Images of Women in

Canadian Literature:

The figure of woman as strong and compe• tent is central to the Canadian tradition. Besides the traditional femine archetypes such as earth mother and femme fatale, another significant feminine archetype is evolving in , that of the woman as hero, rather than "heroine," as central women characters have been (1) traditionally termed. The woman hero is not merely an adjunct to a man's world: she is not satisfied with the role of mother, mistress or wife. The quali• Woman as Hero ties she displays are not solely those traditionally considered feminine, such as tenderness, passivity and intuition. She makes decisions and influences events, and evinces characteristics by usually considered masculine, such as courage, aggression and ambition. Lorraine McMullen In Canadian fiction there are a number of novels in which the woman not only is the hero, but undergoes the same pattern of adventures which the archetypal male hero traditionally has undergone. She ven• tures on a mythical quest or journey, usually alone. For the woman hero, this journey usually implies, to some extent at least, a voyage of self discovery. It may be an entirely internal journey. As with the male hero, her journey may in• clude a meeting with a "light" (Apollon• ian) or dark (Dionysian) person of the opposite sex, perhaps with both. If we family, accepts his domination. Lind are to speak in Jungian terms, these Archer, the young teacher who has come figures may be seen as functions of the to board with the Gares, functions as animus, in the same way that women the the traditional guide for Judith— male hero meets may be seen as functions helping her to develop her feminine of his anima. Also, the hero tradition• qualities which have been suppressed in ally meets a guide of the same sex; and her angry attempts to withstand her finally, like the male hero, she descends father's pressure, giving her the into the underworld and returns wiser or friendship and support none of her fam• freer; this descent and return symbolize ily offers, and finally arranging her death and rebirth. escape to marry her lover, Sven Sandbo. Sven is the "dark man" in Judith's life Novelists I shall discuss to demonstrate who arrives back on the neighbouring this thesis include Martha Ostenso, farm at the opportune time, when Morley Callaghan, , Judith can no longer tolerate her life Ethel Wilson, and at home, and so he provides an escape Constance Beresford-Howe. for her. Judith's passage through the underworld begins when her father ties her hand and foot to the barn floor We shall begin with the earliest of the after her attack on him; this incident novels and the youngest of the heroes. is the physical counterpart to the The novel is Martha Ostenso1s WiId Geese psychological oppression which follows, (1925); the hero is seventeen-year-old as he threatens to have her jailed for Judith Gare. Judith is the only one of attempted murder if she tries to the tyrannical Caleb Gare's four children leave. It is Lind Archer who brings with the courage to oppose him. Her her out of the apathy and despair into name is suitably chosen. Like the which she sinks at this time. Biblical Judith who decapitated Holophernes and liberated the Jews,(2) Judith very narrowly misses freeing Judith does not go through the inner her family from Caleb's bondage when quest of some other heroes we shall be she heaves a well sharpened axe at his discussing. Her quest is basically ex• head. ternal with, of course, psychological overtones, and her trials are largely There is an intriguing reversal of sex physical — ranging from being tied in roles among the Gare children. The the barn to being forced to work end• older boy, Martin, is gentle, submissive less hours in the fields. Her quest and frail. Judith is physically big, ends with freedom. Overcoming ob• strong, aggressive and determined. She stacles set up by her own family—her continually opposes her father's will, mother's determination to keep her home, while Martin, with the rest of the her sister's lack of compassion, as well as her father's continual oppression— flies for fishing, an art her father had she escapes from the farm to the marriage taught her. This skill is important as she wants and she is free. it provides the money to escape from her husband, Eddie Vardoe, to whom she is It is in later novels that we see the housekeeper, sex object and ego booster, more internal quest, the search for self- but not a human being. Also, she re• real ization--often in conjunction with an verses the stereotyped male-female pat• external voyage away from a specific tern by rescuing a man in distress. Yet, place or person or to a specific location. despite these "masculine" qualities and Ethel Wilson's Swamp Angel (195^) provides activities, Maggie possesses the more us with an example of the female hero who characteristically "feminine" traits of undertakes a journey which is both exter• gentleness, helpfulness and kindness. nal and internal. Maggie Lloyd starts on She is sexually attractive. She is her journey to free herself from an in• motherly to the Gunnarsen's young son, supportable marriage. She is not an Alan. She excels in the traditional escapist, for she does not seek to escape female art of cooking. In her com• from life or responsibility, only from a bination of the masculine and feminine, humiliating and reductive relationship. Maggie approaches the androgynous ideal. Swamp Angel, then, begins where Ibsen's 1 Pol 's House ended--as Maggie walks out The elderly and eccentric Nell Severance the kitchen door. is Maggie's mentor, the traditional sage who comes to the aid of the hero. She Her journey takes her from Vancouver to is also Maggie's alter ego; both Maggie the interior of British Columbia, while and Nell have been trapped by the past spiritually she is also taking a journey and both must free themselves from it to into herself. She stops at a village go on: Maggie to a new life, Severance significantly named Hope and remains to death. They are linked by Severance's there for three days, which the narrator gun, the Swamp Angel; Nell sends the gun describes as "like the respite that per• to Maggie to throw away after her death "(3) haps comes to the soul after death, and Maggie writes to Nell when she re• a very obvious reference to her dying to ceives it:" I am so sure that our ability her previous life. From here she goes to throw away the substance, to lose all forward to face a series of tests and yet keep the essence is very important" 129). obstacles seemingly requisite to her (p. entry into a new life. Maggie's adventures include physically Maggie demonstrates characteristics and rescuing Mr. Cunningham from the lake, interests usually labelled masculine. materially rescuing the Gunnarsen lodge First of all she is an excellent fisher- from imminent failure, and spiritually woman and an unusually skilled maker of rescuing Vera Gunnarsen after her abortive attempt at suicide. Of the forty-year-old marriage carrying tests and obstacles Maggie meets, Vera Wuthering Heights, a poetry anthology, is the most difficult. Vera is a blood-pressure pills, glasses and "warm stereotype of the woman who sees herself old-woman underpants." Like