David Adams Richards' Fictional Miramichi Region, Its Inhabitants & the Power Relations within the Communities

A Study of The Bay of Love and Sorrows, and River of the Brokenhearted

Diplomarbeit

zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades

einer Magistra der Philosophie

an der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von

Ines SCHILCHER

am Institut für Anglistik

Begutachter Ao.Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr.phil. Martin Löschnigg

Graz, 2010 Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1

II. DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS...... 2

II.1 Biographical Note...... 2

II.2 Works by David Adams Richards...... 2

II.3 The Miramichi Region...... 4

II.4 The Nature of Power...... 9

III. THE BAY OF LOVE AND SORROWS...... 12

III.1 Overview ...... 12

III.2 Giving Love and Causing Sorrow – Inextricably Linked in Richards’

Fiction?...... 14

III.3 Tommie Donnerel – the Scapegoat ...... 15

III.4 Richards’ Social Outsiders ...... 17

III.5 The Exertion of Power – And the Question of Who Proves to Be the Most

Powerful Character...... 22

III.6 Richards’ Female Characters – Saintly or Sinister?...... 23

III.7 Heroism as a Romanticized Concept, or: Madonna – the Heroine?...... 28

IV. MERCY AMONG THE CHILDREN ...... 31

IV.1 Overview ...... 31

IV.2 The Importance of Mercy and the Perspective of the Child ...... 34

IV. 3 Father and Son or: Sydney’s “Pain of being a man”...... 36

IV.4 Passive Resistance and Physical Violence – The Case of Lyle...... 39 IV.5 The Henderson Women versus the Pits ...... 44

IV.6 Richards’ Women of Power...... 48

V. RIVER OF THE BROKENHEARTED ...... 54

V.1 Overview...... 54

V.2 The Miramichi – A River of Broken-hearted People?...... 57

V.3 Janie McLeary – the Insane Matriarch?...... 58

V.4 Institutional Power – Rebecca Druken alias Dr Abigail Mahoney ...... 63

V.5 Escapism – Fleeing into Alcoholism to Forget the Unpleasant Past and the

Unbearable Present...... 70

V.6 Richards’ Silenced Women ...... 72

VI. A COMPARISON OF THE BAY OF LOVE AND SORROWS, MERCY

AMONG THE CHILDREN AND RIVER OF THE BROKENHEARTED AND

THE TREATMENT OF POWER...... 75

VII. CONCLUSION...... 79

VIII. REFERENCES ...... 80

IX. APPENDIX...... 83

I. INTRODUCTION

This thesis will focus on David Adams Richards, a prolific writer from the Maritimes, who has often been regarded as a 'regional' writer because he deals with a specific locale in his novels, namely the Miramichi river valley in . Richards has written a number of novels that largely concentrate on the psychology of the characters, the exertion of power, and humanity. Special emphasis will be given to Richards' fictional Miramichi region and its inhabitants and to the power-relations within the communities in his books. Three novels in particular will be discussed in detail to portray the aforementioned themes, namely The Bay of Love and Sorrows (1998), Mercy Among the Children (2000) and River of the Brokenhearted (2003).

After giving a brief biography of David Adams Richards and an overview of his works, this study examines the role of Richards as a 'regional' writer in Canada and his Miramichi region. Furthermore, the importance of power in his works will be discussed and given attention. In his works, Richards poses many questions dealing with power and its courses. Why do certain people have power while others do not? Where does it come from and how do they acquire power? How is power used and why?

The main part will be the in-depth discussions of the three chosen novels, starting with an overview of each book. Each discussion concentrates on certain themes and topics that come to mind when reading the books. Since it is often stressed that Richards’ characters are conspicuously central to every novel, the major characters will be discussed in detail in order to provide a thorough analysis of the books’ main themes accurately. Among them, close attention will be given to the power-relations within the communities. Thus, one topic in each discussion will illustrate the characters that are most concerned with the exertion of power.

The paper will conclude on a chapter which compares the three novels with special reference to the treatment of power. It will take a closer look at the female characters who gain power, how they use it and to what extent. In addition, this comparative approach will be used to connect the single books and characters and to establish parallels or identify differences between them.

1 II. DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS

II.1 Biographical Note

David Adams Richards was born in 1950 in Newcastle, New Brunswick. His father was the owner of a local movie theatre - a detail in his life that has been dealt with in Richards' novel River of the Brokenhearted. Richards joined an informal writers' workshop called the 'Ice House Gang' while he was a student at St. Thomas University in . Its name stemmed from the former ice house at McCord Hall where the group had its meetings. One of the members of the group was Alden Nowlan, who has been an important literary influence on Richards (Bennett and Brown 2002:1036). Along with Nowlan, Richards also names other great authors who have influenced his writing, such as Faulkner, Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Emily Brontë. His first novel, The Coming of Winter, published in 1974, was written during his time at university. Only two years later, his second novel, Blood Ties (1976), followed. In 1978, a short story collection entitled Dancers at Night was published and another novel called Lives of Short Duration in 1981. Richards has been a full-time writer since then, and very prolific indeed. He has spent some time abroad, moved to Toronto in 1997 with his family, where he stayed until 2009 (anon. 2008:39). He is now living in New Brunswick again.

II.2 Works by David Adams Richards

Throughout his literary career, Richards has been appointed writer-in-residence at universities in New Brunswick, Ontario, Alberta, and in the United States. He also has Honorary Doctorates from St. Thomas University and the University of New Brunswick at Saint John. Moreover, he has won several literary awards, among them the Governor General's Award for fiction, the Canadian Authors Association Award and the Atlantic Fiction Prize (anon. 2008:40).

Novels 1974: The Coming of Winter. Ottawa: Oberon Press. 1976: Blood Ties. Ottawa: Oberon Press. 1981: Lives of Short Duration. Ottawa: Oberon Press.

2 1985: Road to the Stilt House. Ottawa: Oberon Press. 1988: Nights Below Station Street. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 1990: Evening Snow will Bring Such Peace. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 1993: For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 1996: Hope in the Desperate Hour. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 1998: The Bay of Love and Sorrows. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. 2000: Mercy Among the Children. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 2003: River of the Brokenhearted. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 2006: The Friends of Meager Fortune. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 2007: The Lost Highway. Toronto: Doubleday Canada.

Poetry 1972: One Step Inside. [privately printed] – poetry and short stories 1972: Small Heroics. New Brunswick Chapbooks.

Short Stories 1978: Dancers at Night. Ottawa: Oberon Press.

Non-Fiction 1994: A Lad from Brantford and Other Essays. Fredericton: Broken Jaw Press. 1997: Hockey Dreams: Memories of a Man Who Couldn't Play. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 1998: Lines on the Water: A Fisherman's Life on the Miramichi. Toronto: Doubleday Canada. 2008: Lord Beaverbrook. Toronto: Penguin Canada. 2008: Playing the Inside Out. Fredericton: Goose Land Editions.

