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Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for

Summer 1984

The Prairie Mermaid Love-Tests Of Pioneer Women

Robert H. Solomon University of Alberta

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Solomon, Robert H., "The Prairie Mermaid Love-Tests Of Pioneer Women" (1984). Great Plains Quarterly. 1808. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1808

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. THE PRAIRIE MERMAID

LOVE~TESTS OF PIONEER WOMEN

ROBERT H. SOLOMON

In some fictional, historical, and autobiograph­ Garden Cities movement, describes the period ical accounts of the lives of married women on in question as "the time of hard fighting and the prairies of North America during the brief unceasing struggle," when one could see "set­ period between initial exploration and perma­ tlers come in, but settlers go out again, sick of nent settlement, there appears a rather wide­ the country.,,1 She records this experience in spread and complicated motif. In it the woman her book In Western Canada before the War, lives on an empty prairie, usually far from the which also contains proud and sympathetic edge of town; physically isolated with her hus­ accounts of successful marriages on the prairie, band, she is psychologically alone, too, and similar to those in the work of Willa Cather, friendless, especially in terms of female com­ Nellie McClung, and others.2 Mitchell's account panionship. Often her family is far away; always of unhappy marriages on both sides of the in­ her husband is insensitive and unsympathetic, ternational border closely resembles fictional and, in general terms, unworthy of her devo­ accounts in Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner, tion. Sometimes even before she is able to voice "The Painted Door," by Sinclair Ross, and or demonstrate her needs for friends, family, "Snow," by the German-born, naturalistic love, and beauty, the woman must pass a cruel writer, Frederick Philip Grove. In his auto­ love-test; she has to silence all that she has biography, A Son of the Middle Border, Ham­ learned about the failure of her life, love, and lin Garland presents at least two generations of lover on the prairie. women caught in the same type of unsatisfying Elizabeth Mitchell, a journalist interested in marriage. Not every woman on the prairies contemporary reforms, emigration, and the during this period fits the motif. But the theme of the unappreciated, devoted, and silenced prairie wife exists in Canadian and American An associate professor of English at the Univer­ sity of Alberta, Robert H. Solomon is engaged fiction and nonfiction, created by writers of in research on prairie fiction in the United both sexes. By coincidence or intention, this States and Canada. motif follows the most popular of the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, "The Little [GPQ 4 (Summer 1984): 143-51.) Mermaid.',3

143 144 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1984

ANTECEDENTS OF ANDERSEN'S MERMAID a man she trusted; then she is transported above human indignities to the realm of the birds. "The Little Mermaid" (first published in If Andersen's story contains references to Danish in 1835) was well known in Europe and older traditions, it also resonates with concerns America in the second half of the nineteenth peculiar in origin or intensity to the period in century. It was available in translations, autho­ which he lived. The theme of the seduced and rized and not, the latter much to Andersen's abandoned young woman fills nineteenth­ chagrin. Andersen, who wrote several fanciful century literature, as early as Austen's Pride autobiographical stories, including one called and Prejudice, and appears in popular literature "the fairy tale of my life," maintained that the such as cautionary paperback novels.5 Migra­ mermaid story was his creation. Nevertheless, tion after the industrial revolution intensified he admitted to knowing the popular Danish universal concerns about the fate of young song "Agnete and The Mermen," and Ander­ women who leave home. Emigration to the sen's other tales demonstrate that he knew North American plains offered a particularly European folk literature and mythology, where arduous test, redoubling the significance of the ancestors of the little mermaid can readily be theme. Andersen's tale also reflects Victorian identified.4 fears about the dangers of female passion. Examples of female