Two Inches of Ivory
We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.
Jane Austen, Persuasion
Our lives have become like pocket dimensions - tiny floating worlds, isolated one from another.
We are still ourselves, living in our familiar homes, surrounded by many of the same comforts we enjoyed before the outbreak. I still drink excellent coffee every morning, a habit my household picked up long before the coffee shops closed. My dog thinks this is paradise come down to earth.
Everything is what it was and yet nothing is the same. Our minds are often confused by the lack of definition between workspace and living space. We lose track of time in a way we didn’t before. Tasks feel more daunting and motivation more fleeting.
Most of us are still connected to the people we know and love, a blessing thrown into sharp relief by the shadows of lonely deaths happening all around the world. Our feelings are so complex. Gratitude for our relative health and safety doesn’t eradicate the battle with frustrating inconveniences or growing economic hardships, but it can help us maintain perspective and hope. Family and friends are still close, even if transposed into glowing pixels or sitting on a porch swing 20 feet away, faces covered by a colorful mask. We can still move about the world of commerce, dip in and out of stores, sometimes sit outside and eat a meal.
But it isn’t the same. We feel the limits. We reach the outer edges of our lives in fewer steps.
This may be the first time some of us have been restricted like this, with our daily lives so directly shaped by circumstances beyond our control. Of course, as children, our paths were set by our parents, but as adults, we’ve exercised tremendous freedom, whether we understand that or not. Some of us will have walked through times that felt like this before, times when the world grew small around us, our inner life transformed into an island; in grief, sickness, a broken relationship, or the darkness of betrayal.
Jane Austen wrote about her own small life and work in one of her few surviving personal letters:
“What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour?”
She was teasing her favorite nephew about his misplaced writing, reassuring him that she had not taken his prized pages, and pointing out the differences between their interests and style as evidence. This is a perfect metaphor. If you love Austen’s books, you instantly recognize her meaning and feel your gushing admiration clash with her poignant self-awareness.
The world of an English woman from the gentry class was confined, more so if she suffered from any financial insecurities. Austen still found much to write about and many absurdities to laugh at during her lifetime, despite rarely leaving home. But I think the melancholy of her solitary life peaks through in the above quote from her protagonist, Ann Eliot, near the end of Persuasion. In isolation, our feelings do prey upon us. What else can they do? There is little to distract them.
The limitations of this time are grievous for many. Some griefs are enormous, some quiet or unseen. A few lives may carry on much as they did before, but for most of us, everything has changed. There is still no clear date for when this season will pass.
Like Austen, our small spheres also contain the possibility of delicate and human stories, filled with laughter, sorrow, and resilience. We will have to accept that they will only be painted upon two inches of ivory. It is slow, fiddly work to tell little stories and we can imagine they are unimportant. We may prefer strong, manly, spirited sketches that resolve each difficulty in a few strokes.
We will live for a season in a confined world like Austen’s, of drawing rooms and teacups, with lost days and misspent time, going on endless walks along familiar paths. But it is a world nonetheless. It is the same sort of world she made us love in her stories.
Small, ordinary lives are always full of good stories. They have always been important.