Maggie Lloyd solely in relation to her husband, who she leaves without a word of farewell. cannot relate to other women, and sees Unlike Maggie she leaves without any any capable, attractive woman only as a preparation whatever. Why does she leave rival — to be watched, resented, envied so precipitously? She tells us that it and suspected. When she sees that by was "the cold white autumn light pouring driving Maggie away she has alienated through the landing window as I climbed her husband she attempts to drown her• up with the tray. It seemed to bleach self, and Ironically, It is to Maggie the stairway into something 1ike a high she turns for help. white cell. The night before on TV I'd seen cells like that in Viet Nam or some• where, for political prisoners. You saw By the conclusion of the novel, Maggie them crouched at the bottom of narrow has overcome a series of obstacles and cages, looking up at the light. I've has decided to remain with the Gunnar- never had a political conviction in my sens where she will continue to be a life, unless you count being bored by support to them, individually and as a politics. But there I was just the same. family, and to the running of the lodge. Under bars."(4) She has confronted her past and in ac• cepting its tragedies has learned to lose all but keep the essence, as she Eva moves into a different world when she tells Nell Severance. moves into a basement apartment just two miles from her home. The first morning Maggie is a hero seeking to tread a very she says," I opened my eyes into a per• difficult path. She involves herself fect, self-centred bliss without past or with others, recognizing as Nell says in future, and rejoiced in everything I saw" (pp. 6-7). Nevertheless, Elysium their last conversation, "No Man is an turns into Hades--for this is a dark Island, I am involved in Mankinde," dingy subterranean world in which she (p. 150) and yet at the same time she must come to grips with her past, which accepts her own Isolation realizing, "I is revealed through a series of flash• am alone and, like a swimmer, I have to backs, and to some understanding of her• make my way on my own power. Swimming is self and acceptance of the present and like living, it is done alone" (p. 99)- her new life. She, too, passes through a series of tests—physical illness, The Book of Eve (1973) presents us with psychological illness, loneliness, the as unlikely a hero as we shall find. Eva temptation to return. And is helped Carroll is a seventy-year-old, middle- through these trials by a forty-seven- class housewife who walks out of her year old, Hungarian Czech refugee named isn't the point you see, any more than Johnny, who is an educated factory virtue was when I left. . ." (p. 169). worker and gourmet cook; he would be as unlikely to have turned up in her pre• When we first meet Peggy Sanderson of vious middle class existence as would Morley Callaghan's The Loved and the "old Tom," the battered neighbourhood Lost (1959), she has already left home cat she adopts, and to whom Johnny and rejected class structures and bears a distinct resemblance. Johnny is racial barriers of conventional society. a fittingly exotic dark haired Dionysian She is an anti-establishment figure figure. There is some reversal of the from the outset. She moves among the usual sex roles in the relationship blacks of Montreal's St. Antoine dis- between Johnny and Eva; for Johnny is strict and, like Eva, her home is a the cook who whips up magnificent meals; basement room in a shabby house well he is the one who wants to settle down below the mountain. This is her under• and place his Wilton carpet on her world. basement floor; he is twenty-three years her junior. Peggy is a young woman who seeks and gives love, in the true sense of the The cycle of the seasons helps define word, and meets with anger and resent• Eva's progress. She has left home in ment from whites and blacks of all late September and undergoes her series levels of society; for they cannot of trials through late fall and winter. understand anyone attempting to trans• In spring, appropriately, she emerges cend race and class. The blacks, with from her underworld, signified by the their primitive music, their night life, opening of the door from her cave-like and their location below the mountain, apartment to the outer world. It is provide the Dionysian element in her Johnny who, after much struggle, suc• life. Jim McAlpin, the middle-class ceeds in freeing the door which had been protagonist from the academic world, is jammed shut for years, just as it is the Apollonian figure. He seeks to Johnny who helps her free herself from change her life and is the one person her past, to become a new person. What who has an opportunity to save her. At Maggie Lloyd always knew, Eva learns one point Jim's colleagues suggest that finally from her experiences; that the he is Orpheus to Peggy's Eurydice: "perfect self-centred bliss" she felt "There she is lost in the dark at first is not the answer, that even underworld. Montreal's Plutonian at seventy one cannot opt out of life, shore. Like Eurydice. Remember but must get involved with others. As the lady? she so cryptically puts it finally, Remember? How did Eurydice die?" "I never cared much for paprika and I "Bitten by a snake," Foley said. hate Wilton carpets. But happiness "And certainly our little Peggy has to die, he thought with a sharp pang, been badly bitten." simply because she was what she was. "(4) "So McAlpin becomes her Orpheus. And there had been terror in Peggy's This conversation effectively fore• face as Mai one's hand reached out for shadows the resolution when Jim, doubt• her; she had sensed that there were ing Peggy, leaves her and she is raped many others like Malone, who would and murdered. Jim realizes his failure destroy her (p. 131). and the Orpheus-Eurydice parallel is recalled by these words at the end of Peggy is a hero who stands alone seeking the novel: "In a moment of jealous to bridge the gulf between classes, races doubt his faith in her had weakened, and sexes. But ultimately neither man or he had lost his view of her and so she woman, upper, lower or middle class, had vanished. She had vanished off black or white understands or accepts her. the earth. And now he was alone." Everywhere she goes she causes jealousy, (p. 233) resentment, quarrels and confusion—"a fool saint" might call The carved leopard and the little church her. Yet she is determined to be her own Peggy shows Jim indicate two polarities person. Working in a factory, living of experience: the leopard suggests alone, she seeks love and finds hate. She fierceness, power, lurking violence, never does capitulate to the conventional sexuality; the church, simplicity, grace, world which persecutes her, but she must love, the spiritual. For Peggy they pay for her intransigence. Because she go together. For Jim and for most is viewed from the outside throughout the people they are antithetical, as oppos• novel, she remains an elusive figure and ite as male and female. But Peggy sees we are given more of a portrayal of so• and accepts an androgynous world in ciety's reaction to an outsider than we which both of these seeming opposites are of Peggy herself. belong.