water-deities in Mediter­ Finally, the story undoubtedly stirred Ander­ ranean, North European, and English mythol­ sen for personal, as well as literary and social, ogy and literature include sirens, naiads, Rhine­ reasons. A lifelong virgin, Andersen visited maidens, Lorelei, and the Arthurian "Lady of brothels only to tell fairy tales to the youngest the Lake." Hesiod records Aphrodite of the women. He lied about a dull, insensitive father; Waves, born from the blood-flecked seafoam ignored his bastard sister ("my mother's daugh­ following the castration by Cronus of the ele­ ter," he called her); and never admitted the ille­ mental god Uranus; this motif informs Botti­ gitimate birth of his own mother and her two celli's painting of a Christianized Venus rising sisters.6 Andersen's tale is an amalgam of the from rose-decked waves. The goddess of birth old and the contemporary, the universal and and love bestows magical gifts of secret knowl­ the personal. Across the Atlantic, the pattern edge, wealth, or power. Other water-deities, of emigration, isolation, and privation on the such as the sirens in The Odyssey, offer seduc­ prairie set the stage for a reappearance of the tion, confusion, enslavement, or death instead. mermaid motif. Andersen adopts the bloody feet and the sea­ foam of Aphrodite and the singing of the sirens ANDERSEN'S MERMAID STORY for his tale. His mermaid is silenced, as were the sirens when Odysseus closed the ears of his The mermaid story by Andersen is simple men to them, and this recalls another source, and direct. Six sisters live beneath the corn­ the myth of the rape of Philomela. flower-blue sea with their father, a king, and his Philomela was "outraged" by her sister Proc­ mother. Each maid tends a garden, in the center ne's husband; in order to hide his identity, Tereus of which stands a topiary monument. The sisters cut out Philomela's tongue. In some versions, sculpt fish or mercreatures; the little mermaid Procne also is silenced, but the motif is the same: shapes the sun, reflecting her dangerous interest the silencing of a sexually betrayed woman. In in things Apollonian, masculine (as the sun is the myth the women triumph, gain revenge, and in myths), and unreachable. In the center of the are saved from lives of humiliation by becoming sun-spot is a statue she has rescued from a a nightingale and a swallow. This motif can be wreck, a bust of a handsome man. The maid is seen in art from the Renaissance to the poetry of fifteen, the age of sexual awakening. Omens of William Faulkner. Like Philomela or Procne, An­ danger surround her on her birthday, when she dersen's maid loses her voice and is betrayed by surfaces to spend a ritual time in the world of THE PRAIRIE MERMAID 145 men as her sisters have done before. It is sold their tresses (symbols of femininity) for winter; icebergs and freezing spray make the a magical dagger with which the maid is to stab surfacing painful and dangerous. Nevertheless, the betrayer. But she cannot; instead, the mer­ she sees a handsome prince, falls in love with maid undergoes her final humiliation. She kisses him, and rescues him from death. Hiding her the brows of the sleeping couple and stabs her­ face in seafoam, she dives beneath the sea to self. But as she starts to dissolve, she is miracu­ avoid capture by his companions. But as she lously rescued by "sisters of the air" (Andersen's sinks, the maid plans to become a woman and version of the Philomela-birds). The tale has be­ seek her love. come a children's story, with a happy ending A seawitch gives her an odious potion, a and a cautionary message: the young readers drink made from the bosom-blood of the witch, are warned that the mermaid's life is shortened symbolizing a second nurturing. The new kind when a child misbehaves, lengthened when a of milk and knowledge represents passage to a child is good. Thus Andersen retreats from the new life. The mermaid also loses her tail to gain problems presented by sexual maturation and legs; every step will feel like a thousand stab­ the pressures that force women to be devoted bings. She loses her mermaid's lifespan of three to callous lovers. Unlike Andersen, those who centuries; further, should her prince marry a record prairie mermaids write for adults. On mortal, the mermaid will dissolve into seafoam the prairie, at the earliest time of settlement, (reversing Aphrodite's birth). Finally, the mer­ rescue is impossible; the stories are more can­ maid will be silent, giving