3 II.3 The Miramichi Region

“David Adams Richards' fiction, like the Miramichi river, is large, moody and demanding. The unprepared or inexperienced reader will soon droop, nod, and lose direction, particularly with the earlier novels.“ This statement, written by the critic Sheldon Currie, serves as an opening line to sum up what has often been said about Richards' writing. She goes on, claiming that

All Richards' work requires close attention, a healthy tolerance for ambiguity, and an ability to get along without cheap novelistic tricks […]. And more than anything else the reader needs to bring the kind of intelligence and imagination necessary to discover meaning without the author's intervention, as well as the wit and sense of humour to see the comic in the tragic and vice versa; […].

(cf. Currie 1996:133)

On first being introduced into Richards' fictional world, the reader often stumbles across words such as 'bleak' and 'dour'. In his work the reader is faced with a hostile and often violent world. His characters inhabit a certain region, namely the Miramichi river valley of northern New Brunswick. Most of his work is set in this area, a place that the Prologue to Mercy Among the Children mentions as “[...] the great Miramichi River, which flowed out of the heavy forests into the Northumberland Strait, north of the western tip of Prince Edward Island.” (Mercy p. 3). It has been argued that this river runs through all of Richards' works and thus unifies them. By putting much emphasis on the river and the natural world in his writing, Richards has often been seen as a 'regional' writer. Yet, this label hides the fact that there are universal elements in his fiction too (Bennett and Brown 2002:1037).

Hutcheon (1990:78) poses the question of which novel would not be labelled as regional in some sense when it is commonly understood that the novel is a mimetic genre, set in a particular time and place. There is an amount of realistic detail in Richards' writing, but it would pose a challenge to write about certain people without placing them in a certain setting - geographically and socially. Indeed, Richards' work transcends geography and cannot only be limited to this specific locale. David Jackel (1990:70) also sees his concerns as more than local despite his pronounced sense of place. In fact, Richards' writing serves as a social document. “The dispossessed, the failures, the hopeless, the violent, and the self-destructive,

4 are all treated as if their lives mattered, while at the same time their weaknesses are presented in an unsentimental and forceful way.”

Considering the Heartland-Hinterland model or core/periphery concept, this specific region is located outside the Canadian heartland – geographically, economically and politically. It is a physically fragmented area and disconnected from the economic powerhouse of Canada, which consists of the Windsor-Quebec Axis, the Georgia Strait Region and the Calgary- Edmonton Corridor. The Maritimes lack important urban centres and are therefore restricted in terms of their economic or political power within Canada. Due to their marginal role, they are literally overpowered by central Canada with its close connection to the United States. Quite naturally, this has had an impact on the way of life, the question of identity and the pride of Maritimers (cf. Stadel 2005:33-38). Currie (1996:141) memorably highlights this powerlessness of the Maritimes:

No writer more clearly delineates the terrible consequences that follow when people are deprived of power, economic power essentially, but quickly followed by political and personal power. Few writers understand so well the comic/tragic postures of the people who inhabit the disenfranchised frontiers of the country. Indeed, is there any writer who so adequately illustrates the details of the side shows that play in the provinces while Quebec and Ontario occupy the main stage contesting for whatever power defaults from our European, Asian, and North American neighbours.

Since the 1970s, when Richards began his writing, he has received much scathing criticism, especially for his earlier works. Nowadays, he has a rather polarized readership, which essentially means that some critics praise his works, such as Sheldon Currie, who claims that he is the most important Canadian novelist of the 20th century, considering the quality and the quantity of his novels (cf. Currie 2005:102), whereas others dismiss his books for being simply “too regional“ (cf. Lynes 1999).

The ‘regionalist’ label has been strongly contested even by Richards himself. The term ‘regionalism’ as applied to Maritime writing labels writers from the Atlantic Canadian Provinces even before they have started writing. Such literature is either rejected because it opposes Canada’s strong emphasis on ‘internationalism’ and the propagation of immigrant fiction, or it is simply seen as ‘provincialism’, which basically means backwardness and innocence as opposed to the growing importance of Canada’s big cities, such as Toronto (cf.

5 Hochbruck 1996:14-15). Currie (2005:104) states that “When somebody says someone is a regional writer it usually means the writer comes from the wrong region”, or applying it to the aforementioned model, coming from the “wrong region” could very well mean coming from Canada's “hinterland”. Tony Tremblay (2002), probably Richards' most ardent admirer among his critics, recognizes him as “the most berated author in the country today” and an author who is constantly exposed to a “mix of praise and damnation”. Nevertheless, Richards is giving us a glimpse into his world and as he once said in an interview with Linda L. Richards (2002), it is “like a small microcosm of the world. And it's my world, but it's a microcosm of the world.”, therefore, he is also explaining the wider world to us.

The Miramichi Valley is a real locale in New Brunswick. Richards has employed this specific region as the setting for his numerous novels, yet he has also reshaped and recreated it for his own ends. Thus, his stories deal with rural men and women, people from the lower-middle or working classes who come from this region have never been to Canada's heartlands and have most likely never seen a city such as Toronto. Richards himself once said that “[...] the characters come from the soil. They are like the trees, in a certain respect. They cling to that river and that soil [...]” (L. Richards 2002). Considering the world of Richards' characters, the reader immediately notices the parallel between the people's personalities and their surroundings. They are largely influenced and shaped by the literary landscape of the Miramichi valley and its harshness, ruggedness and inhospitable geography. This rural mentality also means a different way of communicating with each other, a different approach to settling conflicts, dealing with rumours, violence and fear. His characters are Miramichi and the books tell stories of small and seemingly insignificant people. But taking a closer look at their personalities, motivations and restrictions, it becomes clear that they are almost universal characters in the sense that they do not have to be limited to a specific space to be that way but rather transcend it and therefore could be found anywhere on earth. Margo Wheaton (2005:54) in her article “Hunting Richards' Novels Down”, remarks on Richards' quality of creating characters and compares his writing to that of Dostoevsky:

Richards' characters are relentlessly complex; part of both novelists' tasks is to witness the depths of vast and complicated souls in all their dimensions. When I first read the fluid, searching prose of the early novels, I was amazed at how naturally the characters seemed to be unfolding, not only to me as a reader but to the narrator as well as he faithfully followed them, discovering their rich inner worlds.

6 Richards' world is a world of violence and power, a struggle to survive and the inability to change, however, it is also a world of humanity. He wants to show that no matter how sinister, wicked or naïve some of his characters may seem, almost all of them still traces of humanity. The reader tends to be quite judgemental when it comes to violence against women or children, verbal abuse, sexual innuendo and vulgar language. Yet, Richards wants us to look below the surface: the reader should not see him-/herself as standing aloof and not regard him-/herself as superior to the rural men and women in the stories. Richards not only shows the humane side of his characters but also asks his readers to show humanity and not to be condescending towards them. Even the most evil characters are not purely bad. Summers (1992:362) rightly states that “Richards does not use words like loyalty, or dignity, or tenderness. It is the reader, as partial author of the story, who must supply these words if they are to be invoked at all. Richards gives us the ingredients, and the interpretation is up to us“.

Thus, the reader has to discover meaning in human failure, frustration and weakness. Richards does not give the reader explanations or tell him/her what to think (Currie 1996:136). He himself once stated in an interview with Tony Tremblay (2005:32) that, “There is an interior world and an exterior world, and we all live in the interior world. That's the real world.“ His characters and their personal development as well as their histories stand in the foreground while the action recedes into the background. To sum up, the reader has to employ the ability to read between the lines in order to make sense of Richards' stories.

