Domestic Material Culture in Fiction by Joan Barfoot, Marion Quednau, and Diane ~Choem~Erlen
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Living Rooms: Domestic Material Culture in Fiction by Joan Barfoot, Marion Quednau, and Diane ~choem~erlen December 1999 Susan Elmslie Department of English McGill University, Montréal A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy O Susan Elmslie 1999 Natiarial Library Bibiiothèque nationale du Canada Acquisitions arid Acquisitions et Bibliogmphic Services services bibliographiques The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une Licence non exclusive licence aiiowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distri'bute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in rnicroform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfichelfilm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conseme la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantiai extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Abstract My dissertation provides the first full-length study of representations of domestic material culture in contemporary Canadian women's fiction. The first chapter presents two metaphors, the elephant in the living room, and the open secret, and indicates their usefulness in explaining the cultural and critical tendency to overlook the meanings cornmunicated bu contemporary domestic material objects and spaces. Drawing on cultural anthropologist Grant McCrackenls research into the role of consumptiori in the preservation of hopes and ideals. the second chapter examines gendered patterns of consumption in Joan Barfoot's first two novels. i suggest that Barfoot's female protagonists reject their suburban homes out of an awareness of the ways these spaces function as repositories of values with which they can no longer live. In the third chapter. 1 situate mv discussion of the Hardoy, or "butterfly chair." in Marion Quednau's novel of the same name, against the backdrop of twentieth-centurv design dçbatrs between modemists and traditionalists. The chair is the object in which the riovel's main tensions, which relate to notions of comfort, history, and authoritv, are embedded. In the fourth chapter 1 maintain that the central concerns of Diane Schoemperlen's fiction are couched in her representations of domestic material culture. Interpersonal relationships are consistently represented in her fiction as mediated through domestic objects and spaces. Her characters' struggles over issues of control, and the ambivalence characteristically associated with these struggles. often materialize in their manipulations of their domestic environmenfi. Such manipulations make explicit the process of self-fashioning via material culture which every individual engages in on a dailv basis, albeit at the level of the tacit. Elmslie iii Ma dissertation se veut la première étude approfondie des représentations de la culture matérielle et domestique dans la littérature féminine contemporaine canadienne. Le premier chapitre présente deux métaphores, à savoir l'éléphant dans le salon et le secret de Polichinelle, métaphores qui démontrent à quel point la critique et la société ont tendance à ignorer les significations communiquées par les objects et les espaces domestiques contemporains. Inspiré des recherches de l'anthropologue Grant McCracken sur le rôle que joue la consommation dans la conservation des idéaux, le deuxième chapitre examine les normes de consommation représentées dans les deux premiers romans de Joan Barfoot. Je propose que les protagonistes féminins de Barfoot rejettent leurs maisons de banlieu lorsqu'elles se rendent compte de la façon dont ces espaces fonctionnent, c'est à dire comme des répertoires des valeurs avec lesquelles elles ne peuvent plus vivre. Dans le troisième chapitre, mon argumentation se concentre sur la chaise Hardoy (surnommé .<papillonm) représentée dans le roman de Marion Quednau intitulé The Butter-y Chair, et ce dans le contexte du débat entre les modernistes et les traditionalistes qui a marqué ce siècle en design. La chaise est l'objet dans lequel s'enfoncent les tensions principales du roman, tensions qui se rapportent aux notions de confort, d'histoire, et d'autorité. Dans le quatrième chapitre je prétends que les préoccupations centrales dans l'œuvre de Diane Schoemperlen se retrouvent dans ses représentations de la culture matérielle et domestique. Chez Schoemperlen les rapports personnels sont constamment representés et négociés à travers les objets et les espaces domestiques. Les difficultés qu'ont ses personnages avec l'autorité, et l'ambivalence qui en résulte inévitablement, se répercutent dans leurs interactions avec leur environnement matérielle et domestique. Ces interactions rendent explicite le processus de creation de soi à travers la culture matérielle, un processus auquel chaque individu participe quotidiennement, quoiqu'au niveau du tacite. Elmsiie v Acknowledgements Thanks first to the Great Designer. This dissertation was completed with the assistance of the Robert and Mary Stanfield Dissertation Fellowship. My deep thanks go out to donors of this award. 