up her sirenlike voice. did, and the mode of expression is that of gritty As in those nineteenth-century marriages that realism. coincided with emigration and homesteading, selecting the wrong husband will be grievously "CARRION SPRING": A DOG'S LIFE painful, even fatal: her choice of prince deter­ mines the fate of the mermaid, in the tale and Of the writers who utilize the motif of the on the prairies. devoted, long-suffering, silenced prairie wife, The mermaid does select a cold and callous Wallace Stegner develops it most clearly in his mate, who ignores blood flowing from her feet unusual mixed-genre work, Wolf Willow, sub­ as the two of them travel to distant lands and titled A History, a Story, and a Memory of the mountaintops. He inflicts psychological suffer­ Last Prairie Frontier. 7 The story of the prairie ing on his silent companion, telling her of a mermaid appears in the section entitled "Car­ mermaid he really loves and of a princess he rion Spring," in the book's third part, "The does not love but must marry. He offers neither Whitemud River Range." Stegner's book deals recognition nor sympathy. The mermaid's hope with the settlement of Saskatchewan during the for fortune ends when the princess emerges first decade of this century, a time of extreme from a royal or magic chapel, looking like her isolation, privation, and psychological torment. twin. Prairie husbands betray silent mermaid­ In addition, it is a period of physical torment wives, but never out of love for another woman. and endless winter. There are few enough women in these stories; "Carrion Spring" is set in the earliest days of more important, there is a love that is greater­ spring in 1906. The winter that year was so for taming "virgin land," new "territory," and long and severe that prairie people still speak "frontier." Wives lose out to their husbands' of it as the year when winter never ended, or homestead-fantasies. the year without spring. For Molly Henry it has been especially trying, since winter coin­ ESCAPE: AN ILLUSION cided with her first months of marriage, her honeymoon time, and her first homesteading Andersen's mermaid has another chance to on the prairie. Six months earlier she had left escape. Her sisters and the king's mother have "whatever civilization was offered by her 146 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1984 hometown of Malta, Montana," and in the stinking in the treetops. Molly tries to evade period since October of 1905, "except for the the realities she detests and thinks instead of Christmas blowout had enjoyed neither fun nor the trees and blossoms of Malta. She remembers the company of another woman since.,,8 She the sweet side of life there, symbolized by the had left family, female friendship, and familiar candy store. But memory cannot overcome the territory for a new life, love, and homestead. fact that Molly is in a dangerous environment; Like most prairie mermaid figures, Molly began Ray's betrayals come fast and furious. all three at once. Spring, however, has not come on time; the THE LOVE-TEST chinook winds appear in March instead of J an­ uary. When the new bride opens her door, she Instead of reaching Malta, Ray stops with the is not met by the springtime fragrance of the son of a man simply known as "Crazy Shulz," earth, but by the smell of rotting cattle car­ and the men play at scrambling through coyote casses. Cows that were lost in winter, marooned burrows in search of pelts for bounty. Ray is during blizzards, "bloom," in the worst sense, not an Apollonian center nor a ray of sunshine in spring. This prairie world is dead, and it in Molly's cold life. He melds with the dogs and threatens to be deadly to Molly. coyotes, an animal in a naturalistic environ­ But Molly is life-oriented; she has been plan­ ment. In such places love does not hold power. ning to take her husband and marriage back to A twenty-five-cent bounty is more attractive to better territory, back home to Malta, "back Ray than a day with Molly. where there was a chance for them both.,,9 Her Molly tries to give affection to a coyote pup journey carries with it hopes of rescue, but as she rescues, but the dogs nip at her as if she in all prairie mermaid tales, such hopes are were their prey. She persists, puts a leash on the more illusion than possibility; before long we pup, and takes Ray to a picnic spot that they see that Molly's husband will determine where had visited six months ago, when she was a the trip will conclude