The Life of Margaret Laurence

by James King

  This week, in the midst of all this to-ing and fro-ing on the part of doctors etc, I went into London to see the old lion. I was absolutely determined that I would not break the date, even if my entire household was in a shambles and I had to offend everyone from my mother-in-law to the cleaning woman. I became, suddenly, SAVAGELY selfish. And I’m glad I did. Thought I might find he was less appealing when I saw him again, but actually he is more so. Very nice to meet a man to whom sex isn’t a battlefield in which he has to prove himself by a display of superior strength, as with so many North American men, but rather a matter of very accomplished pleasure. Don’t think I will probably see him again—or, rather, don’t know and am not terribly concerned one way or another.… One is grateful (and my God, I really mean this!) for grace received.

  There is a touch of soap opera in her attempt to juggle her conflicted feelings about her mother-in-law, her worry about her friend, her determination to see Jamal and her insistence on recognizing that selfishness is sometimes a necessary vice. However, there is also a note of serenity here. She is going to do what is in her own best interests.

  In another description of her affair with Jamal, there is a glimpse of that side of Margaret which took tremendous joy in sex, in the sheer physical pleasure of one body being completely open to another’s. On June 18, she confided to Nadine the wonderful experience she had had in “a brief but extremely sanity-saving encounter with one of the nicest men I’ve ever met—he is (oddly enough) an ambassador for an African country (which shall be nameless, but isn’t Ghana or Somalia!). Have only been out with him several times, but it was like rain in the desert, believe me. He is intelligent, charming, sexy, and the most accomplished diplomat I’ve ever met. Also, of course, married with seven kids. Naturally. Never mind. Nothing serious about it, but it was just marvellous not to have to be serious, for a change.”

  Her affair with Jamal may also have lessened the serious pull George Lamming evidently still exerted over her. That May—for unknown reasons—Adele had provided her with his address and encouraged her friend to get in touch with him. As far as Margaret was concerned, this would be turning the clock back: “I forgot, in the confusion of my last 2 letters, to mention about your sending George’s address, etc. It wasn’t tactless in the least, Adele. I can’t get in touch with him, though, because I don’t think he would want me to, and at this point it is better for me that I don’t, too.”

  At the very same time she had to deal with a host of personal problems, Margaret had to cope with Jack McClelland’s determination to make her name a household word in Canada. With considerable acumen, he had determined she had to promote A Jest of God in Canada, and he proposed a rigorous—by any standard—schedule of media events for his would-be reclusive author. To be fair to him, his inspiration for a media circus was inspired by Margaret’s letter to him of May 11: “I am homesick. I am also fed up, bored, and temporarily in need of a spell away from the role of mother. I am sick of working. I want to see some of my tribe again. So I have decided that I will go back to Canada for a visit for August and September.… Do you think it would be possible for me to find a hotel or bedsitting room or something in Toronto for three or four weeks, which wouldn’t cost me the earth?” (Through the intervention of Robert Weaver, she had received a Canada Council travel grant which allowed her to go to Canada that summer.)

  In this instance, she was the author of her own misfortunes, since her simple request fuelled her publisher’s imagination. Well before the trip, exhausted by his expectations, Margaret attempted to set limits:

  I am quite willing to go along with publicity matters, UP TO A POINT. I want to be in Montreal, Vancouver and Winnipeg, as well as Toronto and New York. But Jack, PLEASE do not insist on much more than that. It is all very well to make a publicity deal out of all this, but I am beginning to wish I had paid for it all myself and not told anyone I was coming home. Because, you see, the difficulty is that I REALLY DO NEED A HOLIDAY DESPERATELY. I am not trying to be temperamental or difficult, honestly. I do want to go along with what you have in mind. But I really must protect myself to some extent, because at this point I am dead beat and I just do not think I can possibly face a trip which includes stop-offs in every major Canadian city, with all the politeness involved in each. Jack, I’m truly sorry. But please try to understand. I’ve gone through an awful lot of personal crisis in the past few years and have also written two books and am really tired … please, boss, have a heart. Don’t press me too far or I will fold up. I do not speak in jest, believe me.… Honestly, I will try to co-operate. BUT WE MUST COMPROMISE. I stand firm on that. Of course, the main trouble—as always with you and myself—is that in any crisis both get so worked up and verbose! I appreciate you—so much—maybe that is why from time to time I feel free enough to get furious at you. Anyway, don’t be mad at me, please. I will do my best, but please don’t expect some kind of super performance from me, because I’m not capable of that, at this point.