Still, the reader will soon realize that rural people and the public treatment of them is at the heart of David Adams Richards’ writing. On reading interviews with or articles about Richards, he is always trying to defend them against public opinion: “I think rural men and women in our society are losing a battle. I think they're extremely condescended to and misunderstood so much of the time.” (L. Richards 2000). He clearly shows that he has issues with how rural people are presented in, for example, movies. In his essay “A Lad from Brantford”, Richards responds to a statement by a “lad” from Brantford: “We all think of you guys as real stupid, ignorant of the country – but you got dope and murder down there too.” (Richards 1994a:7). Yet, instead of fiercely defending “his” Maritimers, Richards attests that this statement is not so unusual and that the man can be forgiven since he has only repeated what he has been told.

7

Indeed, in his writing, Richards shows the reader much violence and brutality and he reveals the vices of his characters in a very unsentimental and crude way. However, he does not want his readers to get a false picture of the communities described in his novels. Yet, he has had to discover that public opinion of rural people has become strongly distorted by American movies and the media, which mainly represent an urban view. In these movies, a certain person has to leave the safety of a big city to travel into the unknown rural areas, which often implies something sinister and dangerous (ibid.:7-8). Also, when this urban person finally arrives in a small town, “rural people never stare long and hard, they stare at you and drool” (ibid.:9). Richards sarcastically defends his people and tries to portray the hypocrisy of educated urban people who see themselves as superior to these rural men and women:

It is the idea that vice in rural areas is something which most people are superior to. Vice in rural areas comes from backward and repressive mentalities. It is inferior vice. It does not belong to the great, almost liberating category of vice in Los Angeles – there is something unpleasantly vulgar about rural vice.

(ibid.:7)

Richards is giving us an insight into the Maritime world, but, as has been outlined before, often in a very harsh way that is not to everybody's liking. He presents the vices of a community as well as its virtues in a quite unsentimental way. It has often been pointed out by critics that Richards resists himself from employing a tone of nostalgia or idealizing the past (cf. Creelman 2003:147). These are not harmonious communities in which the younger people look up to the elders or value old traditions. Richards presents the events in a very realistic and detailed way that does not leave much space for feelings of nostalgia or reminiscences of past values and traditions. Thus, it is quite understandable that many of his readers perceive Richards' fictional worlds as grim and dreary.

8 II.4 The Nature of Power

The inescapable dilemma of all men and women is that they need to use whatever power they have to prove again and again to themselves, that it is theirs.

(Richards 1994b:57)

Another of Richards' main concerns which is present in almost all of his works is power and its courses, especially between individuals within a community. His novel Mercy Among the Children is probably the work that is most concerned with the theme of power. It is a study of the human condition, a study of the different types of power and pacifism, violence and how to counteract it, and why power is so central to humans. Linda Richards notes in an interview with David Adams Richards that the theme of power is at the novel's core and Richards answers “[b]ecause I almost always think it's a corrupting influence sooner or later” (L. Richards 2000).

Clearly, his books show the different modes and types of power and how they are acquired by certain people. Once it is economic power, then it is institutional or intellectual, and sometimes it is simply physical power. In any case, once a person achieves power, he or she is feared by others, which lends even more power to the person. However, Richards’ books are also studies of how these people use their powers to manipulate others or to achieve their goals, whether good or bad.

Nevertheless, Richards neither gives the reader clear answers, nor does he adopt the role of a moral preacher and say what is good or bad; rather, he poses existentialist questions that are central to every human being: “The human response to power is to become enmeshed in it. And power is considered a good thing to seek. Why is it considered good, and even moral? Because those who seek power now are self-deluded into thinking that they have never sought it before.” (Richards 1994c:58). And he goes on to claim that “I am certain that power, whether it is in the Feminist movement, in the Black movement, in the Irish Republican Army, in PEN International, or in the ‘Aryan Nations’, destroys us. Yet, it is what almost all of us seek, almost all of the time” (ibid.:61).

9 In all three novels here discussed, we witness Richards' wide range of characterization. His stories are almost like Dickens' works when it comes to listing and, above all, keeping track of his numerous characters. He deals with those working class men and women who are losing a battle in society and who are extremely condescended to and misunderstood (L. Richards 2002). Tremblay (2002) rightly calls them Richards' 'fringe' characters because they live on the margins of society. He is writing about the unseen and almost invisible people up in the north-east of Canada, the Hinterland.

His books are about humanity, scapegoats and, most of all, power and its courses. This is a community that seems almost powerless, considering its geographical and economic situation. Yet, Richards brilliantly shows that power is exerted anywhere, and here this is done on a very small scale. It could be argued that his books are studies of how to achieve power and why it is so central to the human condition (L. Richards 2002). Furthermore, what was started in The Bay of Love and Sorrows by examining how individual people gain power, culminates in Mercy Among the Children. Here, the question of who has power over whom and why is more closely discussed than in the former book.

Interestingly, power is used by both men and women, although to a slightly different degree. Most of the time, men either use violence to gain power and to be feared as is the case with Lyle in Mercy Among the Children, or they use money to gain economic power. Women, however, often try to achieve power in a different way. Diedre Whyne, the social worker, uses institutional power to manipulate and ensnare others. Yet, no matter whether good or bad, hero or loser, Richards exemplifies how the actions of one character can have a profound impact on another and no matter which kind of power is used, each one of them becomes the scapegoat for the whole community at least once. Even those who are the most influential and powerful people at the beginning of the story may lose their strength and are pitied at the end. On the contrary, those that have been underestimated at the beginning sometimes turn out to be the real heroes of the novel and prove to have much strength and bravery at the end, and thus become powerful.

David Adams Richards is a keen observer of humankind and understands the courses of power very well, which serves to underline the need for mercy and love. Still, even if Richards' world is a river of broken-hearted people, his stories always come back to his essential concern – humanity. He says, “I've always resented the idea that books could teach

10 us how to treat people. The only thing that can teach us how to treat others is our own humanity, which we don't have to learn from a book.” (Tremblay 2005:41).

Richards says that he is interested most of all in one thing when writing, namely in “that minute interchange between human beings on a certain level that causes all the grandeur and all the heartbreak.” (Tremblay 2005:32) And indeed, there is much grandeur and heartbreak in Richards' novels, which already becomes apparent when taking a look at the titles of his books that are going to be discussed in this thesis – The Bay of Love and Sorrows, Mercy Among the Children and River of the Brokenhearted.

11 III. THE BAY OF LOVE AND SORROWS

III.1 Overview

The story is set in the summer of 1974 in a small and tightly-knit New Brunswick community. The area is simply called 'Bay' according to the map in the book and lies south of Bathurst. The novel is divided up into five sections; most of the fifth section being set twenty years later. It is the story of a group of young people who experience a boisterous time during that summer. In the story, there is not just one protagonist. The reader is confronted with a variety of characters as well as different viewpoints. The events are shown through various perspectives, once through Karrie's naïve eyes, then through Madonna's knowing and experienced eyes and even through Everette's criminal eyes (Lynes 1999). The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a story about crime, specifically about a planned drug deal, murder and sorrow, yet - as the title suggests – it is also about love and hope and humanity. The characters are all somehow entangled in a mystery and it takes a lot of bloodshed until the truth is revealed.