and how much silence bride. But the past, with its dreams of success­ Molly will have to adopt. ful homesteading and successful love, cannot be Leaving their homestead, in accordance with recaptured. Ray betrays Molly again by reveal­ their plans, the failed homesteaders shake the ing to her that he has never intended to return hooflike hands of their male workers on the un­ to Montana. Instead he has been planning to successful ranch. Molly's husband, Ray, looks take Molly to a second homestead, a larger one prematurely old and almost ruined, physically. that has already been abandoned once, as a He has suffered frostbite on the face, and his failure. It will be a bigger gamble, we must as­ scarred cheeks symbolize a blasted and cold sume, and riskier. It seems foolish. personality, as well as his unreadiness for the At this moment, Molly wonders to herself homesteading experience. In the prairie mer­ whether the pup she is trying to love might turn maid stories the husband usually suffers or dies on her and kill her before she can tame it. because he is unprepared for or unwilling to Molly is at the moment of the love-test of pio­ face the demands, physical or psychological, of neer women. She can argue or even leave Ray­ pioneer life. although limited transportation, settlement, At first, however, Ray and Molly seem to be and communication, together with restrictions headed home; their movements resemble the on divorce at the time, make that seem un­ journey of the mermaid to the wintry sea sur­ likely-or else she can surrender, stifle her needs, face, albeit in reverse. They move past melting and silence her protests. "Sick and scared," snowbanks, watery slush, and swollen creeks Molly reaches a blasted, blue-purple, half­ as they travel from the hard and frozen North crushed crocus toward Ray's cheek, which is to the wet and flooding South. As they move, insensitive to touch after scarring by the end­ even Ray is amazed to see cattle marooned and less winter; then, nervously, almost hysterically THE PRAIRIE MERMAID 147 it seems, she exclaims, "You should never wear her needs for love, friends, and beauty. He lavender." Ray's promise is as dead as that of seems to be; he can not understand why Ann the prairie and of the marriage. Neither he nor wants to paint the inside of their bare-wood the prairie should wear the royal color, purple. home. Perhaps unfairly, Ann feels that John Although Ray never behaves nobly, Molly regards her with the same pride of ownership remains devoted to her betrayer, and she is able that he has for his cows. Ann has anxieties, and (or is forced by circumstances) to silence her whether or not she is fooling herself or tor­ yearnings for a better life and love. With an turing herself, it is clear that John does not insensitivity to his wife that matches the know what is bothering her. His farm is success­ callousness of Andersen's prince toward his ful, but his marriage is not. mermaid-companion, Ray asks Molly, "Haven't Ann is irritated, for one thing, by John's you got any ambition to be the first white refusal to shave. He will not remove that de­ woman for five hundred miles around?,,10 One fense against frost-bitten cheeks. In addition, is tempted to ask: Stuck in semi-isolation, on a she feels that the only warmth John provides stinking mess of a prairie, with animal-like for a woman comes from a wood fire. Complex males as her companions, and betrayed by the in personality, Ann is not an innocent mermaid, only other member of her household, what nor is she a foolish new bride, like Molly. She woman would want that distinction? But Molly hungers for artistic expression, physical warmth, does not ask. In psychological terms, every step and recognition of her basic needs. She will be that Molly takes back to her old life, on a new served. homestead, will hurt as much as the steps the Unwittingly, John presents Ann with the op­ silent mermaid took when she followed her portunity she desires. He gives ample evidence chosen man. The psychological pain may be of his insensitivity to Ann's needs when, leaving matched by the physical distress that winter for his father's farm as a storm approaches, he can cause; the fate of the prairie mermaid will tells Ann that his friend Steven will be over to depend on weather, land, and a man, and they help with the chores. Ann has already felt sex­ have betrayed her hopes and trust once. We do ual attraction to Steven; they have danced to­ not know Molly's future, but she has demon­ gether. But John ignores her expressions of strated undeserved devotion to a cold and cruel concern and leaves anyway. Steven comes, as husband, marked at last by the silencing of her does the expected and feared storm. The inevi­ own needs.ll She has passed the love-test of table happens, and when Ann wakes up beside the prairie mermaid. Steven, she stares at what she takes to be an apparition of John beside her bed. The spectre