  I do hope you don’t think I’m being awkward, but right now I feel lousy about the whole trip, because what I desperately need is a little relaxation and gaiety, and your description of events sounds about as gay as a session of the Ladies’ Aid. Please forgive me for bitching. It makes me feel like a heel … Believe me, Jack, I do recognize that one has to accept change—and after all these years, I see finally that I am no longer a simple country girl, etc etc. Whatever kind of writer I am is not so important—the fact is that I know now I am a writer, and therefore committed to this. But one is essentially a private person. And sometimes you reach the limits of your endurance, and this is how I feel now—that I just need to talk to friends and to shed some responsibilities even if only for a while.

  Margaret could only write to the “Boss” in this way because she trusted him so completely. Yet, she knew full well, a writer’s agenda can be drastically different from a publisher’s. In the writing of A Jest of God, she had also reached a new plateau in self-esteem. Her brutal honesty to McClelland and her openness about her affair with Jamal show just how completely she, like Rachel, had been transformed from a woman who was tentative about her rights to one who took what was rightfully hers.

  The Stone Angel—in its brilliant interweaving of time present with time past—is a majestic tour de force, whereas A Jest of God is a classically conceived, beautifully proportioned novel. Hagar changes only at the very end of her life whereas Rachel’s story is an acutely observed portrayal of the slow, gradual transformation of a young middle-aged woman. Hagar’s story is about the self-imposed isolation of a powerful woman whereas Rachel slowly learns to seize power. Ultimately, A Jest of God is about a woman who lives in desperate loneliness and then discards that darkness.

  Of all the Manawaka novels, A Jest of God and A Bird in the House are the ones most centred on the town and its environment (in The Stone Angel, the elderly Hagar lives on the west coast of Canada—as does Stacey in The Fire-Dwellers; Morag Gunn’s life extends well beyond the town of her birth). Hagar’s problems with self-identity stem largely from her loss of her mother, whereas Rachel Cameron’s mother is both sickly and meddling, hardly a suitable role model for either her or her sister, Stacey. If The Stone Angel is about a woman who incorporates a surfeit of male power, A Jest of God is about a woman who has no sense of power and thus no self-identity.

  In A Jest of God, Rachel constantly catches sight of herself in a mirror or window. She does not like what she sees; more importantly, she does not know what she sees: “I don’t look old. I don’t look more than thirty. Or do I see my face falsely? How do I know how it looks to anyone else.… Do I have good bones? I can’t tell. I’m no judge.” Her fragility and inability to see herself extend to her fantasies when masturbating and even include denial that she is touching herself to the point of orgasm:

  She sees only his body distinctly, his shoulders, and arms deeply tanned, his belly flat and hard. He is wearing tight-fitting jeans, and his swelling sex shows. She touches h
im there, and he trembles.… Then they are lying along one another, their skins slippery. His hands, his mouth are on the wet warm skin of her inner thighs. Now—

  I didn’t. I didn’t. It was only to be able to sleep. The shadow prince. Am I unbalanced? Or only laughable?

  In order to dramatize—and show the extent of—Rachel’s sexual repression—Margaret Laurence describes Rachel in a variety of situations in which she is rendered powerless or is made invisible by others. To such, the author seems to suggest, is what Manawaka has reduced Rachel.

  Unlike Hagar—whose life is determined by the absence of her mother—Rachel’s sense of profound loss centres on her dead father. In a very real sense, the first two Manawaka novels re-create, respectively, the effect of the deaths of Verna Wemyss and Robert Wemyss on young Peggy Wemyss.