1 am also enormousl?* grateful to Robert Lecker for sharing his experience and expertise with me while seMng as my thesis advisor and contributing to my professional formation in other research and teaching capacities. Wes Folkerth cvüs a careful reader of rny work, my techno-guru, and mv Rushmore. Throughout mv graduate education, Janet Roberts, Hartley Elrnslie, Lenora Shrewsbury, Ted Folkerth, and Beth Folkerth have given me encouragement and other forms of assistance for which 1 am trernendouslv appreciative. Thanks to Alex Folkerth, for not growing al1 the wav up before I finished this. Thanks also to Masarah Van Eyck for the use of her apartment as a summer writing haven, and for her manv perceptive and helpful responses to portions of this work. Sam Trudeau made helpfiil suggestions for the translation of the abstract. I am grateful to Annmarie Adams for the loan of materials, suggestions on reading, and for her insights on the Hardoy chair, and to Galen Cranz for helping me to track dom an elusive source on the same. Thanks are owing to the staff at McCill Inter-Library Loans for their assistance in obtaining research materials. Elmslie vi Several people assisted me in my research on the Leveridge cabin, depicted in The ButterjZy Chnk Marion Quednau shared with me, in telephone and email conversations, her memories of the place; Carson Cross and Elizabeth Mitchell of the Hastings County Historical Society, Luke Hendry at the BancroJ Times, and Cate Giroux at the Wollaston & Limerick Public Librarv undertook searches and made queries on my behalf; and Richard Trounce, a descendant of the Leveridge family, very generouslv shared with me information about, and photographs of, the Leveridge homestead. Warm thanks to all. Manv people at McGill have offered me terrific support and opportunities, making my time here very rewarding. I am therefore happv to thank Maggie Kilgour. Dorothy Bray, Gary Wihl, Nathalie Cooke, Brian Trehearne, Michael Bristol, and Peter Gibian. This dissertation is dedicated to 26 Brisco Street, Brampton, Ontario, because, in the words of Eudora Welty, "A place that ever was lived in is likr a fire that never goes out" ("SomeNotes" 186). Elmslie vii Contents Abs trac t Résumé Acknowledgements Introduction Corne into the Foyer Notes 1 The Elephant in the Living Room 12 What is Material Culture? Material Culture in Literary Studies Threads of Connection Notes Wallpaper 3 O 2 Possessions and Dispossession in Fiction by Joan Barfoot 53 Finding the Right Pattern The Politics of Purchasing Power Cracks in the Garrison, or, A Theme of One's Own Notes Tray 93 3 The Butterfly Chair The Butteiifly Chair in the Gendered Aesthetics of Contemporary Design Debates Elmslie viii The Butterfly Chair and Notions of Comfort and Discornfort 'Historian of My Infancy": The Butterfly Chair and the Past The Seat of Authority End of the Line Yotes Linen 4 The Power of Rooms The Quest for Control Clues Reflecting Surfaces "Complete Quiet Benevolent Control" Small Comfort Sotes Ribbon (Conclusion) Xo tes M'orks Cited Elmsiie 1 Introduction the obects we possess may rell the stinies of OUT iives more accuratei~than we ourselues could. - Bronwen Wallace. "Benediction" (44) In this dissertation I emplov the tools of material culture analvsis to examine representations of domestic interiors and their component parts in fiction bv Joan Barfoot, Marion Quednau. and Diane Schoemperlen. hl\* title, "Living Roorns," is a loose plav on words meant to emphasize the dynamic, reflexive aspect of domestic material culture. to draw attention tu its capacity to both reflect and shape the attitudes, beliefs and behaviour of' those who encounter and engage with it. Each of these women writers pavs special attention to the material specificities of the domestic environment as a space in which the politics of gender are played out. where furnishirigs and interior décor express not only persona1 aesthetic preferencrs. but where these preferences are in turn understood as expressions of one's relation to larger ideological formations. Each represents domestic