Continuity
Charlotte Sometimes begins one year after the ending of The Summer Birds, after Charlotte has left her small village school, and covers the period of her first term at boarding school. While written three years after Emma in Winter — set during Charlotte's second term at boarding school — the events of Charlotte Sometimes occur beforehand. Charlotte's sister Emma, and their grandfather, Elijah, do not appear in Charlotte Sometimes, although there are references to them in the novel. For example, Charlotte compares Emily with her sister Emma in her own time; and compares the Chisel Brown family home with her own home, Aviary Hall.
Emma in Winter begins during the same Christmas holidays where Charlotte Sometimes ends, and indicates that Charlotte will stay a week with one of the friends she made at boarding school during the events of Charlotte Sometimes. Emma in Winter then follows Emma's story while Charlotte returns to boarding school.
Charlotte Sometimes continues the theme, begun in Emma in Winter, of time travel into the past. While this is unexplained in Charlotte Sometimes, a theorised explanation is given in Emma in Winter. Emma and Bobby are reading journals in Emma and Charlotte's grandfather Elijah's study, where they find an article theorising the non-linear nature of time. It describes time as being like a coiled spring, which can be pushed together, so that some moments in time can be very near a moment in another time.
Read more about this topic: Charlotte Sometimes (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word continuity:
“There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Continuous eloquence wearies.... Grandeur must be abandoned to be appreciated. Continuity in everything is unpleasant. Cold is agreeable, that we may get warm.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)