A Perfect Red

This is the story of a color – and of the lengths to which people went to discover, obtain, steal and synthesize it.

Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire spans the globe and history, beginning with the use of red ochre in Neanderthal rites. Mysticism and metaphor are bound up in this color, and more than one condemned aristocrat wore it to their executions.

Yet a bright deep true red was difficult to obtain, and for painters and dyers that made it all the more valuable. The best dye, though, was derived from the cochineal beetle native to what was, at the time, the Aztec Empire.

And so cochineal passed into the equally-reddened hands of the conquistadores, although most of them preferred gold. From then on it became part of a Spanish monopoly on dye, which the British countered with government-authorized piracy and the French with a spy. If you enjoy history, especially the dramatic swashbuckling aspects of history, this book is a great read, but what really kept me hooked was the introduction of science.

The scientists of that time tried to discover what exactly cochineal was – because after cargoes of dried beetles, smaller than peppercorns, had been stolen or intercepted, no one was quite sure what they were. Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who invented the first microscope, initially mistook them for seeds. As science became more advanced, though, dyes were synthesized—possibly the final blow to an industry that had survived warfare and espionage and biopiracy.

As well as being well-researched, this book is highly entertaining, with several chapters ending on cliffhangers. I even checked Amy Butler Greenfield’s website to see if she had written any other books which blended fashion, history, politics and science into such an absorbing read. Maybe a non-fiction version of The Color Purple? I’d buy it.

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What color is your character?

I’ve written about the use of color before, but it can also provide a touch of characterization, a visual flourish, when different colors are linked with different characters.

In V. C. Andrews’ My Sweet Audrina, the titular character is a troubled young girl who can’t remember much of what’s happened to her in the past. She’s usually dressed in white or violet. White is the color of innocence, but in this case it comes off as a blank slate as well, and violet symbolizes indecision because it’s neither blue nor red.

Antoinette, the protagonist of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, loves colors as vivid as the tropics where she lives. Her favorite dress is red, “the color of fire and sunset. The color of flamboyant flowers.” But the man she is coerced into marrying prefers her in virginal white, a bleached color with no passion in it. This also works because the moral judgment – linked with the symbolism of the colors – comes from the antagonist rather than from the author.

And in the movie Heathers, the colors of the characters’ croquet balls are just as significant – the head of the clique uses a red ball, the royal color of leadership, while the next in line for that position has a green ball, signifying envy, and so on.

I love symbolism. So in Before the Storm, Alex is called the Black Mare, wears a black dress when she first meets the hero and uses a black ribbon as a bookmark. That’s not a warm or happy color. It implies danger, both of the sinister sorcerous variety (think Snape or Raistlin) and the seductive kind. Bad girls wear black.

Watch for nuances, though. Violet doesn’t carry the same connotations as purple, so it may sound more normal for a king to wear royal purple than to wear royal violet. And the names of colors should take geography and history into account. The color ultramarine didn’t come into use until the year 1598, and a world without a certain painter is also unlikely to call a woman’s hair Titian.

What color is your main character?

Image from : http://www.jupiterimages.com/Image/royaltyFree/95588442



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Thoughts on colors

One of my favorite blogs, the Bookshelf Muse, has started a new set of thesaurus entries on colors. I’m looking forward to reading more – Angela and Becca have more examples than Roget’s – but that also inspired me to write a bit about the use of colors.

Describing colors generally works better when there aren’t too many of them. Sentences like the following can be distracting.

The sunset sky was a fiery red, though the trees on the horizon were black as ink spatters and the pearl-white unicorn tossed its head uneasily at the sight of them.

This leads to the Crayola effect, where the readers aren’t immersed in the story because they’re watching out for the next color description (burnt sienna? raw umber?). Unless it’s unavoidable – for instance, the story has to include a description of something multi-colored, it would be better to pick just one or two shades and bring those out fully. Readers are more likely to remember that as well.

Describing colors in full could also involve giving them an emotional dimension. I’ve come across lots of examples of red – ruby, madder, congealed blood – but one of the most original descriptions I’ve ever encountered was in a fanfic which said that if hatred could be made into a color, it would be that specific shade of red.

The fanfic spent literal paragraphs on colors, and yet all of it was vivid, imbued with emotion and connected to the characters and their personalities. As a result, I enjoyed reading it as I’ve never enjoyed descriptions like “Containing three greens in striation – apple-green, jade-green, celadon – the girl’s eyes were beseeching.” (from Dean Koontz’s The Taking).

That’s also an example of what not to do when describing – if the readers pause to wonder what colors cochineal, corbeau or chrysoprase are, then they’re not reading. I’d rather my audience be caught up in my story than reaching for their dictionaries.

Colors are often used to describe more than material objects, but they can be applied to almost anything. Moods would be next, but there are others – for instance, “the pale minutes before sunrise” or “His thoughts were red thoughts” (from “Sredni Vashtar”, by Hector Hugh Munroe). Finally, here’s a fascinating post about the descriptions of colors and the history behind hues.

Happy coloring!