Roman Fever

From Barbara’s early suggestion that they leave their mothers to their knitting to the way Grace deploys her knitting to hide from Alida’s attack, knitting is a complex symbol of femininity and motherhood. A traditional domestic activity, knitting helps to characterize Grace, encouraging the reader to agree with Alida when she notes ungenerously that her friend is “prudent,” someone lacking in spirit or daring (758). As Alida recalls what the “spice of disobedience” might lead one to do, Grace counts her stitches “without looking up,” behavior which confirms for Alida her friend’s nature: “She can knit—in the face of this! How like her” (754-55).

But Alida’s judgments are not always as accurate as she believes them to be—or as narrative priorities encourage the reader to assume. Throughout the scene, Grace uses knitting to mask her feelings; it provides something that allows her not to react to Alida’s insistence that she look at the Colosseum and recall its place in the romantic imagination associated with the past. At the same time, the scarlet thread she uses reveals a tendency toward passion. It may be, in other words, that knitting is more complicated than its accustomed domestic association might seem.