  Ultimately, Rachel gains freedom when she acknowledges her sexuality—on her own terms and not on those of her lover, Nick. She becomes aware of herself as a sexual person, someone of value. But it is not just sexual awakening that allows Rachel to overcome her mother’s manipulation and to make plans for a better future for herself. Rather, it is the resolve she makes (believing herself pregnant) to live an independent life without the child’s father. Even after she realizes she is not pregnant, Rachel decides to make her own destiny and, in the process, to throw over the shackles of loneliness.

  Rachel’s new sense of autonomy and self-sovereignty are confirmed when she promises herself: “I will be light and straight as any feather. The wind will bear me, and I will drift and settle, and drift and settle. Anything may happen, where I am going. I will be different. I will remain the same.” In creating Hagar and Rachel, Margaret Laurence returned in part to the literature of childhood. Hagar appears to be a harsh crone but locked up within her is the beautiful woman who emerges at the conclusion of The Stone Angel; Rachel is a Sleeping Beauty who kisses herself back to life.

  Deaths, betrayals and acts of thoughtless cruelty abound in the first two Manawaka novels, but they are books about redemption, books in which the protagonists rescue themselves from themselves on behalf of themselves. By 1966, Margaret, who had taken charge of her life but had paid a heavy price in self-imposed isolation, felt like a butterfly finally released from its chrysalis.

  In 1966, Margaret was invited to attend a different kind of celebration of independence. Six years before, the British Protectorate Somaliland had combined with the southern region of Somaliland, previously under Italian rule, to form the Somali republic. At the same party where she had met Jamal, she had encountered the Somali Minister of Information, who, in recognition of her commitment to his nation as evidenced in A Tree for Poverty, asked: “Would you like to come to Mogadishu for July 1st?” Without thinking the invitation was a serious one, she responded “Certainly.” On May 31, she told Adele she was glad the invitation had been a bonafide one: “The way I feel right now, I am not turning down any opportunities for enjoyment, as I have lived in a Celtic gloom for quite long enough.”

  As she reported to Jack McClelland, her trip from June 27 to July 4 to attend the independence celebration had been wonderful: “I was only there a week, but I managed to see a lot of old friends, some of whom I had not seen in 14 years.” The most eventful part of the journey may have been on the “dinky” airplane between Aden and Somaliland, when Margaret managed to lock herself in the washroom. “I had visions of the plane landing at Hargeisa, the old Somali friends there to welcome us, and me locked in the John.” She pleaded for assistance, but neither the steward nor the other passengers congregated outside the toilet could help. Finally, with great cost to the skin on her hands, she forced the bolt to give way and emerged triumphant to rousing cheers. During this ordeal, when she noticed that the sandwiches which the stewards were to serve were stored in a bin in that confined enclosure, she comforted herself with the realization she would not starve.

  In comparison to her trip to Africa, the journey to Canada proved arduous in many ways. Before she set off, she had to contend with an extremely angry Jack McClelland, furious that Macmillan published A Jest of God during the week of July 9—more than a full two months before the release of the Canadian and American editions—leading to the very real worry that booksellers in Canada might import copies from England and so bypass the McClelland & Stewart edition. The author herself was more understandably concerned with the good reviews the book received in the Manchester Guardian Weekly and The Spectator.

  Some idea of the rather hectic schedule planned for Margaret can be gleaned from her telegram to McClelland of June 14: “Please cable if following plan OK Toronto July 30 to August 20 New York August 21st to August 27th Montreal August 28th to September 10th Vancouver September nth to September 24th Winnipeg September 25 to October 2nd Toronto October 3rd to October 15th.”

