Filaree by Marguerite Noble (review)

146 Western American Literature are confused and contradictory. McClure seems aware of this issue, but she offers no clear response. Kevin Starr has charged that “Gertrude Ather­ ton was a novelist because she wrote novels, not because she had any sense of art or craft or profession.” McClure notes this direct and damning judg­ ment, yet moves on without reply. Atherton is represented to us as a femi­ nist, but her obvious sexism is never explored. Her concern with race is mentioned, yet her blatant racism is ignored. This persistent failure to address major issues is reflected in McClure’s specific formulations. We learn, for example, that “Mrs. Atherton devel­ oped her characters by what they did and by how they reacted to their own actions and those of others.” Though virtually empty of critical content, this sentence is at least clear. The same can be said of this comment on Patience Sparhawk: “Her narration carries the reader through the five parts of the novel by adapting its pace to the sense of time needed to portray the stages of Patience’s development toward the climax of her journey.” But what of “Mrs. Atherton frequently had her heroine fantasize a soul­ mate — a conventional Romantic notion — but one which she employed to characterize an anti-Romantic, self-aggrandizing woman, one who might stimulate the imaginations of her middle-class readers more than the sedate and domestic Howellsian heroines?” There is much learning in this little book, and we must acknowledge that Professor McClure has tackled a frustrating subject. It is also true that her analysis of individual works (especially Black Oxen) is often quite sound. Nonetheless, in Gertrude Atherton Professor McClure has rarely trans­ cended, and often even obscured, the obvious. FORREST G. ROBINSON and MARGARET G. ROBINSON Santa Cruz, California Filaree. By Marguerite Noble. (New York: Random House, 1979. 243 pages, $8.95.) Marguerite Noble’s first novel, Filaree, traces the domestic interior of the frontier experience in its spiky portrait of a pioneer woman in the Ari­ zona Territory in the early 1900s. A leathery saga of Melissa Baker’s life until her death at 89, the novel focuses on her struggle for personal and social emancipation and her loving regard for the land of the filaree blos­ som. Faced with the challenges of frontier life she overcomes formidable obstacles in a battle for survival. Married to Ben, a Texan rancher incapable of expressing tenderness and insensitive to the trials of her unwanted pregnancies, the loneliness of prairie isolation, and the drudgery of domestic relocation, Melissa exper­ iences no drought of hardship and deprivation. The disintegration of her Reviews 147 family begins with the death of her son and the loss of the ranch to the assaults of civilization. Like the unpredictable country where “wagon wheels exposed the rocks and ground the dust as fine as the flour the women made biscuits with,” Melissa feels a torturing emptiness. Her dissatisfaction is assuaged by an affectionate moment with a cavalier cowboy (whom she helps to escape after a range killing) and the independence enforced by Ben’s desertion. Despite its psychological hold on her she is compelled to leave the sere tenacious land called “The Mesa,” which has so shaped her life. Melissa’s travels to earn her keep reward her with a miner’s adoration, the privilege of cutting her long hair, and the right to smoke a cigarette. The courage with which she returns to the perdurable mesa seems like an island of emotional fertility in the midst of an arid desert. Noble has dedicated her book to “the pioneer women who survived a life of suppression,” and this fictional account of one woman’s life is cer­ tainly marked by feminist strains of frustration and resentment. However, Filaree does not overemphasize the martyrdom of the pioneer woman. Ra­ ther, it celebrates her adaptability and accomplishment. This novel is a spunky commemoration of the stubborn spirit of the frontier to resist, sur­ vive, and prevail. BOBBIE BURCH LEMONTT, University of Tennessee Bret Harte, Literary Critic. By Patrick D. Morrow. (Bowling Green: Bowl­ ing Green University Popular Press, Publishers, 1979. 193 pages, $10.95.) Except for the “Condensed...