From Society through Sex to Selfhood: Attainment of Identity in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God
From Society through
Sex to Selfhood: Attainment of Identity in Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God
Ashwini .N,
M.Phil Research
Scholar,
Nirmala College
for Women,
Coimbatore.
Margaret
Laurence’s Manawaka novel A Jest of God
(1966) is an exhortation to women who wish to enjoy independence in the male
dominated world and to gain and preserve their self. The protagonist of this
novel, Rachel Cameron, emerges from the depths of domesticity and psychological
slavery unscathed and fortified. Laurence pleads through this novel for the
autonomy and individuality of women by artistically portraying one woman’s
struggle for freedom from bondage.
Laurence’s heroine the thirty four
year old spinster school teacher Rachel lives in Manawaka with her widowed mother
May Cameron in a flat. Rachel is a middle class woman who left the university
half way through on the death of her father because she did not have enough
money to educate herself after that. She came to Manawaka fourteen years ago to
take care of her mother by earning a small income as a grammar teacher. Her
mother “an egocentric hypochondriac bound to fears and pills” takes pleasure in
the trivial vanities associated with high heels, blue- rinsed curls, and bridge
parties. Although she clings to Rachel as a dependent she is manipulative and
always sights her weak heart in order to gain sympathy and attention.
Clara
Thomas rightly points out, “These and the dependence and servitude of her
daughter are all she has and to them she clings with every ploy that cunning,
born of self-indulgence and real and desperate need”. She demands that Rachel should love her, protect
her and never even think of deserting her. For fear of losing her daughter’s
love she attempts to keep her under firm control. Helen M. Buss says, “It is
the very intimate relationship with her mother that keep Rachel emotionally a
twelve-year old, while it is because May has no dominance in her world that her
daughter’s problems exists”. Rachel too is neurotic, egocentric and emotional
by nature. Clara Thomas thinks that she is “desperate with the need to reach
out and touch some life outside her own”. At thirty four she cannot imagine a
life of her own independent of her mother, despite her biological urges and
emotional needs since she has fallen easy victim to mother-fixation and
Manawaka value system. It leaves her lonely in the small world of Manawaka with
no friends or well-wishers to turn to.
In
an attempt to cope with her sense of alienation and repressed desires she
visualizes herself as “a lonely cloud”. The impact of mother-fixation on her is
so deep that she is often confronted by an uneasy question: “I sometimes wonder
what I’ll do when mother dies. Will I stay, or what?” (14). Clara Thomas offers
an interesting explanation in this regard. “Emotionally she [Rachel] and her
mother, May Cameron, both are children, each unwilling and unable to grow up
and leave the other free, each batting on the weakness of the other”. Rachel’s
life is regulated by the moral code of the Manawaka society represented by her
mother. The town imposes rigid standards of morality and social restraints on
its inhabitants. The social atmosphere of Manawaka offers no scope for its
women to establish meaningful relationships with men of their choice outside
the institution of marriage.
An
important aspect of this patriarchal value system is the emphasis placed on
women’s virginity which is sought to be treated as their “most precious
possession” (89-90). Rachel is gripped by fear-psychosis due to the constant
dinning of this particular value into her head by her own mother. She
vigorously represses her biological urges and feminine aspirations adhering to
this patriarchal code. Like her sister Stacay, she too develops a divided self,
“a split-psyche”, and represses all her emotions. She creates a private world
of fantasies and dreams which offers her substitute gratification. She feels
comfortable in the world of dreams as she admits: “I am fine only in dreams”
(143).
Whenever she feels the physical urge
she slips into the fantasy world and freely breaks the social and moral taboos
by imagining herself as making love to a handsome “shadow prince” (19). This
shadow prince later translated as Nick with whom she actually participated in
sex. Rachel is neurotically obsessed with the Manawaka ‘doctrine of chastity’.
With all her repressed emotions, she appears to be “a volcano ready to explode”
and she wishes to offer herself to a man of her choice. This wish is
materialised when she gets involved emotionally and sexually with Nick Kazlick
during the summer vacation. Nick is her former schoolmate and her senior by a
year. At present he is a high school teacher in Winnipeg and has come back to
his father’s farm on the outskirts of Manawaka to spend the summer holidays. He
appears to be the man Rachel has been looking for all along, her shadow prince,
and hence she readily responds to his proposal.
Communication in the man-woman
relationship is essential for it to be meaningful and successful. Rachel
overcomes it by communicating with a man close to her, Nick, and clears the way
for her full-fledged experience of life and attainment of self-realisation. Rachel’s
association with Nick is the most significant event in the novel as it marks
the beginning of her realisation and initiates a chain of events. It enables
her to overcome the problems of communication, identity crisis and sense of
inferiority. It leads her to liberation from both her own fears and her
mother’s unhealthy influence. She even starts ignoring her mother’s cautions
since meeting Nick. She shocks her mother by leaving the house on a bridge
night to ‘date’ with her boy friend against the old lady’s explicit
instruction. She tells her mother: “I’m sorry. I mean, to leave you like this.
But I won’t be late” (101).
After playing the roles of daughter
and lover, the one unsuccessfully and the other superbly, Rachel now entertains
a strong desire for motherhood which is exclusively a woman’s prerogative.
Later Nick leaves Manawaka without taking formal leave of Rachel while she
cherishes the vision of motherhood on the basis of her imaginary pregnancy. Rachel’s
strong desire for a child is evident in her maternal affection towards James
Doherthy, one of the boys in her class.
She experiences a conflict within
herself regarding whether or not to keep her ‘pregnancy’. She now considers the
pregnancy unwanted and an “excess baggage” of “garbage” (163) and decides to go in for
abortion. Rachel’s ‘pregnancy’ finally turns out to be a mere tumour and it is
discovered by Dr.Raven. Nora Foster Stovel explains this development: “This is
the ultimate Jest of God, for the decision that cost Rachel so much seems all
for nothing”.
The
tumour is removed from her womb and she leaves the hospital like a “freed prisoner” (185) because the suspected
pregnancy has been very oppressive, chewing her at the subconscious level.
Although she cannot become the mother of a child in actual terms she still
keeps the image of it within her as she mumbles in a semi-conscious state, “I
am the mother now” (184) and she calls her mother her “elderly child” (201).
Thus there is not only a reversal of mother-daughter roles but also the birth
of an adult self. This is the real attainment of her identity as she now feels
free from all constraints. In symbolic terms, the removal of the tumour from
her body means her deliverance from bondage.
With
a newly gained spirit of freedom, and her eyes brimming with of hope for the
future, Rachel now leaves the oppressive Manawaka, setting aside her mother’s
objections, for Vancouver, “the golden city” (1) to join her sister Stacey
there.
Work
Cited:
Buss, M.Helen. Rachel and Stacey: The Voiceless Vision, Mother and Daughter
Relationship in the Manawaka Works of Margaret Laurence. Victoria: U of
Victoria P, 1985. Print.
Laurence, Margaret. A Jest of God. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1966. Print.
Sahani, G.Roshan. Family in Fiction: Three Canadian Voices. Bombay: SNDT Women’s UP,
1993. Print.
Stovel, Nora Foster. Sisters Under their Skins: A Jest of God and
The Fire Dwellers, New Perspective on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative,
Multiculturalism and Feminism, ed. Greta M.K.McCormick Coger. London:
Greenwood Press, 1996. Print.
Thomas, Clara. A Jest
of God”, The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart, 1976. Print.
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