Some
of the research I did yesterday and a remark by another academic have made me
consider a small sub plot. In fact, I’ve done more than consider it; I’ve
pretty well decided to go ahead with it. I’m going to include a lesbian couple.
This gives a chance for some reconciliation between Hani and some of the girls
who bully her in the BDM. Towards the end of the book she will find out that
they are lesbian and they will need her help. She will not be vindictive. Gay
and lesbian people were as much abhorred by the Nazi regime as non-Aryans, gypsies
and other people the Third Reich considered tarnished.
I
have also got to the part now where Clara Lehrs is about to have to sell her house.
She realises that it is too late for her to escape as her daughter and
granddaughter have. She also supposes that things can’t get any worse – they can
only get better. She does realise that it might be dangerous for Hani to write
to Renate, but because Germany is not yet at war with England she herself is
still getting letters from Renate and Kathe. She shows Hani a letter Renate has
sent. Thus I can pull something from the Renate thread into the Hani
thread. I’ll have to be careful about
dates and content but it already seems to make the novel more coherent to me.
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