At first glance, it seems as though who is more – or less – Canadian matters in this story.
Because I am Canadian, I latch on to the idea of whether Douglas’ father is more “reticent” than his mother, whether he is “cautious and single-minded”, whether I myself exhibit any or all of these qualities. (Likely, yes. And Peggy in the story? The kind of Canadian girl Douglas deliberately avoided? I’m probably another Peggy.)
This matter of Canadian/not-so Canadian seems particularly important given the question of French-Canadian/English-Canadian identity in “Orphans Progress”. But soon this matter recedes.
Anyway, it’s not simple: this matter of saying that I am Canadian. It all depends where my story begins.
Because it is also true that I am a settler in the homeland of many indigenous communities, a settler descended from English and Irish settlers. I’m squatting on land currently called Ontario, in a city built on land which was the subject of a treaty signed by the Mississauga of the New Credit, a document they likely viewed more like a lease than a sale.
So where does my story begin? As a matter of justice, it begins before I arrived. As a matter of documentation, my birth certificate states that I was born in Windsor, Ontario. As a matter of heart, Toronto feels like home to me in a way that no other city has.
My story might begin in a dozen places, at least. Where I choose to say that it begins, in a given moment, says more about my choosing than anything else.
Mavis Gallant names this story after a station which served as a depot after WWII, where family could be united with soldiers who were returning home.
But by the time that we meet Douglas on the pages of this story, the station no longer exists. (Readers get to know him in Katharine Moser’s home, where he is staying for the summer.)
Douglas’ mother went to this station expecting to end her relationship with Douglas’ father. (This is before Douglas is born. Before the idea of Douglas.)
Douglas’ father has survived and is expecting a beginning. (Douglas isn’t expecting anything yet. But later he resents the story surrounding his conception and the language he uses — words like ‘besieged’, ‘invaded’, ‘violent’, ‘dominated’, ‘wrenched’ — reveals the conflict this embodies for him.)
This question of Douglas’ beginning is important. Mostly because he seems to be moving away from this idea of his beginning. Once a child prodigy, he finds himself, at twenty years old, having grown into some other stage of life. But, if he is no longer beginning, what is he about? He is, yet, a long way from a middle.
Just as it seems a matter of some importance, this question of Canadian-ness, so, too, do other questions: of artist and muse, of student and pupil, of women and men, of identification and admiration, and of city- and country-dwellers. Because readers are immediately immersed in the perspective of a besieged narrator, we cannot help but be drawn into a system of extremes, of either/or rather than both/and.
Here, for instance, viewed through Douglas’ eyes, we see Katherine Moser (“companion of genius, generator of talent, dispenser of comfort, and mind reader as well) and Sabine (“the slut, the innocent, the admirer of her own body, the good-natured, the stupid, the avaricious, the maker and seeker of love”).
But extremes are not always opposed. And even though Douglas is not prepared to embrace the kind of complexity that exists in the middle of life, he catches a glimpse of the complications.
“Owing to a mistake in time, he was having a conversation with a very young girl who was somehow old enough to be his mother.”
When summer ends, however, he returns to the city and discovers a letter from Katharine, a letter which was mailed to him before he left to stay with her in the country.
It is something from a beginning, which only appears at the ending of the story.
A letter in which Katharine observes: “Flower petals are strewn on the grass, and it is like the end of a season instead of the beginning.”
After nearly forty pages, Douglas remains a slippery character. Perhaps even more so because he has been inhabiting a place he finds uncomfortable (in a broader sense, the country-side and, in a narrower sense, a building last inhabited by Katharine’s now-deceased husband).
But even as we readers are ending our experience with this story, Douglas is not ending but beginning.
He has reached some kind of decision which will allow this ending to be viewed as a beginning.
If only the story were to begin in – and be named for – some other place.
How might you title the short story of your life?
Home Truths Stories: Thank You for the Lovely Tea / Jorinda and Jorindel / Saturday / Up North / Orphans’ Progress / The Prodigal Parent / In the Tunnel / The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street / Bonaventure / Virus X / In Youth is Pleasure / Between Zero and One / Varieties of Exile / Voices Lost in Snow / The Doctor / With a Capital T
Note: This is part of a series of posts on Mavis Gallant’s stories, as I read through her short fiction. This is the final story in Home Truths. Please feel free to check the schedule and join in, for the series, or for a single story; I would love the company. Next collection: Overhead in a Balloon.
Wow, what a wonderful post on a fascinating sounding short story. I got quite lost amongst the beginnings and endings! I am fascinated too by the idea of a besieged narrator.
I wondered about your comment that “Where I choose to say that it begins, in a given moment, says more about my choosing than anything else.” I guess so – in the sense it says something about where you are in your life or in your thinking or who you are with and what you want them to think or know about you at that time?
If I were being honest, I probably should title the short story of my life, simply, Lucky. Of course I’ve had challenges and troubles, and of course I’ve worked for some of my success, but the older I get the more I realise how lucky I have been simply in where I was born and in the loving and secure family I was born into. What would you call yours?
BTW Is the title of this story meant to be ironic regarding Douglas? Now I think about it, my Lucky is also Bonaventure? But, I’m not being ironic!
It’s a long one, so there are a lot of beginnings and endings to consider, most of which I skipped past because they’re related to plot points (if Mel reads this one, he will probably summarize those tidily!), but I love following her circuitous routes. She is such a deliberate writer that you have a sense that you could figure it out, if you just keep reading. And, along the way, she invites some introspection. (For Douglas, he probably considers the title ironic, but he has been fortunate even if he doesn’t recognize it (yet? ever?).
Yes, that’s exactly the idea I am toying with, the selection of one identifier at the expense of others, the slant of the tale. I was just reading an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin the other night, about how fiction is a uniquely human thing and its motivations somewhat mysterious. “We don’t know exactly for what purpose. But one of the things it does is lead you to recognize what you did not know before.”
My title would not likely be a place, although I can see why that would be popular for some. Mine would probably revolve around a bookish haven of some sorts; I was very fortunate to find a refuge in various libraries when I was young, and at various times even specific books/families/series provided a kind of escape that I felt quite desperate for. I wonder if Gallant felt lucky, too, in that she was able to escape, begin all over again, in Paris in so many ways. As an American author, she might not be familiar to you, but a children’s author, Beverley Cleary did publish a book called The Luckiest Girl in the 1950s. Lucky is quicker to type though! 🙂