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Looking Back to Lot's Wife Christl Verduyn Trent University Looking Back to Lot's Wife Christl Verduyn Trent University The story of Lot's wife is not unknown to look. At least Lot's wife had had fair contemporary Canadian women novelists nor warning .... Lucky Lot's wife . (p. to their female protagonists. Indeed one 246) Quebec writer, Monique Bosco, shapes an en• tire novel, appropriately entitled Lot's Wife (La Not all references to Lot's wife are this ex• Femme de Loth),1 around this biblical character. plicit or direct. In Marian Engel's The Glassy As the protagonist Helene puts it, the statue of Sea, the image is evoked indirectly when the Lot's wife is "a fine image, a most telling sym• protagonist Rita states: "If I had looked any bol. A pillar of petrified tears." (p. 142) In longer I should have turned into a pillar of another Quebec novel, Whirlpool (L'eau est salt." (p. 160) One might also interpret the profonde) by Diane Giguere, the main character stone angel of Margaret Laurence's 1964 novel Nathalie has her eyes "firmly fixed on the (The Stone Angel) as a version of Lot's wife's past": "I kept thinking of that frightful second statue. The stone angel of Manawaka's of time in which Lot's wife chose to look cemetery is there at the crucial moments in back," says Nathalie. "I kept alive the Hagar's life, establishing a link between it and memory of a person who had already been the protagonist who comes to resemble the me." (p. 55) A lengthy reflection on Lot's wife marble angel. Thus the night her favourite son appears in Adele Wiseman's Crackpot, when dies, Hagar is "transformed to stone" (p. 243) Hoda suddenly finds special meaning in the and unable to shed a human tear. On the day figure: of her escapade to Point Claire, Hagar sits in the bus "rigid as marble, solid and stolid to For some reason it was that lady in the outward view." (p. 146) At the end of the Bible that Hoda remembered now, and novel, which is also the end of Hagar's life, the suddenly understood what had really hap• statue is still there, and like the aged Hagar, pened to her. She had always felt sorry for "winters or lack of care had altered her .... that one, who, just for looking back, had She stood askew and tilted. Her mouth was been turned into a pillar of salt. Now she white." (p. 305) The statue of Laurence's saw that when Lot's wife looked back she novel emphasizes various significant moments simply became what she had been, con• in Hagar's life as she looks back at it from the centrated essence, pillar of tears. Most of vantage point of her ninety years. the time you trail your life behind you in a constant dribble of leaking time . you The woman who turns to look towards her hardly know it's there. But comes a time, past, even in the face of impending disaster or unexpected and unwanted, to you of all death, is Lot's wife. And while there may be a people, when you, of all people, must limited number of references to this biblical figure, such as those mentioned, there are clock's time into suspension and allows a countless characters in the novels written by reorganization of past events into another, Canadian women since 1960, who turn to their desired order, one which is often more of a past to take a second look at their childhood or disorder. Complementing this voluntary disor• adolescence and sometimes their early der is a somewhat "incoherent" or "obscure" adulthood, as well as at the people associated discourse and rather unusual imagery rooted with these periods of life. in the protagonist's memories and fantasies. Quebec women's novels seem to display such traits more than those of English Canadians Women have been accused of being able to although, of course, exceptions can be found. write nothing other than romantic memories of In Louise Maheux-Forcier's work, for exam• the past—their own personal past—rather than ple, the present, which is often reduced to a taking up the so-called more "ambitious", mere few seconds,2 is frozen while the "challenging" topics such as politics, war and protagonist goes back to her childhood by national history. Despite such accusations, means of a poetical reverie which recounts a women are still writing about their past, and childhood not so much as it was lived but as it what is finally becoming evident is that to do so is imagined. This return in time has no ap• is neither a fault nor a weakness, as the parent order; the only organization seems to be (predominately male) criticism implies, but that of a series of coincidences and inspirations rather a necessity. Like Lot's wife, the female influencing the protagonist. protagonists of women's novels since the beginning of the sixties have their reasons for turning to the past. While these reasons may Similarly in Monique Bosco's Lot's Wife (La differ slightly from character to character, they Femme de Loth), as in Margaret Atwood's Lady are all linked to the same important idea un• Oracle, the present is secondary to the past. derlying most women's writing in recent years: Both Quebec and English-Canadian authors the search for self, the quest for identity. By focus on the protagonist's past life, with only going back to see what or who she was as a passing reference to her present situation and child and adolescent, and by accepting that activities. person, the woman protagonist can finally come to a better understanding of who she is Instead of being suspended, the present is and ultimately also accept herself as she is. sometimes only slowed down by frequent, regular interruptions of flashback. This The "return to the past" is an integral part technique seems to be used more in English- of a major concern of contemporary Canadian Canadian women's work than in Quebec women novelists. To talk about past and works. In such cases, present-day events present demands that special attention be paid catalyze departures into memory. These may to writing techniques; different authors, ex• well be chronological, but due to the author's perimenting with time in their narrations, alternating between past and present, the have used different techniques. Sometimes the adherence to chronology is less apparent. In present is suspended or frozen while the Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel, for exam• past—"time lived"—surges forward to take ple, Hagar's memories are chronological, but the central spot. Mechanical, chronological since they are interwoven with events in the time then takes a second place to a time lived in present, the reader is scarcely aware of the the past, an internal duration which puts the rigidity of their sequence. The author, however, dissatisfied with her character's and suspected dead, she finds herself thinking "chronological" memory, decided in sub• about him, and about her mother, who died sequent novels to employ different techniques some years earlier, as well as about her feelings allowing her to present her character's and attitudes towards these two people. While memories in random order. Thus, in The on the one hand the protagonist regrets her Diviners, "memory bank movies" and old parents' death, on the other she is relieved for photographs permit Morag to skip back and she feels that they never understood her: forth in her memory. Marian Engel uses a somewhat similar technique in her novels. In They never knew, about that or why I The Honeyman Festival, for example, the left. Their own innocence, the reason I photograph of the protagonist's ex-lover, couldn't tell them; perilous innocence .... together with the evening's events, trigger off a flow of memories. They didn't teach us about evil, they didn't understand about it, how could I describe it to them? They were from Not only does the "return to the past," another age, pre-historic, when everyone which appears in so many women's novels got married and had a family, children since 1960, allow a certain experimentation growing in the yard like sunflowers; with time and writing techniques, it also remote as Eskimos or mastodons, (p. 144) organises itself around several recurring con• cepts or themes to be found in French and The parents' peculiar "innocence" places English novels alike, three of which may be them in another era, of which each represents described as: 1) the protagonist's relations with different values. The father is the spokesman her parents; 2) the relationship between the of logic, order and rationality; he was the one parents themselves and its influence on the who taught the protagonist and her brother protagonist; 3) the protagonist's love and sex their arithmetic. The mother taught them relationships. reading and writing and represents intuition and instinct. Each parent leaves his daughter One of the first things clarified by the return an inheritance which she recovers upon return• to the past is the protagonist's relationship with ing to the cabin of her childhood. From her her parents. Before she can fully determine her mother come the family photo albums which place in the present, she must define her permit her to see in the pictures the evolution position with regard to the people who shaped of her identity. From her father she gains her past. Quite often in these novels parents special knowledge,3 namely that one cannot represent the established order of things—the impose one's own will and order on the natural status quo—with which the protagonist is order of things.
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