47 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanThe Invisible Hour
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804. His most famous works of fiction include the short story “Young Goodman Brown” and the novels The Scarlet Letter, The Blithedale Romance, and The House of the Seven Gables. The Invisible Hour features Hawthorne as a major character and takes inspiration from his beliefs and writing style. Hawthorne is known for his use of symbolism and the integration of the spiritual in the guise of ghosts, mesmerism, and biblical allegory. Similarly, Hoffman uses the story of Eve and the symbolism of apples to highlight the challenges of women in her novel.
Of all Hawthorne’s novels, The Scarlet Letter is the most significant influence on The Invisible Hour. Hester Prynne, like Mia and Ivy, is marked with a letter demonstrating her supposed moral failing. Hester’s love and instincts as a mother isolate her and her daughter, Pearl, but also grant them a bubble in which Pearl can become an independent person less encumbered by societal expectations. Hoffman’s novel also draws on The House of the Seven Gables, which focuses on a secret, hidden deed connected to the misdeeds of the family who owns the house. The deed is found behind a painting, just as the deed to the Community’s farmland is written on the back of the painting Mia takes when she runs away in The Invisible Hour.
Genre Context: Magical Realism
Magical realism is a literary genre that blends elements of magic into an otherwise realistic setting. Magical realism is distinct from the fantasy genre primarily because the magic is woven into an otherwise real or mundane world. Alice Hoffman’s novels, including The Invisible Hour, often contain elements of magical realism. The magic in magical realism literature is often an undercurrent rather than an overt element of the world. In addition to time travel, The Invisible Hour also features elements of folklore and the magic of nature in Ivy’s, Mia’s, and Nathaniel’s experiences. The term “magical realism” originates in visual art theory, arising from Latin American art that combined myth, dream, and magic with a mid-19th-century realism style. It was first used to describe primarily Latin American literature in the 1950s, specifically the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Marquez.
Some argue that magical realism is a uniquely Latin American style and that writers who are not Latin American who use the style are appropriating Latinx culture. However, there are also arguments that magical realism as a style existed before the coining of the term, such as in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis; some also suggest that transcendentalist literature similarly contains elements of magical realism.
Related Titles
By Alice Hoffman
