CHARTED TERRITORY Women Nriting Genealogy in Recent Canadian Fiction by NETA GORDON Thesis submitted to the Department of English In conformity with the requirements fx The degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen's University Kingston. Ontario. Canada November. 200 1 Copyright O Neta Gordon 2001 uisiaans and Acquisitions et 3-Bi mgogrPphic Services seMees WliraphQues The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une Licence non exclwive licence aiiowing the exclusive permettant à la National Li- of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distri'bute or sel1 reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microfom, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la fome de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author retains ownetshtp of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette dièse. thesis nor substantial extracts fbmit Ni la thése 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 This dissertation argues that the recent refashioning of the genealogical plot by Canadian women entails a dual process whereby, on the one hand, the idea of family is radically redefined and, on the other hand, the conservative traditions of family are in some way recuperated. For my analysis of the multi-generational family history, 1 develop a complex critical framework which demonstrates that the organizing principles goveming any particular conception of family will also influence the way that family's story is nmted. Using the book of Genesis as a narrative model, 1 begin by proposing a poetics of genealogy that delineates the range of organizing principles that control it. My poetics establishes such features of the genealogical plot as its relationship to the force of injunction, the contrasting effects of its vertical and horizontal axes, and its association with narrative temporality. 1 then proceed to a discussion of how the traditional system of the genealogical plot is both invoked and politically ador aesthetically transformed in recent work by Canadian women authon. My analysis of novels by SKY Lee, Ann-Marie MacDonald, and Barbara Gowdy shows how the refashioning of the family plot regenerates fiction by Canadian women concemed with how the conception of family relates to subjectivity. My study of Lee's Disap~earingMoon Cafe addresses her use of postrnodern narrative strategies as well as her confrontation with the complex process of historical recovery. demonstrating how the conse~ativegenealogical ïmpetus tends to produce problematic instances of genealogical fabrication. My analysis of MacDonald's Fa11 On Your Knees investigates her comic challenge to both the privileged vertical axis of genealogy and the stability of genealogical interpretation in order to indicate how the forecloscd genealogical plot may be revitdized. Next, 1 show how Gowdy's The White Bone takes up the problem of a genealogical plot that depicts the annihilation of family, cornparhg the characteristic proscriptiveness of the genealogical injunction to the inadequacies of certain types of faith. In my conclusion 1 argue that recent genealogical plots by Canadian women may be considered as part of an evolution in feminist literature that concems itself more with context than with subject. 1 consider myself so lucky to have ken supervised by Sylvia Sadedind. She is a vuly sophisticated reader, and the combination of her boundless creativity and cornmitment to ihis project has made me into a far better researcher, writer, and thinker. 1 would like to thank her for her wisdom, her standards, her insistence that 1 find my own voice and, most of dl, her humanity. Thanks also to my second reader, Tracy Ware, for his care and professionalism. 1 have learned much [iom his determination that one observe the trajectory of critical conversation, and ihink that this attention to critical links has made Dr. Ware particularly suited to a project on genealogy. So many of the staff and faculty members of the Queen's English Department have played a crucial role in this project by providing me with such a wonderful working environment. 1 would especially like to thank Kathy Goodfiiend for always knowing the answer to any question 1 had and for her quiet support of every graduate student that passes through her capable hands. Many thanks, aiso, to Elizabeth Hanson for her insight. compassion and tierce cornmitment to ethics and teaching. 1 am very grateful to the Ontario and Canadian government from providing me with an O.G.S. and S.S.H.R.C.. and to Queen's University for their fûnding. Every doctoral dissertation has its own specid "team?' of coaches and cheerleaden. My team consists of Dana Medoro, my inspiration, Vanessa Wame, my passionate comrade- in-amis. and Daniela Janes, my mode1 of curiosity. Thank you al1 for your constant humour. your sympathetic rage and your brilliance. An ovenvhelming measure of gratitude goes to Martin Gough, for his composure in the face of my anxiety. for his excitement about my work, and for the suength of his love and friendship. 1 would like to thank the memben of my own sprawling family. whose afTection for me challenges any intlexible notion of genealogical obligation. Love especially to Arnir Gordon, Shira BQ~.Talia Gordon. Eytan Gordon, Gilda Berger, Daniela Gordon. Diane Gordon. and Ruth Seliger. And to my parents. Yael Seliger and Michael Gordon, without whom 1 am not who I am: it is your own cornitment to family and to learning thai is given form in this dissertation. your own inquisitiveness and concem with ethics that has shaped my academic soul. Thank you for al1 of the stories about my name. This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of my extraordinary grandparents. Ros1y-n Gordon. Chava Seliger and Dr. Martin Seliger. and to my wonderful grandpa Max Gordon. Table of Contents .. Abstract ............................................................................................................. .,.,... II Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... iv introduction "These are the StoryLines of,"A Poetics of Genealogy ............................................... 1 Chapter One Golden Chains and Narrative bots: SKY Lee's Disauoearina Moon Cafe .................... 43 Chapter Two AmMarie MacDonald's Fa11 On Your Knees and the Hermetic Genealogy................... 90 Chapter Thne The Sacred Witness in Barbara Gowdy's The White Bone ............................................ 137 Conclusion . - Beyond the Individual Imperative ................................................................................... 185 Works Cited .....-............... .....................................*................................*....................198 Vita ............................................... ,, ................................................................................ 211 "These are the Storykines 9fPnA Poetics of Genealogy The toledoth series. as well as the older genealogical matenal, should not [. .] be consigned to an insignifiant collection of bits and pieces. Its importance derives rather from the structure of the whole.' (George W. Coats. Genesis. with an Introduction to Narrative Literature) She said, "There's a me growing inside you [. .]. It's the part that goes on living." (Am-Marie MacDonald, Fa11 On Yow Knees) Beyond the YCeoealogical Imperative" Towards the end of In Search of Myself, Frederick Phiiip Grove's contentious "autobiography." he speculates about the value of an individual's existence: Willy-nilly we live for a while under the illusion that the link in the chain has as much reaiity as the chain itself. Death destroys that illusion; and death may well not be the cessation of anything whatever. We live as much in othen as we live in ourselves. For the chah of the generations the life we live for others. in others. is the one thing which has any importance whatever. (452) It is not. however. so much Grove's interest in the primacy of the "chain of generations" that is taken up by critics of his witing or that seems to be the themaïiç and structural focus of his fiction. but rather the implicit and awiliary condition of the "illusory" significance of the individual. John Moss remarks that, "in exploring the patterns of individual isolation in Canadian fiction. it is inevitable that Frederick Philip Grove should demand separate treatment. His lone protagonists loom large in the literate Canadian imaginationy(9),and Laurence Ricou offers the striking image of Grove's '%vertical man [who] is alien to a horizontal world," whereby "the exposure of vertical man in Grove's prairie dramatically presents the inevitability of decayW(38).in his essay on Grove's early Gerrnan novel. Fannv Essler, D.O.Spettigue notes that "A reviewer wrote, in 1906, that the novel represented a 'search for the self.' Grove never forgot the phrase; he borrowed it for his autobiography nearly forty years later [. and] in al1 the novels it is taking place"(53). Grove's concem with this ontological "search" is reflected in the myriad pioneer figures that populate his novels, whose initial syrnbolic value as modem heroes of the frontier only serves to mapi@ their individual failure. The very concept of the hero is callcd into question. as R.D. MacDonald