In The Time Traveler’s Wife, the color white symbolizes the hope of new beginnings, while the color red symbolizes the ongoing struggles of life. For much of the novel, white is associated with Clare’s keenest desires. In two pivotal moments in her relationship with Henry—when they have sex for the first time on Clare’s 18th birthday and when they marry—Clare wears white, which traditionally symbolizes purity and beginnings. This is precisely what Clare longs for in these moments: fresh starts that will signal the end of their tumultuous courtship. Instead of marital bliss, however, a whole new set of issues arises once Clare and Henry are married, and Henry’s time traveling still leaves Clare lonely and worried. She determines a baby could serve as a companion in his absence, but their attempts to conceive result in numerous pregnancy losses that threaten Clare’s life. The color red appears frequently during this period in relation to both Clare’s pregnancies and Henry’s time traveling incidents. In a dream Clare has during her final, healthy pregnancy, she encounters a white sheet on the floor. This represents the promise of the new life growing within her, but it is spoiled by a drop of blood that falls from her body and dyes the whole sheet red, symbolizing her fear of miscarrying again. Clare and Henry cling to the hopefulness conventionally associated with the color white when they select their daughter’s name: Alba, which means “white.” The symbolism of her name demonstrates her parents’ wish for her birth to be a fresh start. Yet complications continue to arise after Alba is born, as Henry’s time travels become more dangerous, and stress weakens his body.
Clare’s obsession with idealized life moments, symbolized by the color white, is a manifestation of her longing for certainty in a relationship where neither she nor her partner have control over their daily lives. What Clare finds, however, is that new beginnings don’t bring an end to hardship; every new season of life inevitably brings its own complications. When Henry loses his feet in a time traveling accident, Clare’s creation of a set of wings for him marks a turning point in her relationship with suffering. While she could have left the angel wings a stereotypical white, she decides to paint the wings red. This decision symbolizes the end of her idle hope for peace and a new commitment to embrace the messiness of existence.
Red and White Quotes in The Time Traveler’s Wife
The next evening I’m standing in the doorway of Clare’s studio, watching her finish drawing a thicket of black lines around a little red bird. Suddenly I see Clare, in her small room, closed in by all her stuff, and I realize that she’s trying to say something, and I know what I have to do.
My body wanted a baby. I felt empty and I wanted to be full. I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always. And I wanted Henry to be in this child, so that when he was gone he wouldn’t be entirely gone, there would be a bit of him with me…insurance, in case of fire, flood, act of God.
I walk down the long hall, glancing in the bedrooms, and come to my room, in which a small wooden cradle sits alone. There is no sound. I am afraid to look into the cradle. In Mama’s room white sheets are spread over the floor. At my feet is a tiny drop of blood, which touches the tip of a sheet and spreads as I watch until the entire floor is covered in blood.
“What we need,” Henry says, “is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let’s call her Tabula Rasa.”
“Let’s call her Titanium White.”
[…] “Alba DeTamble.” It rolls around in my mouth as I say it.
“That nice, all the little iambs, tripling along […] ‘Alba (Latin) White. (Provencal) Dawn of Day’. Hmm.”
[…] “A white city on a hill. A fortress.”
We sit up, and I hold her for a while. She is shaking.
“Clare. Clare. What’s wrong?”
I can’t make out her reply at first, then: “You’re going away. Now I won’t see you for years and years.”
“Only two years. Two years and a few months.” She is quiet. “Oh, Clare. I’m sorry. I can’t help it […].”
“How come I always have to wait?”
“Because you have perfect DNA and you aren’t being thrown around in time like a hot potato. Besides, patience is a virtue.”
“Any tissue that’s gonna make it will turn bright red. If it doesn’t look like a lobster, it’s a problem.”
I watch Henry’s feet floating in the yellow plastic basin. They are white as snow, white as marble, white as titanium, white as paper, white as bread, white as sheets, white as white can be. […] I watch to see his feet turn bright red. It’s like waiting for a photograph to develop, watching for the image slowly graying into black in the tray of chemicals. A flush of red appears at the ankles of both feet. […] The right foot remains stubbornly blanched.
“I made you something,” Clare says.
“Feet? I could use some feet.”
“Wings,” she says, dropping the white sheet to the floor.
The wings are huge and they float in the air, wavering in the candlelight. They are darker than the darkness, threatening but also redolent of longing, of freedom, of rushing through space. The feeling of standing solidly, on my own two feet, of running, running like flying. […] (Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future/ grows any smaller…Superabundant being/ wells up in my heart.)
“Kiss me,” Clare says, and I turn to her, white face and dark lips floating in the dark, and I submerge, I fly, I am released: being wells up in my heart.
Red and White Symbol Timeline in The Time Traveler’s Wife
