About a month ago I was telling you how much I'd enjoyed Dorothy Canfield Fisher's The Homemaker. I thought then that she was a remarkable writer and I was greedy for more, so when I spotted someone's review of this one soon afterwards (wish I could remember whose) I managed to get a copy in record time. And I'm here to tell you that in many ways I think this is an even more interesting novel -- or at least a novel that is interesting in a different, and rather more challenging way. This is how the author described it to her agent:
The story turns on the development and strengthening of a character, in this case after forty-five, the age when most people are set for life. A woman of forty-five meets calamity and struggles through great sorrow and misery, to an immensely deeper understanding and self-abnegation.
Well, yes -- that's one way of looking at it. This is the story of a widow, Mary Bascomb. She has one son, Ralph, who she has supported through his growing up by working as a teacher. Ralph is now at college and Mary has great hopes of his becoming a lawyer and marrying the pretty young colleague who works with her. Until one day, that is, when she gets home to find a letter from Ralph, announcing that he has got married to one Lottie Hicks -- It was rather sudden of course but it seemed best -- and ending with the ominous postscript: Mother, Lottie's not your kind, but she's all right.
Indeed. Lottie could scarcely be less Mary's kind. Lower class, uneducated, frivolous, sluttish, obssessed with clothes, and not very clever, she appals her new mother-in-law more than words can say. Ralph quits college and takes a menial job, money is scarce, so the young couple move in with her and soon, inevitably, it becomes apparent that Lottie is already several months pregnant. When the baby girl is born, Mary decides to harden her heart against her. But one look into the baby's eyes, which prove to be the exact replica of those of Mary's adored, long-dead husband, and she is lost.
And so begins the terrible struggle for the child, known as Dibs, which dominates the rest of the novel. Mary adores Dibs and sees that her mother is not looking after her properly, something she finds agonising to watch, so much so that at one point she actually moves out for three years. But that becomes intolerable too, and when she returns to the house and sees the damage that has already been done to the little girl, she decides to take drastic action.
I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of a SPOILER but I can't talk about the novel adequately without telling you what she does. Lottie has always been excessively vain of her feet, and crams them into unsuitable and too small shoes, so walking has become painful to her. Mary builds on this, persuading the young woman she has severe spinal problems and will be better off in bed, and there she remains for the duration, attended by an expensive quack doctor paid for by Mary, happily reading trashy magazines and eating chocolate. Dibs, meanwhile, becomes the sole care of her grandmother, who raises her to becomes a fine upstanding young girl and eventually sends her off to college and an exciting potential new life.
The thing about all this is, of course, that Mary is sacrificing one person's life and liberty for the sake of another's. You may say that Lottie doesn't suffer -- she likes lying around being waited on hand and foot, takes pleasure in the times of day when her daughter comes and helps her dress, brushes her hair and spends a little time with her, and is happy to have the running of the house and the child's upbringing taken off her hands. But this has been achieved through Mary's deceit and conniving, something she herself is secretly wracked with guilt about, as we can see from the fact that she stops wearing the locket with her dead husband's picture (his eyes too reproachful, presumably) and even ceases her lifetime's bible reading and church attendance. Of course she is sustained through all this by her conviction that she is doing right by Dibs, and events undoubtedly bear this out. But nevertheless this raises massive moral and ethical questions, ones which the author leaves it to the reader to wrestle with.
In fact the relationship between the two women is fascinating. When Fisher wrote to her agent about Mary achieving an immensely deeper understanding and self-abnegation, this really seems to refer to the very last part of the novel. She really cannot bear Lottie at first, and for a long time indeed, and this I suppose is how she manages to justify her actions. Things begin to change when Lottie's old father is found dying, in a destitute state, and is brought back to the house to be nursed through his last weeks. His revelations about Lottie's childhood, and his struggles to bring her up on his own, certainly make Mary think and she understands her daughter-in-law better as a result. But the final change happens literally in the last paragraph of the novel, when the two women are finally left alone (Ralph has left for a successful career as a journalist and Dibs gone off to college). I'm not going to say any more, in case you read it, but it is wonderfully and extraordinarily moving.
And Mary is a fascinating character. She is never especially sympathetic, and I certainly didn't warm to her, though my goodness I did empathise with her. She is clever, quite tough minded, and very sure of right and wrong, at least until she faces her great moral dilemma. Would I have done the same? Probably not, but I must admit this was all very near the knuckle for me, because I did end up bringing up a grandchild and the initial struggle, though different, was equally painful, though it all turned out very well in the end.
One thing's sure -- Dorothy Canfield Fisher (that's her at the top) was an amazing writer. Anyone else read this? It's only available in the old Virago edition, but highly recommended.