A MERMAID WITH ILLUSIONS: goes, and Ann slowly falls asleep. "THE PAINTED DOOR" The next day John is discovered against the fence, dead. Only Ann sees that he has paint In "The Painted Door," Sinclair Ross deals from her door on his hand. She knows now with a later stage in settlement, and there are that the face of John was not an illusion. more hopes, security, and companions than in Escape through infidelity, however, has been Stegner's account,12 Some farms are becoming illusory for Ann. No sooner had Steven fallen permanent; the settlers even have community asleep than Ann began to rationalize herself dances. However, the suffering of the unloved back into the loveless relation with her cold and unsatisfied woman in this story may be husband. Devotion comes, in "The Painted worse than Molly's fate. The marriage and Door," on both sides of transgression. We do homestead are seven years old, and Ann, some­ not know Ann's eventual fate, but the imme­ what self-deceptive and confused about her diate outcome is the silencing of her previously goals, has yet to feel happy in either. She is strong desires for beauty, sex, and love. Ann is certain that her husband, John, is insensitive to passing a particularly frustrating love-test, and 148 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1984 she does so eagerly, submissively, just as the significantly worse than Ann's or Molly's; she mermaid-model does in Andersen's tale. Having is trapped in more ways. rationalized about John's "superior" values, she It appears that this child bride has been de­ seems unable to maintain her drive for personal voted to her woeful Redcliff, who does not satisfaction and self-assertion, even when her know a prairie winter's storm when he sees one chief impediment, her insensitive, authoritarian approaching and who curls into a fetal position husband, has been removed. John's death in and sleeps into a frozen death when it comes. fact reinforces Ann's devotion and guilt. To In prairie mermaid stories, children do not Steven Ann says nothing; her chance for escape ameliorate but intensify the predicament of the passes, and the reader is left to wonder what woman. Redcliff's masculinity gave him the psychological corner she has painted herself authority, one assumes, to attempt homestead­ into. Of the women in the fictional prairie ing, for which he was unprepared, and to father mermaid stories under consideration, Ann is six doomed children. The fate of Redcliff's the one who comes closest to escaping.13 By wife is determined not only by her marriage but contrast, for the women in Frederick philip by her devotion to yet another failed home­ Grove's "Snow," there is no hope at all.14 steader, her cocky and egotistical father.

"SNOW": SUFFERING REDOUBLED TWO FAILED MEN, TWO DOOMED WOMEN In "Snow," the motif of the woman who is trapped in an unsatisfying marriage intensifies: The father in "Snow" has failed once as a escape is unthinkable; silence is unbreakable. bush farmer and has been reduced to depending The scene is Manitoba, and the devotion of the on the dubious skills of his son-in-law Redcliff wife to her foolish husband is complete. Again, to save both generations. He is a dandy, a hand­ as in all prairie mermaid stories, there is betrayal some man, but useless on the plains. He has and suffering-in this case resulting from the been living on his looks alone, but now he has weak husband's unassailable, authoritarian posi­ turned to the impossibly slim hope that Red­ tion. Molly and Ann foreshadow the strong and cliff could make the dry land bloom. The father self-reliant women to come with later stages of has his own wife, so devoted that she has stuck prairie settlement, but the women in "Snow" by him through one failure and the possibility rely totally on the strength and knowledge of of another one. Upon hearing of Redcliff's their husbands, two unsuccessful farmers. When death, this nameless woman exclaims, "God's the men fail, their women face the possibility will be done." of starvation or of living on the