Tenebræ has seated herself and taken up her Needlework, a piece whose size and difficulty are already subjects of Discussion in the House, the Embroidress herself keeping silence,— upon this Topick, at least.
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Line 11 Vulgarized:
Reverend Cherrycoke's niece, Tenebrae (a girl who loves to talk), has been working on an enormous and complicated piece of embroidery (which is one of the most exciting topics of conversation in the house because it's 1786) while listening to her uncle's stories.
Subtext:
The needlework probably represents Gravity's Rainbow because a needle is phallic like a rocket and also the novel is large and difficult and everybody just loves to talk about it, except for Thomas Pynchon who remains silent ("upon this Topick, at least" meaning Pynchon still writes loads and loads of pages that he puts into books all the time but he's said as much as he's going to say on boner rockets of World War II).
"Tenebræ"
Tenebræ is the name of a Catholic religious service held during the three days preceding Easter (so Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Saturday Before Easter). Tenebræ also means "darkness" in Latin which is probably why the Catholics call the service before Easter "Tenebræ." That would make more sense if I'd mentioned that during the service, candles are extinguished until the church is completely dark and then somebody makes a loud noise, probably akin to a V2 rocket hitting London.
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