Past the Grinning Masks: Temporal Form and Structure in The Disinherited

Past the Grinning Masks: TemporalForm and Structure in The Disinherited ROBERT LECKER Canadian novelists have often been preoccupied with addressing - and affirming - the notion expressed by Morag Gunn near the end of Margaret Laurence's The Diviners that "The Myths are my reality." Morag's statement implies that the reality of the moment is part and parcel of the myths connected with the past, and that in order to grasp the significance of the present one must become conversant with, and indeed participant in, those traditions which ostensibly contribute to the formation of contemporary social mythologies. This belief in the relation between history and contemporary reality (imaged by Morag as a river of "now and then" which ''flowed both ways'') is held by other Canadian characters who have made a strong impression on critics. There is Lou, in Marian Engel's Bear, transforming herself as she uncovers relics in the backwoods of Northern Ontario; Dunstan Ramsay in Robertson Davies' Deptford trilogy, pursuing the collective unconscious as it arises from an exploration of his ''personal mythology''; and the heroine in Margaret Atwood's Surfacing, who appears to find herself by going baekward in time to the symbols of her family heritage. In the following pages I want to suggest that Matt Cohen is one of a number of contemporary Canadian novelists who are trying consciously to depart from the linguistic and cultural values inherent in this temporal perspective. One thinks· of Robert Kroetsch's historical deconstructions in The Studhorse Man, of Jack Hodgins' mythical burlesque in The Invention of the World, of Dave Godfrey's fragmentation of time in The New Ancestors, and of the truncated mythical associations which comprise Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations ofBig Bear. Like these novelis~s, Cohen suggests that the search for 94 history and tradition may be self-effacing and ultimately futile. He wants to challenge the notion that tradition is valuable, that we know ourselves more in relation to what we were than to who we are. Cohen does not see the dissolution of community, or of history, as a problem to be overcome, nor does he view the contemporary fragmentation of time as a threat to self definition. Rather, he tries to show that 0nly by becoming free from the past can the individual explore his own identity. In all his fiction, and most successfully in .The Disinherited, Cohen asks whether it is worthwhile to seek any kind of unity with ancestry or tradition. In The Disinherited Cohen explores this question by presenting us with a fragmented history of the Thomas family. As he pictures each successive generation, Cohen demonstrates that it has become more and more difficult for modern man to place his faith in lineage, or in the sense of temporal continuity which lineage implies. One aspect of Cohen's approach is discussed by George Woodcock in an essay on the development of Canadian fiction entitled "Possessing the Land." Woodcock notes that: Novels such as Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear (1975) [sic], Matt Cohen's The Disinherited (1974), and Robert Kroetsch's The Studhorse Man (1969) do not merely confirm for us the quality of writers whose first and promising novels had appeared in the later 1960's; they introduce a new sense of perception of the land, of geography as a source of art. In the process they break time down into the nonlinear patterns of authentic memory at the same time as they break down actuality and recreate it in terms of the kind of nonliteral rationality that belongs to dreams.I Woodcock's emphasis on the ways in which these novelists have introduced new forms of rendering time in relation to place is eminently applicable to The Disinherited. One aspect of Cohen's novel is concerned with how various members of four generations of the Thomas family have perceived place - or space - in their attempt to possess it. Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 16, No. 2 (Ete 1981 Summer) This exploration of man's relationship with space provides the touchstone for a more involved portrayal of the Thomas' temporal existence, and of the many facets of their attempts to possess time as well. Because this...