charity of It is a savage, naturalistic universe that Grove others. It is a stark scene. portrays, ruled by survival of the fittest, not the In "Snow" the love-test is administered to will of God. "Snow" has two loyal, long­ two women; one is totally silent, and the other suffering women, both caught in isolation, utters but one line. The setting is winter, as it despair, and danger; linked to men who are usually is in prairie mermaid stories, and a man failures; and forced to silence their desires and is missing in a storm. Redcliff, unsuited by tem­ disappointments. The proximity of the two re­ perament or training for the country he is at­ lated women only intensifies their problems. tempting to subdue, has disappeared; his wife, Each is alone, in effect, on a land where few who has no name in the story, remains painfully women can determine their own fates. silent as able men search for her tenderfoot hus­ Grove's story contradicts Georgina Binnie­ band or his corpse. She lives in a drab, drafty Clark's account, in Wheat and Women, of the shack. Grove describes this nameless woman as opportunities that the plains held for the mil­ hardly more than a child; yet she is already lion or more surplus, or "redundant," women mother to six. As a result, her predicament is of England.1S She believed that women might THE PRAIRIE MERMAID 149 successfully emigrate to North America and run Garland paints a picture of successive genera­ farms without men. Grove, however, paints a tions of wives wasted by the arid prairie and prairie that threatens to overwhelm women insensitive males.17 less self-reliant than Binnie-Clark's. His two Elizabeth Mitchell would have accepted women confront equally hopeless futures; one Garland's reservations about prairie husbands. faces it in stony, eery silence, the other by She said that pioneer homesteading on the silencing her personal feeling in one fatalistic prairie was so hard that "the burden of Empire­ sentence. Neither husband is worth the tears making most truly rests on the prairie woman, of his wife, just as the prince had not been and she is often worn and old before her time." worth the suffering of the mermaid. Genera­ Mitchell believed "the farming life in Western tions of suffering wives are symbolized in this Canada at present is really a terribly hard strug­ bleak, compressed story. gle.,,18 Like Stegner, Ross, Grove, and Garland, REAL WOMEN, REAL TESTS Mitchell feared what isolation and silence could do to women, in some marriages, at this time: The same kind of failure is recorded by "a woman alone in a house all day may find the Hamlin Garland in his autobiography, A Son of silence deadly." As we have seen, Molly, Ann, the Middle Border. 16 In his portrayal of Amer­ and the two unnamed women in our stories ican prairie pioneer women who are married found it deadly, but they also found actual or to land-crazed men during the early settlement figurative silencing a necessary part of pioneer period, Garland's tears fall for the two he knew marriage. In certain marriages silence was the best, his mother and his grandmother, and for only socially acceptable or practical response the girls he played with as a youth. Like Steg­ of the pioneer wife. But Mitchell was a reform­ ner, Ross, and Grove, Hamlin Garland did not minded person, and she found some husbands see the promise that Binnie-Clark found for who treated their wives like "Queens." Further­ women on the prairies. Binnie-Clark was writ­ more, with optimism and prescience, she noted ing of a later period, from 1905 to 1908, and that a time was coming when believed that the laws and natural conditions of the prairies favored the resettlement of some there would be more neighbors, and they of the redundant single women of Great Britain would be nearer. There would be more or­ dinary sociality, and there would be more at that time. But Garland's account of what he available help in times of troubles. A solitary saw in prairie communities shows women suf­ man or a couple would no longer feel as if fering the fate of submissive, silenced prairie they individually were up against the heart­ mermaids instead. His autobiography corrob­ less prairies, and were not sufficient for the orates what Mitchell and the fiction writers tell struggle. 