The story sets out with Tommie Donnerel, a young and parentless farmer who lives with his retarded older brother, Vincent. Karrie Smith, a 'country-girl', is in love with him, yet he is still unaware of this fact. She secretly imagines him as her hero; however, the only thing that bothers her is his best friend Michael Skid because he seems to be wild and unpredictable. Michael's mission is to write an article about his former boarding school and the hypocrisy and sexual harassment he experienced at the hands of a certain teacher. After Tom has expressed his opinion about the article, saying that Michael is only wasting his life on it, he and Michael have a severe falling-out in which Michael says, “You might not have wasted your life but you still can't afford a suit for a family funeral” (Bay:16). After that, Michael leaves the community for a while, and when he returns, many things are still unresolved between them. In the meantime, Karrie and Tom have become a couple. Michael, who is now a photographer, becomes close friends with Madonna and Silver Brassaurd, two impoverished siblings living together. Karrie, who is now studying at Community College, suddenly becomes interested in Michael and ultimately leaves Tom for an adventurous and risky affair with him. She is thus gradually drawn into the circle of Michael, Madonna and Silver. Somehow she is enthralled by their wild and “irreverent” (78) behaviour, yet she is also intimidated by them and realizes too late that she has cheated on Tom and has left him for

12 nothing.

At the same time, the ill-reputed Everette has come back from prison to his sister, Gail, and her little child. Soon afterwards he is planning a drug deal and manages to lure Michael, Madonna and Silver into assisting him in exchange for money. In the end, Michael and Silver end up executing the drug deal alone because Everette has had an accident and is lying in hospital. Their plan is to sail by boat to Prince Edward Island and hand over the drugs. The deal, however, goes awry when a police patrol nears and Michael rashly throws the drugs overboard.

From then on the community starts to crumble. Everybody fears Everette's uncontrolled outbursts of fury and they are all in want of money. When Karrie, in her childlike naïvety and without ever having talked to Michael, plans to travel to Spain with him, she packs her things and takes money from her father and stepmother. While walking through the woods, she encounters Silver, who is prone to taking too many drugs, and believes that she knows about the drug deal and therefore plans to tell the police. In a rash moment he kills her and finds the money in her bag. Immediately, Tom and Vincent are the scapegoats of the community and are accused of having caused her death. However, when Vincent dies shortly afterwards too, Tom is found guilty again of having murdered his own brother.

When Everette's power over others grows to immensity, Madonna is the only person who is able to stand up against him. Her fate is sealed when she sacrifices herself to protect others from the brutality of Everette, and she is finally killed too. Silver, not knowing what to do, hangs himself, and ultimately, the truth is found out and Tommie is released from prison. At the end, Michael discovers too late that he has only brought mischief to the community and tries to change his life.

13 III.2 Giving Love and Causing Sorrow – Inextricably Linked in Richards’

Fiction?

Since Richards is a writer of fiction and his characters and places are fictional, the 'Bay' in The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a product of his imagination. The only parameters the reader is provided with are from a map at the beginning of the novel. Apparently, the Bay is not too far away from Prince Edward Island and lies south of Bathurst (see Appendix).

Richards often uses words such as 'sorrow', 'mercy', and 'desperate' for the titles of his books, yet he also uses 'love' and 'hope'. It could be argued that these titles already reveal the books' contents and what the author is mainly concerned about. Sometimes, his titles invoke water images such as The Bay of Love and Sorrows or River of the Brokenhearted. More importantly, however, a negative word and a positive word are also sometimes used in combination to form the book's title, such as Hope in the Desperate Hour (1996) for instance. Here it is 'love' and 'sorrow'. Indeed, there is much sorrow in this novel, but also some love. Many people die and many are hurt both psychologically and physically. Karrie is the victim of a 'misunderstanding' - Silver believes she wants to tell the police about the drug deal although she barely knows anything, Madonna is brutally killed by Everette and Silver hangs himself after finding no other way out of his misery. Those characters that have not died by the end of the novel have certainly been traumatized for the rest of their lives. Tom, for example, who has lost his parents and his brother, is let down by his former friends Michael and Karrie and is the scapegoat of the community; he has to go to prison only to get out at the end, but remains deeply disillusioned by the community's damnation of him.

Despite all the sorrow there is also love. However, this is not as apparent as the tragedies. Love is probably the book's underlying meaning, but perishes through all the sorrow. Tom has always loved Karrie, even though she dismissed him for an affair with Michael. There is love when the interaction between Gail and her little son is described. Madonna loves the men around her – Silver, Michael and Tom. She tries to protect them out of love and therefore sacrifices herself. In The Bay of Love and Sorrows Richards exemplifies how close love and sorrow lie together and how one causes the other, in particular for Tommie Donnerel.

14 III.3 Tommie Donnerel – the Scapegoat

Karrie's first love, Tom, receives much sympathy from the community at the beginning of the novel, falls into the community's disgrace in the middle, and turns out to be a lucky loser at the end, who dismisses the community's efforts to provide compensation for having made his life miserable.

Tom is a down-to-earth and hard-working man with quite conservative views for the ‘70s. He would rather stay in the background than get involved in community life too much. Since his parents died he has had to grow up early in order to look after the farm and his mentally- retarded brother, Vincent. The members of the community show sympathy towards him while at the same time thinking that his parents were wild people. Karrie, too, sees him as “heroic” and wants to “invest in him because of his sterling qualities” (4). Tom seems to be quite content with his life and does not feel the urge to travel the world or experience something special that would likewise make him feel special. He turns out to be the complete opposite of Michael. People trust Tom for this reason, but over time all “[have] come to the same conclusion – that Tom [is] too reasonable, too practical, and youth never ha[s] time to be reasonable.” (18).

Since their quarrel about Michael's article on the hypocrisy of his former private school, both friends have lived separate lives and their personalities have developed in different directions. Tom's humanity would not allow him to write such an article because it would hurt innocent people as well. Yet, his overt modesty makes him appear as very submissive and also innocent to the reader. He, for example, knows intuitively that the article is wrong, but “who [is] he, with his grade-eight education, to say anything?” (16). He also has a hard time understanding what Karrie is talking about when telling him of college:

By the summer Tom was working full time at his farm, back on the low river, and fishing in the bay. He had for the times rather conservative views, short instead of long hair, and loved country and western music. But these qualities only reaffirmed Karrie's belief in him, because she herself was afraid of so much that was becoming fashionable. Tom believed in the Orwell aphorism, without ever having heard of it or Orwell. That is, that so many who were rebels against the status quo were often rebels against

15 a sense of integrity in their own natures. He believed this about Michael Skid. But he tried his best to keep these thoughts to himself and say nothing. (48)

