” and “nubbly”, align the
meanings of the words with their sounds. The pleasant words have drawn-
out, elongated pronunciations, while the unpleasant are short and sharp.

The preconscious compulsion to touch material surfaces is coupled

with cognition and memory to create emotion. A survey carried out by
DeLong, Wu and Bao, involving female American art and design students
and a similar group of students in China, was published in 2007. It was
designed to assess the “role of touch sensation in early memory” (DeLong,
20 Chapter One

Wu, and Bao 2007, 41). Students were given a questionnaire about their
early touch experiences. This study found that for the female American
students the second most prominent remembered category was “bedding”
(14%) after the category “animals” (27%):
US respondents combined cognitive and affective descriptors when
describing touch experience with bedding. All such touch sensations were
described cognitively as “soft” or “smooth,” and affectively as
“comforting,” having a “sense of security,” or “calming.” These
experiences were reported as “liked.” Repeating or reinforced perceptions
of “soft” or “smooth” were likely to result in positive experiences of
“comfort,” having a “sense of security,” or “calming”. (DeLong, Wu, and
Bao 2007, 42)

Pleasant experiences predominated over painful ones and “repetitive

exposure”, such as sleeping, consolidated these memories (DeLong, Wu,
and Bao 2007, 45).

This 2007 survey, which used only female students, was followed by
one using 103 female and 101 male American design students, which
looked at how gender effects the childhood memories of tactile items.
There was surprisingly little difference between the two groups. The most
remembered textile product for the male group was wool/cashmere
sweaters, then bedding. This result was reversed for the female group to
bedding and then wool/cashmere sweaters. Overall more pleasant touch
memories were recorded than unpleasant (female 79.7% liked and 20.3%
disliked, male 70.3% liked, 29.7% disliked) (DeLong and Park 2008, 40).
Strangely 22% of males mentioned home furnishings compared to 9% of
females (DeLong and Park 2008, 31).

When we read fiction that employs textiles, we bring a pre-knowledge

of how the textile in the text feels to the touch. It is a visual as well as a
tactile response to the text. Our other senses—smell, hearing and, to a
lesser extent, taste—may also be involved in our appraisal of a textile.
These sensations may remain as separate entities, or may combine with
precognitive affect—a tingling down the spine, a tear, a smile or a laugh.
Textiles present multilayered patterns, as well as embellishment, truth and
lies.

In other art forms, in painting, for example, the artist can run the gamut
from the abstract to a photo-realistic image or the many interpretations in
between. The viewer can, if they wish, fill in the gaps that the artist has not
explicitly depicted. We can understand the perspective of a painting from