19 us. Garland's grandmother worked hard on Ironically, although she lived to be one hundred prairie homesteads and finally suffered a stroke and died in 1980, Elizabeth Mitchell never re­ that, in his eyes, was caused by harsh living turned to the prairies to see this change in mar­ conditions. The stroke left her literally silent; riages and in the fate of women. his mother, on the other hand, was driven to stifle the complaints she felt welling up within GARLAND'S THIRD GENERATION her. Complaining only to her son Hamlin, she quietly accompanied her husband on repeated Garland, however, returned to the West time moves, despite her sensible misgivings about his after time and was present whenever his family suitability as a homesteader and the family's readied themselves for another move. When chances for survival. To Hamlin, she seemed to Hamlin tried to stop his father's peregrinations, have "a prematurely old" body. Like Grove, the old man-called "The Captain," after his 150 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1984

Civil War rank and his imperious manner-de­ new wife, must have had fantasies of power and clared, "I won't surrender so long as I can run control over both their fates. And many a pio­ a team.,,20 Hamlin's mother was worn out, neer wife, so young she seemed only a child, so weak that she could hardly walk, but the must have accepted that authority, believing (or "captain" of her destiny urged her on. He re­ merely hoping) that her husband deserved her fused Hamlin's offer of a New England-style complete devotion and trust. Armed with a home or an easier life in San Francisco. Virgin woman who could not easily leave him, who land and new territory to open lured the cap­ was full of Victorian notions about her station tain until his death. in life, and who might be "redundant" at home, To Hamlin the mother did voice her fears the pioneering man could feel that he had an and complaints, including her confession that efficient, absolutely essential tool. So a wife life on the prairie had worn her out. She told must have seemed to some of them. Sinclair him that only her daughter's grave had kept the Ross's Ann may have been wrong about John's old woman on the western prairie all these likening her to a cow, but Stegner, Grove, and years. Garland describes himself as "wordless" Garland write of men who regarded their wives when he considered other women he had as their possessions. known on the prairie: "the tragic futility of their suffering" moved him so.21 He saw that at CONCLUSION least some of the prairie girls he had known in his childhood were becoming prairie women Thus we have the basic components of the and wives, and, worst of all, mothers of new prairie mermaid motif: an authoritarian, insen­ prairie girls. Unlike Mitchell, Garland saw no sitive, and foolish husband; a young wife, full end to the cycle. As a child he had "felt rebel­ of old ideas of female subservience and submis­ lion toward my father who had kept my mother siveness; a cold, arid, isolated land where there always on the border, working like a slave long are no female friends; a homestead as old as the after the time when she should have taken her marriage and equally unsatisfying in terms of ease"; and as an adult, Hamlin saw the pattern the woman's needs for companionship, beauty, repeated on the prairie.22 He wondered why and recognition; a storm or a move, which the love-test of silenced women had not ended: crystallizes the situation and challenges the "Why should this suffering be?" and "Why man's sympathies for his wife, as well as her should mother be wrenched from all her dearest ability to express her desires to him; and a test­ friends and forced to move away to a strange ing moment, when the wife accepts all that she land?,,23 Perhaps the clearest voice for the has learned and silences her desires for beauty, silenced prairie mermaids was Garland-the son, companionship, and understanding. In the grandson, and friend-but his sensitivity to the earliest, most primitive accounts, not only is suffering of his mother and the other women is rescue unthinkable, but even protest seems tinged by the Oedipal rivalry he felt toward his beyond possibility; in later ones, opportunities father. to meet other men and to travel increase, but Generalizing from his family experiences, no prairie mermaid is rescued. Guilt reinforces Garland questioned the appropriateness of the social convention; indeed, it is another conven­ westering experience for any woman. He as­ tion that limits the freedom of choice offered serted that his mother "was not meant to be an to the pioneer wife. In the most pessimistic emigrant-few women are.,,23 But Garland's stories and accounts, successive generations of story also points out one of the necessary prairie mermaids follow in a chain that threat­ causes behind the appearance of the mermaid ens to be endless; in the most foresighted ver­ on the prairies: a husband who assumes total sions, especially that of Mitchell, the death of direction of his wife. Many a pioneer man, the mermaid-wife is predicted. setting out with new tools, a new team, and a The development of the mermaid motif in THE PRAIRIE MERMAID 151 the story by Andersen leads us to re-examine 6. Bredsdorf, Andersen, pp. 15-16. this febrile, homoerotic, and autoerotic man, 7. Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow: A History, whose love-life consisted of unfulfillable in­ a Story, and a Memory of the Last Prairie Fron­ fatuations with people he hardly knew, includ­ tier (New York: Viking Press, 1966). ing the "Swedish Nightingale," Jenny Lind. 8. Ibid., p. 222. Molly comes from a town Andersen identified female sexual maturation that the narrator ironically calls "civilization." 9. Ibid., p. 222. See also Mitchell's remarks with suffering, marriage with coldness, and on settlers coming out of the prairies in this devotion with wordless submission. If he repre­ stage of homesteading. sents the most extreme, least reasonable no­ 10. Ibid., p. 238. Stegner leaves undescribed tions of his age, the appearance of mermaidlike the tone of this statement, and it is possible women on the plains causes us to scrutinize that Ray is being ironical. But Molly takes him the men and marriages of that period as well. seriously. It is possible that the extreme conditions of life 11. Ibid., p. 238. Molly replies, with prob­ on the prairies reinforced nascent tendencies in able irony, "If that's what you want." the post-Victorians who settled there, and that 12. Sinclair Ross, "The Painted Door," in privation, which could bring out the best in Great Canadian Short Stories, ed. by Alex marriages, at first encouraged the worst to Lucas (New York: Dell, 1971), pp. 95-115. 13. Ann's inner life is presented as complex, flourish. The prairie mermaid died out eventual­ in contrast to Molly's and the women's in ly, but pioneer fiction, historical account, and "Snow" and A Son of the Middle Border; as a autobiography all record that the little mermaid result her marriage and future are less simplistic, lived, at least for one brief period, as a prairie too. Nevertheless, she is silenced, at least tem­ wife. porarily, just when she might have chosen free­ dom of expression and movement. NOTES 14. Frederick Philip Grove, "Snow," in Great Canadian Short Stories, ed. by Lucas, 1. Elizabeth Mitchell, In Western Canada pp. 65-74. Grove's real name was Felix Paul before the War: Impressions of Early Twentieth Greve. Century Prairie Communities (1915; reprint, 15. Georgina Binnie-Clark, Wheat and Wom­ Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, en (1914; reprint, Toronto: University of 1981), p. 196. Mitchell calls the initial period Toronto Press, 1979), p. 76. A reform-minded "history beginning with high and stern adven­ writer, she described the "woman-farmer" as ture." "the true daughter of a new day" (p. 312), and 2. Ibid., p. 37. The prairie farmer faces noted that economic, social, and legal barriers "Frost and Drought and Solitude and Poverty." to women-farmers were fewer in North America 3. Hans Christian Andersen, "The Little than in England and Scotland. Mermaid," in The Complete Andersen, trans­ 16. Hamlin Garland, A Son of the Middle lated by Jean Hersholt (New York: Heritage Border (1917; reprint, New York: Grosset and Press, 1949), section 1, pp. 57-59. Dunlap, 1929). 4. Elias Bredsdorf, Hans Christian Andersen 17. Garland's mother also suffered a stroke, (London: Readers Union, 1975). This biography which disabled and aged her rapidly. Although challenges Andersen's diverse autobiographical she maintained her opposition to homesteading, statements; on this minor point, however, she could never stop the "Commander-in­ Bredsdorf corroborates rather than contradicts. Chief," her husband. See pp. 105-6 for discussion of the song. 18. Mitchell, Western Canada, p. 103. 5. In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia Bennet is 19. Ibid., p. 153. seduced, but she is neither abandoned nor 20. Garland, Middle Border, p. 437. coerced; nevertheless, the fear of damage to her 21. Ibid., p. 416. future and to her family's reputation brings a 22. Ibid., p. 402. crisis to the novel. 23. Ibid., p. 238.