Nevertheless, by the end of the novel, after getting back from prison and starting a new life, he attends courses at university and starts to write. Karrie's great plan to bring Tom and Michael together falls on deaf ears with him. He is angered by her intentions because she does not understand what happened. All the same, he still sticks to her, waiting for her to come to him. He realizes what has happened when a song is played on the radio, hearing the line “I gave you everything and you flew.” (59). After this, people start behaving strangely towards him, almost apologetically and pitying him for having lost Karrie. Through her selfish and immature actions, he loses all self-esteem and power:

He wanted to frighten Karrie the way he was now frightened. But everything about her was inscrutable. And in this agony there was a terrible and conscious realization that his love for her depended now upon this agony, and somehow always would. And then suddenly, and most terribly of all, he remembered her praying at church, with her gloved fingers fumbling in front of her mouth the night she had tried to trick him into meeting Michael. He now felt small and pathetic in her eyes. (64)

After Karrie's death, the community easily finds a scapegoat for it. Everybody looks at Tom and Vincent with contempt, finding them guilty of Karrie's death. Ultimately, even Tom is not sure about Vincent's innocence anymore, thinking that it was his fault because he drove him to do it without even knowing it. Shortly after, however, Vincent dies when his dog falls over the falls and he jumps after it. Although Constable Delano thinks that Tom cannot really be proven guilty, Tom is also accused of his brother's death. Much to the reader's surprise, Tom pleads guilty in the end. It is only then that Tom learns that Vincent was mentally retarded because he saved his baby brother from falling off a wharf and thereby wounded himself in the head. This detail leaves a deep impression on the community and thus their accusations are justified. Tom's efforts to show repentance and remorse by writing a letter to the judge, however, are futile since he has already been marked as a criminal in the community's eyes. He soon finds out that his property has been burned and is in the hands of the law.

16 In chapter 5, towards the end of the novel, Tom's innocence is revealed when Everette Hutch's sister, Gail, finds the money that has been stolen by Karrie, found by Silver and brought to Everette, underneath the floorboards. Rumours start to spread again after this revelation, and suddenly Tom and Vincent are seen as heroic and Karrie's death is retraced again. Finally, Tom is released, but moves to Saint John instead of returning to the community that has condemned him.

Being the scapegoat for most of the story, Tom’s sense of belonging to the community is severely damaged and he realizes his own inability to return to the same place as before. Although he emerges as a hero at the end, his knowledge that the community has made him the scapegoat without proper evidence leaves him with a bitter aftertaste and, thus he seeks a new life in another place.

III.4 Richards’ Social Outsiders

The focus of most of Richards’ novels is on the social outsider. He creates communities just to pick out several characters who are either scapegoats, criminals or innocents who are treated like criminals. Madonna and Silver Brassaurd, for instance, are used to their bad reputation within the community. Yet, they never mind what other people think about them since they have always been treated as social outsiders. Madonna is portrayed as a beautiful woman who swears and roars from time to time, and Silver is prone to sniffing too much glue. Both are hoping for better times to come, but try not to get in touch with Everette until Michael comes along.

Karrie and Madonna are every bit as different as Tom and Michael are. Madonna is first introduced while hunting in the woods with a scarf about her face and a twenty-gauge pump in her hands. She is an impoverished, yet headstrong and beautiful woman who lives with her brother Silver. It can be argued that she has not solely become a social outsider due to her poverty but also because she does not fulfil and live up to the image of a decent, well-behaved and shy woman which the community wants to see in her. Madonna has learned to fight, and although she is described as physically beautiful, she has more traits of a man than a woman in her behaviour which does not go hand in hand with the community’s view of women. Thus, Madonna is the perfect foil to Karrie. The latter is a mature woman who helps others without them noticing it and has the ability to reflect upon her actions. She has been secretly in love

17 with Tom, but when he starts going out with Karrie, she puts all her hopes into Michael, not solely out of love but also out of self-interest. He is a photographer, and Madonna sees her chance of becoming a photo model:

Her idea was that in some way, no matter how slight, Michael's superior knowledge of the world would rub off on her. He would take her picture and it would be printed in a magazine. She had battled a long time to make some kind of a life for herself. This life was fine, for now, but there was another, more brilliant life that she expected. And her beauty and her body would get it for her. (18)

Madonna and Silver look up to Michael because he has the appearance of an experienced man who could teach them and improve their lives.

Michael is known throughout the community for being the Judge's son, who is rich and unpredictable and “love[s] to argue about the world and use[s] some kind of drugs.” (4). After spending some time abroad, he returns acting as a worldly and experienced man whose mission it is to expose the hypocrisy of his former boarding school and the people that treated him badly by writing an article and getting it published.

Upon coming back, he starts getting involved with Silver and Madonna Brassaurd since Tom is not his friend anymore. The Brassaurds replace Tom with Michael, thinking he may be able to help them and putting all their confidence and hope in him:

Michael, all during this time, lived with Silver, began, at the exact moment she wanted him to, to sleep with Madonna, grew his hair even longer, and read many books of popular philosophers, which continually reaffirmed Michael's overall perception of himself as a good and caring and decent human being. He inquired about renting a farm and buying some chickens and living in a way like Tom Donnerel lived back on his farm. (24)

Gradually, he becomes aware that the community is watching him. Mr. Jessop, for example, tries to explain to him that Michael is now responsible for the Brassaurds since he is helping them by saying, “Be careful if people look up to you – you have an added responsibility – “

18 (25). Michael finds out that Madonna and Silver are completely under Everette's control; they depend on him in order to get money, but Everette only knows the criminal way to improve his financial situation. When he gets involved with Karrie, Karrie remarks that there is no masculine quality to his face that it is rather feminine, and she establishes a connection between the look of his face and his arrogance and feeling of superiority over others. He uses Karrie merely as a toy to play with and to spite Tom, calling her 'cinnamon girl'. In fact, Michael has replaced Tom with Everette. When Everette is hurt and has to stay in hospital, Michael is tricked into taking over the drug deal together with Silver. Everybody is aware of the fact that if the deal goes awry they will be blamed by Everette, and suddenly Silver does not see the powerful and self-assured Michael anymore:

Silver looked at Michael sheepishly. His only comment, as he walked away mumbling was, “Why do you think he is still in the hospital? It's over three weeks. He should be out by now – but it puts everything on our shoulders. He has worked all summer long – to make us do this for him. He never intended to do anything himself. Why didn't you listen to Madonna and go to Tom three weeks ago? He wants you in jail – Madonna told me that last fall – he wants the judge's son in jail!” (114)

Indeed, the deal fails and Silver and Michael try everything to erase their mistake, although they do not have any money. When Karrie dies he feels guilty and her smile bothers and disturbs him. Nevertheless, he is offered the chance to write a book about Karrie's life to recount the events of the summer of 1974:

He said yes, and set about, he felt, to tell the truth as best he could about the murder. Not to spare anyone and to ultimately show that his values – the values of the new man – were much superior, say, to the values of his old friend Tom Donnerel. He felt that he was a moral representative of his age group. There were those young men and women who were liberal and believed in what had to be done to secure equality for everyone and there were those who still clung tenaciously to the repressive dogma of a former time, of community and church. Michael believed more than ever that he belonged to the former group, the best group, the more inclusive group. (192)

