Through Blight to Bliss: Thematic Motifs in Jill Paton Walsh's Unleaving

Unleaving, Jill Paton Walsh's novel for young adults, is rich in its presentation of psychological and spiritual growth, as seen in the heroine's progress from sensitive child to wise, warm, life-embracing grandmother. Paton Walsh exhibits remarkable artistry in weaving together certain thematic motifs to highlight Madge's growth towards a holistic vision of life's beauty and joy set against its harsher realities. My concern will be to illuminate these motifs as they signify Madge's progress through the blights and limitations of the human condition towards a celebratory vision of life, of the sheer bliss of being.

The first blight in Madge's life is the fact of her family's being broken by divorce. As Paton Walsh's earlier book Goldengrove relates, Madge has been brought up by her mother and a stepfather; her "cousin" Paul—revealed to be in truth her brother—has been raised by their father and his second wife. Madge's deepest sense of family has come from her grand-mother, who has bequeathed to Madge her home by the sea, Goldengrove. Unleaving, the sequel to Goldengrove, tells of the summer when Madge returns to bury her grandmother and is drawn into a tragedy and a romance that shape her subsequent life. During the summer of Unleaving, Madge discovers the meaning of love and commitment, experiences the loss of innocence, and—through flash-forwards to the time when she is herself a grandmother, gives expression to a mature vision of the value of life.

Unleaving is remarkable in a number of respects—its highly vivid, metaphorical language, its allusive quality, and the author's artful handling of time. The title alludes to Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," with its opening "Margaret are you grieving/Over Goldengrove unleaving?" and it sets the stage for the book's revelation of the paradoxical truth that we mourn our own mortality in our grief for the deaths of others: "It is the blight man was born for,/ It is Margaret you mourn for" (Hopkins 94). The story encompasses Madge's life-span, reflecting back to the times when she came to Goldengrove as a baby, and flowing forward to the time when she is herself "Gran" to a beguiling set of youngsters.

The book relates the events of the particular summer when Madge returns to take possession of Goldengrove, which she has agreed to share with two philosophy professors, their families, and their students who are here for a "reading party." Through coming to know the Tregeagles, a troubled, starcrossed family, Madge becomes aware of the pains of human connectedness, the sometimes sorrowful inadequacies of human relationships. Through her dawning love of Patrick Tregeagle, she also becomes aware of the mixed joys and complexities of love. She is initiated, one might say, into the consciousness of what the Romans called the lacrimae rerum, the undercurrent of pathos present in all of life. The ultimate vision of life presented in the book, however, goes beyond this, as shall be seen.

The events of the novel may be briefly summarized. Madge quickly perceives Professor Tregeagle's lack of empathy for his four-year-old daughter Molly, a victim of Downs' syndrome. He values intellect above all else and cannot bear to face the emotions that hover around his severely retarded daughter, whom he perceives as an embarrassment and a burden. Patrick Tregeagle, Molly's brother and Madge's contemporary in age, feels a frustrated empathy for Molly mingled with fear for her future and shame over his father's lack of sensitivity to her feelings. The other children, with the cruelty of childhood, taunt Molly and exclude her from their play, to Patrick's torment. Madge shows kindness to Molly, and nurtures a bittersweet love for Patrick (against the warnings of her brother Paul, who fears Patrick will bring her no happiness). It is Madge who keeps Patrick from despair and possibly madness after he does or does not—his responsibility is left open to interpretation—bring about Molly's death in a...