The ‘genius’ of place and time: The fiction of Ethel Wilson

14. Ibid., pp. 35-36. 15. Ibid., p. 30. 16. Round Table, op. cit., pp. 53-56. 17. Ibid., p. 53 (italics in original). 18. Lyon, op. cit., p. 37. 19. Denis Stairs, "Confronting Uncle Sam: Cuba and Korea", IFP, p. 67. 20. See C. A. Ronning, "Canada and the United Nations " in J. K. Gordon, ed., Canada's Role as a Middle Power, Toronto, Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 1966, pp. 37-50 for a discussion of Canada's role in the negotiations. 21. See Griffiths, op. cit., pp. 110-18. The 'genius' of place and time: the fiction of Ethel Wilson WILLIAM H. NEW 'To some,' writes Frances Burnaby, the narrator of Ethel Wilson's Hetty Dorval (1947), 'the genius of a place is inimical; to some it is kind ... My genius of place is a god of water.'1 In her case, the god is kind, for though experience comes to her, no real harm ever does. This does not deny that there are ironies in her life, and ironies in Life, and it is with skill and subtlety that Mrs. Wilson presents them. Frances Burnaby's apparently casual statement, for example , is more than just a statement about what landscapes people like; it is also a revelation of character and of the discovery of that character. Not all of Mrs. Wilson's figures show the perception of Frances Burnaby; not all are conscious of what motivates them. But all are observed in relation to an environment that becomes their 'genius,' and the author's balance of character with place becomes part of her exploration of ]ournal of Canadian Studies 22. T. Hockin, "Federalist Style in International Politics ", IFP, p. 121. 23. Ibid., p. 125. 24. Hanly, op. cit., p. 18. 25. See, in particular, J. Steele, "Canada's Vietnam Policy : The Diplomacy of Escalation", IFP, pp. 69-81; K. McNaught, "From Colony to Satellite", IFP, pp. 173-83; D. Cox, "Peace-Keeping in Canadian Foreign Policy", IFP, pp. 187-97; I. Lumsden, "The 'Free World' of Canada and Latin America", IFP, pp. 198-211; C. Pratt and C. Sanger, "Towards Justice in Rhodesia", IFP, pp. 212-25; S. Hymer and B. Van Arkadie, "Offering Options to the 'Third World''', IFP, pp. 226-43; and R. McKinnell, "External Aid: How to Choose," IFP, pp. 244-52. 26. Hymer and Van Arkadie, op. cit., p. 240. man's relationship with himself, with others, and with the philosophical traps and supports which he invents to trouble and to comfort him. Such concerns do not make the author's works distinctively 'Canadian,' but such a demand is irrelevant in any estimate of literary worth. Ethel Wilson's sensitivity and her stylistic restraint have made her one of Canada's most accomplished novelists, and that is enough. Frances Burnaby, as the title of Hetty Dorval indicates, is not nominally the central figure of the story, but as the narrator, the perceiving and focussing eye of the work, she becomes equally as important as Hetty in controlling its direction. "Frankie" is a twelve-year-old child when the book opens at Lytton, where the clear Thompson River meets the larger and muddy Fraser (and is absorbed by it), in British Columbia. Hetty, with a mysterious Oriental past, is older and knowledgeable. She lives isolated from the community , and though she enjoys Frankie's company , she asks that the visits be secret. The child considers this 'unnatural;'2 the community 'knows' Hetty to be 'of no reputation;'3 but Hetty, like the 'domestic promiscuous cat,' 'simply shed people,' and Frankie writes: 'I only once caught a glimpse of her claws.'4 It is in her attempt to understand the morality of this attitude that Frankie grows up. Time takes 39 her away from Lytton to school, and then, at nineteen, still feeling twelve, to England, but Hetty is always a Presence in her mind. By coincidence they also meet again, in Vancouver, and aboard the boat, and in Picadilly, and the coincidences strain the novel a little. What redeems it from complete artistic limbo is the continuing sense of life which is in tum related to the reality of the characters themselves. This...