What the Stencil Really Means

The stencil metaphor in "Knife Grinder" chapter is basically saying that each group defines itself by tearing the other one down. The villagers spend the entire meeting making the Romani into the worst possible version of themselves, and then when Jason ends up at the Gypsy camp, he sits by the fire and listens to them do the exact same thing about gorgios. The mother goes off about how dirty non-Romani people are. Clem Ostler is sneering about them sleeping with their pets. They are doing exactly what the villagers were doing. And Jason catches it. He thinks about how the Gypsies wanted the villagers to be gross, "so the grossness of what they're not acts as a stencil for what they are" (Mitchell 232). That is such a specific way to describe it and I think it is perfect. A stencil does not show you what something is. It shows you the shape of everything around it. Both groups are doing that. They are not defining themselves by anything real about who they are. They are defining themselves entirely by how bad they can make the other side look, and the worse the other side looks, the better they feel about themselves.

What gets me is that Jason is thirteen and he is the only person in the entire chapter who sees this. He tries to be honest with the Gypsies about what he saw. He tells them the villagers are just scared, that if they could sit down and actually listen to each other it would be a start. And the daughter just shuts it down: "The boy could preach till he's purple...They'd not believe him. They'd not want to believe him" (Mitchell 244). It is not that the villagers can't understand the Romani. It is that they don't want to. That is the whole point of the stencil. People keep it in place on purpose because the ugly version of the other side is more useful to them than the real one. You just have to actually look at the person on the other side of it, and the daughter is saying nobody wants to do that.

Comments

  1. RuijingApril 23, 2026 at 9:28 PM

    Hi Lynn, I like all the details you analyzed in this scence :DD. I think the fact that Jason is the only one in the village realizing both sides are painting facades of each other says a lot about his innocence. Jason stands relatively neutral between the townspeople and Romani because he hasn't been brainwashed by the social prejudices of his townspeople. This clear mind allows him to make more accurate judgements of each side. Great blog!!

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  2. ShriyaApril 26, 2026 at 7:07 PM

    Hi Lynn, I like how you explain the stencil as defining indentity by making the other side worse instead of understanding themselves. The parallel you point out between the villagers and the Romani is interesting, because it shows the conflict isn't one side but both relying on the same mindset. Your point about people choosing to keep the stencil in place, i never thought about it in that way its a bit unsettling. It makes Jason's attempt to be honest feel frustrating since, you can see it could be different but no one is willing to change.

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  3. MitchellApril 27, 2026 at 12:56 PM

    I like your observation about how, at the tender age of thirteen, Jason seems to be the only person in the entire village who is not losing his mind over the issue of the designated campsite for Romani people (although Helena seems not nearly as worked up as Michael, and we can assume Julia has a smart and non-hysterical/xenophobic take on the issue). We talked about Jason keen observational skills from the start of the novel, and how these are in some ways enabled and enhanced by his tendency to remain silent in crowds or in the midst of arguments. He doesn't speak at the town meeting, and he barely speaks when he's with the Gypsy community in the gorge. He listens and observes, and this enables him to perhaps better discern the parallels, the ironies, leading to the stencil analogy. If he were lining up to shoot his mouth off at the microphone at the meeting, he would presumably not be listening very closely--his critical intelligence is seemingly enhanced by Hangman, in an indirect way. And this seems to give him a "take" that is unique among the madding crowd.

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