A comparison Jim makes between Peggy and In Margaret Laurence's (1966), Joan of Arc underlines her heroic char• i Rachel Cameron's voyage is inter• acter as well as foreshadowing her fate: nal, a voyage from childhood to maturity She, like Joan, lived and acted by at the age of thirty-four. her own secret intuitions. Joan had shattered her world, and Peggy shat• Rachel is a neurotic spinster school tered people too. Not only Malone, teacher living with her mother in small but Mrs. Murdock; even Foley. She town Manawaka. Her distorted view of would shatter all the people who reality can be seen in her relationship lived on the mountain and the people with her mother; her school principal, who prayed on the mountain. Joan had her students and her co-worker and friend Calla Mackie. Her affair with Nick is heralded by her words spoken under Kazlik initiates the change which takes anaesthetic," 1 am the mother now." place within her. In order to meet with When Rachel leaves hospital she says Nick, Rachel must withstand her mother's that she feels," like a freed prisoner neurotic threats. This is the first step . . . slightly dazed at the sudden con• in her journey—in leaving her childhood, crete presence of the outside."(6) Now leaving home. Prior to meeting Nick, finally she j_s_ free, she _i_s_ outside. Rachel had been replacing love and sex• She has come out of the fantasy world uality in her life with a fantasy world of exotic princes and the hypocritical, peopled with exotic princes in far off equally unreal world of pretence in• lands. Nick is a bridge between this herited from her mother and the neur• fantasy world and reality. He has some otic world of her own distorted rela• elements of her fantasy—he is dark, tionships with others. Small wonder Slavic featured, of Ukrainian background, that she is "slightly dazed at the sud• foreign to her Scots Presbyterian world. den concrete presence of the outside." There is an unreal element in their re• lationship, too, for Rachel dreams of Rachel meets a woman adviser in the marriage and children, whereas it is all person of Calla who is generous, kind too apparent that for Nick she is a and eccentric. Calla has the courage temporary diversion for the summer. Yet to disregard public opinion and be her Nick is the catalyst through whom own person, but Rachel is unable to Rachel develops her capacity to reach benefit from this example. Later, when outward to others, to give and receive she believes she is pregnant, Rachel goes love. Nick, with his foreignness, dark• to Calla for support—this is signifi• ness and sexuality, is the Dionysian cant, for the first time she can reach figure in Rachel's experience. out for help.

