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TROUBLE AT HOME: THE ANXIETIES OF BELONGING AND SELFHOOD IN THE FICTION OF LYNN COADY AND CHRISTY ANN CONLIN by Heather Levie Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia August 2008 © Copyright by Heather Levie, 2008 Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44085-8 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44085-8 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY To comply with the Canadian Privacy Act the National Library of Canada has requested that the following pages be removed from this copy of the thesis: Preliminary Pages Examiners Signature Page (pii) Dalhousie Library Copyright Agreement (piii) Appendices Copyright Releases (if applicable) TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2 CONSTRUCTING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN COADY'S STRANGE HEAVEN 15 CHAPTER 3 "CRASHING BACKWARDS": THE RESISTANCE OF TRANSITIONS, CHANGE AND LEAVETAKING IN CONLIN'S HEAVE 42 CHAPTER 4 "THE SEA IN MY BLOOD": SELF AND PLACE IN COADY AND CONLIN'S SHORT FICTION 67 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 93 BIBLIOGRAPHY..... 105 ABSTRACT Lynn Coady and Christy Ann Conlin depict adolescence in Cape Breton and the Annapolis Valley, respectively, and illustrate how their heroines' ambivalent feelings about their homes negatively influence their senses of self and complicate their functional transitions into adulthood. Protagonists in the novels Strange Heaven and Heave, as well as in the authors' short fiction, grapple with oppressive conceptions of their regions' character and struggle to re-envision themselves as individuals apart from their homes. They exemplify what David Creelman identifies, in Setting in the East, as a regional culture at a point of transition between former and future identities. The novels characterize these two Atlantic Canadian regions, portraying their contemporary tensions and interrogating simplistic understandings of their people and culture. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED DE Down East, Wolfgang Hochruck and James O. Taylor (Eds.) PP People and Place, Larry McCann (Ed.) PTMB Play The Monster Blind, Lynn Coady SH Strange Heaven, Lynn Coady SMLH Studies in Maritime Literary History, Gwendolyn Davies SW She Writes, Carolyn Foster (Ed.) TANM Towards A New Maritimes, Ian McKay and Scott Milsom (Eds.) TOTM The One and The Many, Gerald Lynch TQTF The Quest of The Folk, Ian McKay UEE Under Eastern Eyes, Janice Kulyk Keefer VM Victory Meat, Lynn Coady, (Ed.) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Deborah Stiles for her interest in and support of this project and for her unwavering encouragement throughout the process. I also wish to recognize the financial support of the Nova Scotia Agricultural College's Rural Research Centre, with its Humanities, Underdevelopment, Gender and Sustainability Fellowship. Andrew Wainwright's expertise, guidance and insights are also greatly appreciated. I am grateful to Trevor Ross and Rohan Maitzen for their time and leadership. I owe endless thanks to my family and friends, who provide invaluable perspective and support. Most of all, I want to express my gratitude to my mother, Pat Levie, whose endless generosity, strengths and influence are apparent, to me, in all aspects of this work. 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Reading the fiction of contemporary Atlantic Canadian authors Lynn Coady and Christy Ann Conlin, one is privy to the inner voices of similar protagonists: intelligent, insightful and capable young women somehow broken at the core, so deeply troubled that they are not rebellious in a sense typical of young adulthood, but conflicted to the point of self-destruction and even madness. Their lives are evocative of a halted and hesitant momentum that reflects their abundant potential as well as the anxiety that holds them back. In Coady's Strange Heaven, Conlin's Heave and their various short stories, characters illustrate a specific stage in the maturation of young women and a particular difficulty at that stage centering around "the question of going or staying" (Kulyk Keefer UEE 213) in their rural Nova Scotian homes. Coady and Conlin portray an overall malaise in their home regions and a deep, adolescent alienation, but one particularly felt in young women. What captivates and perplexes, however, is the counterbalancing reverence for home evoked by the humour, descriptions of regional particularities, turns of phrase and social norms found in nuanced presentations of Coady and Conlin's regional settings. These settings capture the ambivalence protagonists feel toward their homes and, with respect to their families, communities and regional identities, there is felt as deep an alienation as fundamental identification. This conflict preoccupies and paralyses the characters in these fictional works as they attempt to transition from adolescence to adulthood, evaluate their homes and communities, and envision themselves outside of and beyond them. In his sociological study, "All kinds of potential: Women and out-migration in an Atlantic Canadian coastal community" (2007), Michael Corbett examines trends in out- migration in a rural Nova Scotian community and specifically explores the motivating factors behind young women's decisions either to stay in or leave their rural communities. His work provides a real life context in which to consider Coady and Conlin's creative exploration of this decision. Corbett identifies a "migration imperative" in rural communities where there is a "climate of diminished opportunity" (11). He argues that there is "an aura of obligation and compulsion for the individual youth" to leave home in order to gain professional and financial security (11). He explains a "harsh reality that women are under greater pressure to leave the area [than men], and that they are destined for economic disadvantage should they stay" (13), for "women who stay . earn less than half as much money as men and are economically disadvantaged in comparison to provincial and national income norms for women" (9). However, despite these trends, he finds that the "migration imperative" is countered by many rural youths' sense of loyalty to and security in their home community; he refers to these young people as "the place-attached rural youth" (2). He writes that "even in the face of limited economic opportunity, it is difficult for many women to leave" (12), citing "pride in survival" and "communal bonds" (10) as some of the factors that compel young women to stay despite their low and unequal economic prospects. "Home is perceived as secure" (10), Corbett argues, referring to a subject who explains of his peers, '"they don't want to move, they're safe and secure ... when you grow up in a small place you fear the unknown, you fear even Halifax because you've been protected and isolated in this safe little environment where everyone knows everyone'" (10-11). According to Corbett's study, young women face the dilemma "of going or staying" that Janice Kulyk Keefer 3 argues is prevalent and recurring in Atlantic Canadian literature (UEE 213), and which is of central importance to Coady and Conlin's contemporary work. The most intangible of the factors Corbett identifies, those of "pride in survival" and "communal bonds," have to do with young women's essential identification with home and its particularity. These are the aspects of the young woman's relationship with this regional home that Coady and Conlin evoke most intriguingly, for they are not easily explained or understood. Corbett's findings suggest that there is a perceived loyalty and solidarity in "surviving" the difficult conditions of the shared marginal experience in this region's rural communities, and that young women are willing to make a personal sacrifice of their individual well-being in order to affirm this identification with home and the collective. The authors examine this sacrifice, and the young woman's internal, psychological negotiation of it, in their works. They illustrate the struggle to separate selfhood from membership in a collective and problematize the tendency, both within and outside the community, to repress individuality in order to affirm communal identity. They question the existence of a shared essential character and perspective that can be thought to unite the collective and justify the kind of self-sacrifice implied in Corbett's study.