Miss Morgan's Book Brigade

Lewis’s Ford, “Bessie,” symbolizes the Cards’ independence from traditional roles and willingness to get their hands dirty, literally and figuratively, as part of their work. Bessie and the other Fords provide the Cards the mobility and freedom they need to bring provisions, books, and story hours to devastated villages near a war zone. The fact that Lewis has given the car a woman’s name emphasizes that women are capable of charting new paths even when that means bucking social norms: Like Kit, Lewis has rejected the idea of marriage as the only role she can fill, noting that the women of France have “never seen a woman drive—they don’t think it’s natural” (8). Skeslien Charles emphasizes the rebellion inherent in the act of driving when she has Marcelle point out that the word the Cards use to describe a woman chauffeur means something else; there is no word for a woman driver in French. Despite this, Kit says the “black-and-white definition of the dictionnaire would not sway us: Our motor service was made up of first-rate chauffeuses. ‘You’re right,’ Marcelle relented. ‘We women deserve a word of our own’” (113). By defying norms and taking the word chauffeuse for their own, the Cards and Bessie develop the novel’s portrayal of The Impacts of Women in History.

The relationship between mothers and daughters is a motif in the novel that emphasizes generational differences, the fragility of life in wartime, and the need of each character to shed the expectations of others to experience ​​Self-Discovery, Resilience, and Transformation. Early in the novel Kit describes the mother-daughter relationships she sees through the lens of stereotype, especially with regard to Marcelle and Madame Moreau: “[E]ach was intent on her role, a beleaguered daughter and put-upon mother. The dynamic reminded me of how my mother always had to get in her two cents,” (39). Her view of these relationships is based on her own sense of being misunderstood. Mothers want to protect their daughters by keeping them home, as Madame Petit does with Jeanne, or pushing them toward predictable or “safe” lives; meanwhile, daughters have minds of their own and want to be free from a variety of perceived shackles, such as propriety, marriage, and children. Kit judges mothers for wanting to perform the impossible task of keeping their girls safe from the heartache they have suffered themselves.

As Kit experiences her own transformation, she comes to see these relationships as more complex and comforting, but only after losing her own mother and realizing how much she has taken for granted. “My mother had been the window to my world. […] And yet, like a windowpane, my mother had been invisible to me. There to keep in the warmth, there to let in the light” (240-41). Mothers, overbearing and “put-upon,” shape a safe space in the world that gives their daughters permission to rebel against that very space. The loss of that space—which Skeslien Charles conveys explicitly in Wendy’s description of losing her mother at age 12 as “an earthquake […] a tremor that changed everything” (164)—is to lose a source of resilience and a particular view of the world.

Kit often escapes into the “library of [her] mind” to seek refuge from stressful circumstances (194), but in some ways her imagined connections with fictional characters ironically hinder her ability to bond with real people. In this way, the library of the mind symbolizes ​The Value of Literacy as a Means of Connection and Escape, but also demonstrates a caveat about what can happen when people escape too much into fiction and abandon the real world. Allusions to books and authors appear throughout the novel, and Kit shows her attachment to her favorites when she arrives in Blérancourt and sets “My Ántonia, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Anne of Avonlea on the nightstand. I kept my favorite people close—impossible to sleep without them” (18). Kit depends on these novels to soothe the hurts she experiences and escape wartime horrors that would otherwise be beyond her capacity to cope. Books allow her to experience things secondhand that she is intimidated by in the real world, something she explains when she notes, “In real life, desire was dangerous: if you married the wrong man, you lost your rights over your bank account and your body. With novels, the biggest risk was dropping the book in the tub” (121). By visiting the library of the mind, Kit can avoid risks, but also avoids taking chances that could help improve her life. Her abandonment of this internal library when she decides near the novel’s end that she will no longer retreat into her mind, but will say what she thinks, symbolizes her growth. By standing up to Winnifred and taking the risk of moving to Paris, Kit demonstrates her commitment to working in real libraries, rather than escaping to imagined ones, and to living in the real world.