Major trials Rachel must face in her What heroic qualities does Rachel possess? quest for maturity are her desertion by None at all at first. But through her Nick, her supposed pregnancy and her experience she develops some—she learns mother's powerful inhibiting influence. courage, decisiveness and the willingness She rejects the escape routes of suicide to accept responsibility. Her quest, and abortion as solutions to her preg• which she thought a quest for husband and nancy and accepts all the trials im• children, propels her into a very dif• plicit in being unmarried and pregnant ferent one, an ordeal through which she in a small town at the age of thirty- achieves self respect and the capacity to four. Her voyage through the under• love and therefore to understand others, world of hospital and anaesthesia is the and the maturity which, along with love, ultimate step in her journey to maturity motherhood implies. and freedom. Her new found adulthood tumour, black pearl; ... (p. The unnamed protagonist of Margaret At- 145) wood's Surfacing is journeying to She does not surface from this under• (1972) her former home. She is also journeying world until she has deliberately become from the city back to nature, from civi• pregnant to replace her lost child, has lization to the primitive, from present communicated with her dead parents, to past, from illusion to reality. Thus destroyed everything linking her with the her quest functions on multiple levels artificial life she can no longer toler• other than the ostensible one—a search ate and identified herself with the ani• for her missing father, and becomes mal world. Finally, cleansed through primarily a journey into herself. As she suffering, she re-enters her own time plunges into the lake she dives into the and place to begin anew. depths of her own being. Finding the body of her father in the lake jolts her These heroes are a motley crowd indeed into an awareness of the reality about — ranging in age from seventeen to sev• herself which she has been suppressing, enty, in occupation from factory worker of the truth she could not face: to farmer to teacher to commercial ar• It was all real enough, it was enough tist, and including housewives; in reality for ever, I couldn't accept marital status they include the single it, that mutilation, ruin I'd made, and the married, those who want to marry I needed a different version. and those who want to get out of mar• (7) She is referring, of course, to her abor• riage. tion and recalls now the actual events which she has thus far successfully What is most intriguing is not their transformed in her mind into "a differ• diversity so much as their similarity. ent version"—marriage, a child and All of these women are heroic in their divorce. Now she accepts the truth and qualities and in their actions, and all the responsibility for her action: undertake a journey or quest with vary• I could have said no but I didn't; ing degrees of success. None of them that made me one of them too, a is a stereotype—all have stepped out killer. After the slaughter, the of the mould—all are individuals. All murder, he couldn't believe I didn't find themselves flouting convention; want to see him any more; it be• Judith runs away from home, Maggie and wildered him, he resented me for it, Eva walk out on their husbands, the he expected gratitude because he protagonist of Surfacing rejects the arranged it for me, fixed me so I cliche-ridden, artificial world of the was as good as new; others, he said seventies, Peggy ignores social struc• wouldn't have bothered. Since then tures, Rachel casts off her role of I'd carried that death around inside dutiful daughter. None is seeking the me, layering it over, a cyst, a conventional goal of today—money, power, a successful marriage, social prestige. For none of them is a man must first discover what this identity or the usual male-female sexual rela• is. For all of them, in fact, their jour tionship the primary objective. ney becomes a learning process, through which they discover truths about themsel• What, then, do they seek? They seek, ves and their world, and the role they first of all, freedom. At its most must play in this world. Their journey primitive level Judith Gare seeks physi is always a difficult one. But the free• cal freedom. Most seek psychological dom and sense of self worth that are freedom—the freedom to achieve and ex• achieved make it well worth the price. press their own identity. Often they

NOTES

1. I use the term "hero" as defined by Carolyn Hellbrun In her study, Toward a Recognition of Androgyny, (Hew York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973). 2. Old Testament, Book of Judith, 10:1 - 13:10.

3. Ethel Wilson, Swamp Angel (: McClelland and Stewart, NCL edition, 1962), 'lO. All page references will be to this edition.

k. Constance Beresford-Howe, The Book of Eve, (Toronto: Hacmlllan of Canada, 1973), 1-2. All page references will be to this edition. 5. Horley Callaghan, The Loved and the Lost (Toronto: Kacmlllan of Canada, Laurenttan Library Edition, 1970), 135- Alt page references will be to this edition.

6. Hargaret Laurence, A Jest of God (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, NCL edition, I97M, 185.

7. Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (Toronto: General Publishing Co., Paperjacks edition, 1973), 1^ Al 1 page references will be to this edition.