19 It seems everything has turned out quite well for Michael since he is now even engaged to a woman called Laura McNair. However, Everette Hutch still poses a threat to him and his fiancée. He wants to blackmail him by taking a tape that Everette has recorded to Michael's father, the Judge, in order to send him to prison. In the end, everything he has done over the course of time is coming back to him. He suddenly feels sorry for using Karrie, for hurting Tom and his former school teacher. He is ultimately charged with criminal negligence and conspiracy to traffic in illegal drugs. The course he has taken has ultimately made him a social outsider too. Yet, the thing that hurts him most at the end is reading Karrie's diary entry on him:

Michael could fly above us – but he has decided to lower hisself [sic] into the pit, just like the pit at the dump. Why? Well I think it's to pretend he has his bad side. But real men never have to do this. Only the sad cruel men he has taken up with. So I will help him get away from them – you see that's my secret summer job. (299)

Madonna and Silver are not sure whom they can trust and Silver is also suspicious of Michael when he starts planning the deal with Everette. Both know that Michael does not know about Everette's meanness and is already too engaged in Everette's big plan, which will only bring danger and problems for them too. Silver tries to persuade Michael to leave the drugs alone and not carry out the deal but he still follows him and stays at Michael's side after the dilemma. Moreover, Silver also tells Michael to stop seeing Karrie since she is Tom's girlfriend, and Tom is the only person who really cares for her. Silver often acts as Michael's conscience and is able to distinguish right from wrong, but he still lacks the courage to contradict him.

What Michael can whether see nor understand, but what is apparent to Silver and Madonna is that “Everette never understood the meaning of the difference between good and evil” (291). Everette is another social outsider, and clearly the most dangerous person in the community, being feared by all of them, even by his sister Gail. Before coming back from prison, Gail, a very religious person, prays that Everette would not come back to her place. Her ejaculatory prayers, however, have not been heard and Everette directly goes back to Gail and her little son and starts tormenting them again:

20 A statue of the Virgin and a picture of the Madonna and Child rested on the table as well, which gave precedence to the idea of religion being an opiate of the people, a controller of the poor. It certainly controlled much of Gail's life and thought since her husband's death. And when it did not, Everette's presence did. (21)

Gail is described as a very weak person, having asthma and a little son to care for. She is living in a shack under bad conditions, is marked by her inability to stand up against her brother and is the person who bears the brunt of Everette's outbursts and violence. The narrator draws an interesting parallel between her humanity and the shape of her inhaler, which looks like a squirt gun with yellow tape around the handle and which functions as a poignant reminder of her humanity:

Now her brother, Everette, talking and happy, sat at the table. His eyes flitted here and there. He was just finishing a long monologue about religion, which he liked to discuss. These discussions invariably worked their way around to the nature of power, and what made him, Everette, violent. He was fascinated by his own violence, and always held the belief that he would commit a great crime, that he was a man who didn't like to be violent, but could not help it, since people got in his way. Any other reasoning was beyond him. Everette's most telling trait was his conviction that everything else was beyond him. As if, in lacking compassion, he proved himself. (20)

Michael fails to think of the motivations behind Everette's interest in him. In fact, Michael's father is the judge who sentenced and imprisoned Everette, and now he wants to get back at Michael. Everette has secretly taped everyone in order to have evidence that they have been involved in the deal too, and if he shows the tapes to Michael's father, everyone will go to jail. Thus, Everette has power over them all, since he is feared and he uses this fear to manipulate others. However, the only person he really is afraid of is Madonna because she can refuse him what he longs for – herself. When hearing about Madonna's conditions not to go back to see Gail anymore and not to hurt anybody anymore, he says, “’I don't harm anybody’. And he firmly believed this. All his problems came, in his mind, only because of others.” (231). Still, he agrees to these conditions just to be with Madonna. In the end, however, he ruthlessly kills her too, thinking that Madonna has betrayed him. Everette's fate is to go to prison again, and

21 ultimately his health deteriorates.

III.5 The Exertion of Power – And the Question of Who Proves to Be the

Most Powerful Character

Richards' interest in power and its courses has been pointed out earlier. The Bay of Love and Sorrows is a study of how power is achieved and in what ways it is used by certain people. The most powerful person that comes to mind is Everette. However, he only seems powerful because he uses violence and brutality to frighten other people.

In fact, Everette does not have power at all, he is only made powerful by the community who fear him and therefore empower him. Apparently, Everette can exert most power over women. While reading about Everette, the reader gets the impression that he must be very tall, muscular and strong, although these physical qualities are hardly mentioned by the narrator. Compared to his physical appearance women seem weak and almost frail. Gail, for example, is crushed underneath her brother's power and dominance. She is barely treated as a human being by Everette and is only there to obey and accomplish his orders. What is left is a woman bereft of any self-confidence and social standing.

Madonna also has to experience Everette's brutality in the scene in which she is thinking that she has betrayed him. Everette wakes her up, pulls her out of bed and drags her down the staircase while her head hits every step. Madonna still has the courage to play games with him and makes him believe that she will flee to British Columbia with him. However, when Madonna attacks him to keep him away from killing anybody else, she is brutally murdered too.

Another powerful person is Dora. Even though she acts as a minor character in the novel, she exerts great power over Karrie and her husband Emmett. She is Karrie's wicked stepmother and largely imposes her own views on Karrie. For instance, she first thinks that Michael is wild and unpredictable and Karrie should stay away from him. Secretly she likes him, however, and understands why women are attracted to him. Later, when Karrie starts going out with Michael, she rails against Tom, and after Karrie's death openly shows her repulsion of Tom and Vincent. Dora is as egotistical as many other characters in the novel and therefore tries to exert her power over others to achieve her own goals. One goal is to eliminate the fact 22 that money has been stolen, thereby silencing Emmett who knows she is lying.

Michael, however, is not aware of his own power over others at first. He wants to represent the 'new man' who has seen the world and has gathered a lot of experiences. The admiration of Madonna, Silver and Karrie, though, add responsibility because they all think that he may be able to help them. Madonna believes he will take a picture of her and then she will be famous. Silver hopes Michael can help them financially and thinks he has found a new friend, and Karrie also trusts Michael to turn her from a normal country girl into a mature and independent woman. Mr. Jessop tells him of his responsibility towards them because they are looking up to him. Yet, even when Michael becomes aware of this, he does not care about the people who trust him and simply abuses their loyalty for his own ends.

The community as a whole also has power over the fates of certain individuals. It is the community's firm belief that Tom has helped Vincent to kill Karrie out of lover's grief, which ultimately leads to his imprisonment. Rumours bring about his damnation but also his release from prison. Rumours play an important role in Richards' fiction, and it can be argued that they are the fatal flaw of a community having a direct impact on the novel's outcome and the fate of a character. In The Bay of Love and Sorrows the community keep an eye on Michael when he comes back, making him aware that every step will be followed and examined closely. This intimidates and annoys him, and he tries to keep up appearances. Tom, however, is a victim of the rumours that spread throughout the community after Karrie's death. He does not even fight back or try to defend himself. Instead he pleads guilty to spare others. Only when some individuals of the community start thinking about the missing links in the murder case, do rumours spread again about his innocence. The community as a whole in this novel has a certain power that directly influences public opinion on a certain event or person. MacDonald (2005:74-5) argues that shame as a means of coercion is the dark side of tightly- knit communities. Through rumours the community effects that certain members may lose face or lose their status which is indeed a powerful way to modify and alter behaviour.