  She was not pleased when Jack informed her that her proposed schedule did not “suit HIS plans” and was in fact too modest. Shortly after her arrival back at Elm Cottage, Margaret ruefully recalled her ordeal to Adele:

  When McClelland said “a working trip”, he sure wasn’t kidding. In the two months, I did a total of 17 radio interviews, 15 newspaper interviews, 4 TV interviews, and gave 4 talks. How I ever survived is a mystery.… The awful thing is that I do not personally believe it will make one damn of difference to sales of the book.… all I could think about was mere survival—… the best part of the trip was seeing just a few people like yourself, Bob and Anne Hallstead, Bob Weaver, and one or two people in Vancouver.

  Margaret’s horrified recollection only hints at the complexities of her North American sojourn. The first problem she faced with an extended stay away from England was to find someone suitable to look after the children. Her friend, Ann, obviously could not undertake this task. Eventually, her neighbours Mr. and Mrs. Charlett agreed to take charge, but Jack Laurence travelled up from Southampton on weekends to be with his children. The trip itself “began in nightmare fashion and continued that way, with small breaks for humour.” The first casualty was her case containing an entirely new wardrobe. She first noticed the suitcase was missing when her plane landed in Montreal en route to Toronto. Margaret had a tendency to go into over-drive when distraught, and this is exactly what happened. The officials told her to calm down, assuring her the suitcase would turn up when she arrived in Toronto. It was not there, and an incoherent and inconsolable Margaret reduced to one item of clothing—the blue and white linen dress she was wearing—made her way, accompanied by a representative of McClelland & Stewart, to the apartment Jack McClelland had rented for her on Avenue Road.

  The flat contained fresh flowers and a much-needed bottle of whisky. “I fell into bed in my underwear and thought, ‘Sufficient unto the days are the troubles thereof.’ ” Margaret, who had arrived on a Saturday, had no Canadian money with her. She now reached a very low point, desperately wishing she had never undertaken the trip back to Canada. She felt like the biblical Ruth, “in tears amid the alien corn.” However, the superintendent of the apartment lent her five dollars. “I sashayed down Avenue Road, walking miles, or so it seemed, until I finally found a café and had breakfast. I have seldom felt so lonely and so out of place.” The next day, Air Canada was extremely unfriendly. They had no record of any such missing piece of luggage “but we will take all the particulars, madam.” That night, she dined with Jack and Elizabeth McClelland and, immediately afterwards, Jack had to battle Air Canada’s offer of $50 in compensation for $580 in missing clothing.

  Margaret—who recalled she had five hundred dollars stashed away in a Royal Bank account in Toronto—called on John and Chris Marshall for assistance. John had been the best man at her wedding, and Margaret and Chris had been colleagues at the YWCA in Winnipeg. Chris was a take-charge person, someone used to managing crises. Margaret was very direct during that phone conversation: “Chris, it’s me. My suitcase got lost. I have no clothes. I have to do all this publicity stuff and I have no clothes! I have some money. Help! I don’t know wh
ere to shop.” When Margaret and Chris went shopping the next morning, they acquired a wide range of clothing: a gold lamé cocktail dress, three summer dresses, a light wool suit, two pairs of dressy sandals, several handbags and a suitcase. Never before having purchased so much in so little time, Margaret enjoyed the experience completely.

  During that trip, Toronto became for her the V.M.—the Vile Metropolis. She did not enjoy the process of becoming famous. She was especially put off by the scorching TV lights, camera and camera cables which filled Jack McClelland’s house at the launch party. This is what she said in Dance on the Earth. “A reviewer who had slashed A Jest of God came up to me at the party, wanting my approval for the damning review. I had, thank God, the presence of mind to say, ‘I am not a spiritual masochist. Write what you like about my books, but don’t expect me to approve when you pan one of them.’ ” The reviewer was the biographer Phyllis (“Pat”) Grosskurth in The Globe and Mail (“Pathos Not Quite Enough”). In a letter of March 24, 1967 to Adele, Margaret gives an account of the encounter which seems a bit more realistic than that provided in Dance: “She didn’t like my novel and gave it a horrible review and then proceeded to apologize to me for this fact—I wanted to say to her, look, it doesn’t matter that you didn’t like it, but please don’t expect me to reassure you about it.”