III.6 Richards’ Female Characters – Saintly or Sinister?

Frances MacDonald (2005:72) states that “David Adams Richards writes about women the way Henry James saw them: as persons, rather than as women.” MacDonald claims that Richards creates characters that could best be described as “dysfunctional”, meaning that he

23 exposes the weaknesses as well as the strengths of women and men in a casual way. In this sense, women are no better than men, but also not worse – the emphasis is put on the fact that Richards' women do not have to be better than men. In his fictional worlds, women are not flawless; there are 'fallen women' and those that are the embodiment of meanness.

Right from the beginning the reader becomes aware of Karrie's self-centred and naïve world- view that makes her appear more like a little girl than a woman, writing in her diary about her love for Tommie and imagining herself as a tragic heroine. She is so sweet and almost childish to an extent which reminds the reader of Charles Dickens' so-called “child-wives”, found, for example, in David Copperfield (1850). Indeed, it has been argued that Karrie is the tragic Cinderella of the story and is looking for her prince (Lynes 1999). While studying at Community College she writes Tom letters, complaining about movies only showing sex and swearing and cursing and no love, written in capital letters. The only thing on her mind is marriage, and she has a romanticized image of Tom in mind, who should stay away from drinking, smoking or chewing tobacco. The time at college, however, slightly changes her and her priorities in life – a fact that Tom cannot easily come to terms with because the world of education is foreign to him.

When Karrie falls and hurts her leg one day, Michael is there to help her. This seemingly insignificant incident brings about the ultimate change in Karrie. She dismisses Tom for a more adventurous affair with Michael. Michael, a liberal and free-thinking young man, represents and opens up a whole different world for Karrie that does not go together with Tom's views, which were conservative for that time. She secretly believes that Michael can turn her from a normal country girl into a wild woman. “She blushe[s] because in his look she [feels] he ha[s] already determined her as a country girl who would be easy to impress, while she [knows] immediately that he would only think that way if he had no concern for her and was not once Tom's friend. If he [is] wild, so could she be.” (Bay :52). She is gradually drawn into the world of Michael, Madonna and Silver, yet it takes her some time to break with Tom.

What ultimately causes the break happens when she tries to intervene in Michael's and Tom's argument of years ago and restore their friendship without knowing that Michael has hurt Tom. Due to her low self-esteem, Karrie constantly needs to imagine what other people think when they see her and dreams about a hero who will take her away from her miserable and boring life. Crying, for example, in the open street makes her feel special because people will

24 think that their relationship is over and that Tom has probably hurt her. She directly runs into Michael's arms, believing their meeting must have been destiny:

With Michael she had feigned being in a predicament over Tom's cold behaviour, and feigned needing to come to Michael for advice. Yet though she and Michael pretended it wasn't, it was very much a predicament that both of them knew would not exist unless they themselves willed it. At first Karrie wanted to believe that Michael's and her relationship revolved around the principal idea of getting Tom to reconcile with his friend. Later, when she saw how hurt Michael was, Karrie felt sorry for him, and angered by Tom's stubborn meanness. Yet behind all this, there was a subtle but marked game being played between her and Michael, that both of them knew. (68)

When Karrie starts meeting Michael, she is introduced to a completely new world, namely a world that does not care about proper behaviour or social norms. Karrie encounters Madonna wearing nothing but a T-shirt and she blushes because she feels embarrassed while at the same time she admires Madonna’s casual beauty, remarking “[h]ow vulnerable and yet powerful [Madonna] in her near-nakedness [is].” (54). Karrie aspires to become like Madonna, although Madonna openly shows her lack of interest in Karrie and like Michael starts calling her 'cinnamon girl', which has a different connotation out of her mouth.

Karrie is intrigued by her new friends and their wild boat trips. “There was such gaiety at everyone else's expense – there was such disorder, fighting and cursing and nudity. There was such high revelry at nothing at all. There was such a pretence of concern for their friends, the world of affairs, the marijuana laws, that seemed upon reflection to be tired and sad” (72). Being with them, however, also intimidates her. She wants to be like Madonna and repeats what they say in order to sound like them.

However, after being ridiculously called “cinnamon girl” (72), she has to find out to her great shock that she has turned into a mere plaything for Michael, probably to spite Tom. Yet, she still pretends that they are her friends, although there is nothing easy-going between them anymore.

25 Out of her loneliness and naivety, and a prominent tendency to act as a drama queen, she starts imagining her own funeral and how people will react and feel sorry. She also apprises her wicked stepmother of her marriage to Michael and tells Tom that he is overprotective and too good a person for her because she is bad but independent now. By doing that she feels special and important and it empowers her, yet “she did not understand that [Tom] feared her because she was naïve, and the naïve are always dangerous to themselves and to others” (148). This naïvety ultimately leads her to her death.

Karrie is so engaged in dreaming up her future life that her view of reality becomes completely distorted. She believes that by telling Madonna how she grew up without a mother, Madonna will understand her situation and give her a loving hug – something the reader knows Madonna would never do. In her mind, her life passes like a movie. Yet, her life finds an early end, already at the end of Chapter Two, when Silver kills her in the wood by throwing a stone at her head. While lying on the ground and slowly losing consciousness, she thinks about her life:

And suddenly, a rage descended upon her. She felt as enraged at the wasted time in her life, the tragic sorrow of her life, […]. At the loss of her life, and the child she might have held, as any human being who ever existed. She felt sorrow at the sound of voices calling her name, of those she would no longer be able to help. Then quite suddenly she began to know and to understand. And in knowing, she wanted only these things - to see and hug Madonna, to ask Tom's and her father's forgiveness – to long for a reconciliation between her and the entire world – to hope in love and justice for all humanity – to – “Silver, don't you understand? You will pay”, she managed to say, with a good amount of bravery, and then she closed her eyes, as she saw the terrible rock descend. (152)

Among Richards’ novels, The Bay of Love and Sorrows certainly corresponds most closely to the genre of the Gothic novel. There are many parallels to Gothic stories, for instance the link of love and death between various characters. This characteristic can be found twice in this novel, once with Karrie and Silver and once with Madonna and Everette.

Apparently, Karrie's and Silver's Gothic encounter is the scene when Silver murders Karrie. She is the naïve and helpless 'damsel in distress' who runs through the woods at night,

26 meeting the 'monster'. Silver seems not to be aware of what is happening and the murder happens incidentally rather than planned. Yet, he becomes the monster when she tries to flee before him screaming the name of her hero, Tom, and he hits her on the head with a stone. He hits her more often than is necessary to kill her and immediately leaves the place. When he returns to her dead body he muses about having sex with her. There is almost a case of necrophilia and through this murder Silver becomes the monster of many Gothic tales.

The scenes with Everette and Madonna also bear close resemblance to Gothic stories. In several conversations between them, Everette makes it clear that he is interested in her body and in having sexual intercourse with Madonna. The main difference to Gothic tales, however, is that Madonna acts as if she were interested in him, too. She does not flee from him or scream out for her hero; in fact, she knows exactly what she wants. Nevertheless, the relationship between those two could be termed ‘Gothic’ due to the fact that Everette also embodies the monster, since Madonna is secretly disgusted by him, too, and he finally kills her ruthlessly.

Dora is a highly manipulative woman who seems to be wickedness personified. She and Karrie have several things in common: both women are very self-centred and egotistical and both show an innate inability to reflect on their actions. By creating two female characters such as Karrie and Madonna, who are completely opposed to each other and even antagonistic, Richards highlights their contrasts and underlines the women's different personalities. Gail and Dora are equally different to Karrie and Madonna. Gail is warm- hearted and cares for others while being oppressed by a man, whereas Dora is cold-hearted and plays the role of the oppressor of a man.

Dora is portrayed as a two-faced person, saying something but secretly believing something else. She mainly tries to manipulate Karrie by explaining that it is destiny for Karrie to meet a man like Michael, saying ““[t]hink for once of what you want. People like you and me never think of ourselves, dear – think of yer own self -” And she suddenly smiled, snapped her gum, hugged her stepdaughter coldly, and her lips quivered slightly, so Karrie had to look away.” (70). For Karrie, Dora cannot provide her with any maternal warmth or feeling of protection. She is clearly only interested in herself and seems to look at her with false love. In fact, both women are quite similar in feeling special and powerful when something tragic happens such as Karrie's funeral where Dora looks “immensely proud and unshaken” (177).

27 Dora seems to have stepped out of one of Grimm's fairytales – she is the typical stereotype of a stepmother and fulfils all the classic characteristics of being wicked, egotistical and manipulative. An exemplary scene is the following conversation between her and Emmett, when he is racking his brain as to why Tom has pleaded guilty and still cannot tell where their stolen money is:

“It couldn't have been Tom.” “Why in hell not?” “Because he wasn't found guilty – he pleaded guilty – Why wouldn't he tell where the money was? He has no knowledge of our money – “And for the first time in his life he grabbed her aggressively by the shoulders. “This is our fault,” he said. “All of it.” For the first time Dora looked at him, confused. But she hated what she was hearing. “I can't do anything about him – what do you want me to do – save the man who killed your girl? You weakling – you weakling – you weakling – you keep your mouth shut.” And she smiled because he dropped his hands. (208-9)

This dialogue bears a strange resemblance to Shakespeare's Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. She is trying to silence him, telling him not to think about it as he is finally crushed underneath her power. Richards strengthens the assumption that women are as realistically and relentlessly portrayed as men in his works by creating these opposing groups of women.

III.7 Heroism as a Romanticized Concept, or: Madonna – the Heroine?

Throughout the novel, Madonna has been described as a wild and irreverent woman who does not care about what the community thinks about her. As it turns out, however, Madonna is the only person who really cares about other people and tries to protect them by sacrificing her own life. Most importantly, these characteristics are underlined by her name. She is therefore the novel's real heroine, albeit a tragic one.

Karrie secretly also wants to be a tragic heroine, yet she has a completely different and romanticized notion of what that means and implies. She mainly uses her imagination to picture tragic scenes in which people will see her as a heroine. Her death, however, is tragic, but there is, at the same time, nothing heroic about it. 28

William Connor (2005:61) reminds us of what heroism means.

Heroic actions are characterized by unselfishness, and positive characters show a typical readiness to put the needs and well-being of others ahead of their own. Associated with such unselfishness is courage. Richards' characters, though not unmindful of physical danger, are characteristically brave when bravery is required in a good cause. Most good causes involve protection of family, friends, children (regardless of origin), and the community as a whole. It is characteristic of Richards' fiction that heroic actions are usually performed by individuals who appear to be unheroic by conventional standards; and, generally, characters who are relatively uneducated and ill- at-ease in the mainstream of contemporary society are more likely to demonstrate heroic behavior than those who are more sophisticated. This is perhaps because heroism in Richards' characters still tends to be uncalculated, a projection of intrinsic individual merit.

Connor hereby underlines the need of brave men and women in a community where mischief, murder and scapegoating appear on the agenda. The bravery and heroism in Richards' writing is needed to create a balance between all the sorrow and love. People like Madonna fulfil a certain role in this community without being aware of it. It could be argued that she has to sacrifice herself at the end in order to give hope – not only to the people in the community but also to the reader. Her heroic action is uncalculated, performed to protect her brother and friend. She does not appear as heroic right from the beginning, but is brave on the spur of the moment when bravery is needed most. This is exactly what makes her the heroine of The Bay of Love and Sorrows.

Richards wrote poetry before he turned to writing fiction. His poetry collection entitled Small Heroics (1972) includes a short poem, also called “Small Heroics”:

They fan small wings to stay alive Yet fire rages round their hive

In unison the choked bees die. (Richards 1972:6)

29 Connor (2005:58-9) uses this poem to establish an introduction to Richards' fiction. The poem probably refers to the method used to destroy bees' nests in local areas of New Brunswick, namely to set the bee hives on fire to destroy the bees and their nests. The bees, therefore, cannot fight back or do anything against the fire, even though they are unified. Connor sees in this little poem a connection to the communities in Richards' fiction. They are like the bees in a certain respect, and are exposed to external factors that may pose a threat to their living, meaning that the cultural traditions and values are gradually extinguished by the importing of social and cultural trends of modern life from outside New Brunswick. The characters in his fiction are constantly exposed to external threats, but “these characters tend all too often to attack the flames while failing to identify their source.” (Connor 2005:59).

Transferring this idea to The Bay of Love and Sorrows, the community is threatened by the 'external' factors of Michael and Everette; Michael returning from his travels abroad and Everette returning from prison. These two people bring mischief to the community, yet instead of identifying them as the source of their problems they turn on Tom, a well- established member of the community, to attack him, and perceive him and Vincent as the scapegoats because they are easier to attack. The title - “Small Heroics” - is quite accurate and telling when referring to the bees' fight for survival. In the end, this is exactly what the community does too – trying to survive – and thereby fulfils 'small heroics'.

30 IV. MERCY AMONG THE CHILDREN

IV.1 Overview

In the book Mercy Among the Children, published in 2000, the reader is only presented with one perspective, namely that of Lyle Henderson. He figures as an omniscient narrator who retells the family's history from the time before he was born up until the time of being a grown-up man. The story's focus is on the Henderson family and their misery and bad luck throughout life. The main part spans some years in the 1970s and 80s.

The book is divided into four chapters – entitled “Mercy”, “Fury”, “Love”, and “Redemption” – which are framed by a Prologue and an Afterword. The Prologue constitutes a conversation between the character Lyle and Terrieux, a retired police officer. Lyle visits him to remind Terrieux of a man called Mathew Pit, who has made Lyle's life and that of his family miserable and who could have been caught and imprisoned by Terrieux years ago. Terrieux, however, saved Mat Pit's life by letting him escape. Lyle's mission now is to retell his whole family's life to Terrieux who may write about it to “expose the Mat Pits of the world” (Mercy:7).

In the first chapter, “Mercy”, Lyle as the narrator of the story introduces the reader to his mother, Elly Henderson, and his father, Sydney Henderson. He describes the harsh physical world they live in and their comm