SOURCE: "Two Solitudes," in The Novels of Hugh MacLennan, Harvest House Ltd., 1969, pp. 47-69.

[In the following excerpt, Cockburn provides an in-depth analysis of character, theme, and setting in Two Solitudes. Overall, he finds the first half of the novel aesthetically and intellectually superior to the second.]

The title of MacLennan's second novel has long since passed into the language as a common descriptive phrase of Canadians; and Two Solitudes is probably still the best-known of his books. MacLennan wrote it, one feels certain, because of the importance of the theme; here was a chance to examine the major rift in Canadian life; here, concomitantly, was the chance for MacLennan to establish himself solidly in the role of sociological historian, of spokesman, as it were, for Canada. Edmund Wilson has written that

Mr. MacLennan seems to aim … to qualify, like Balzac, as the "secretary of society," and one feels that in his earnest and ambitious attempt he sometimes embarks upon themes which he believes to be socially important but which do not really much excite his imagination. An example of this, it seems to me, is … Two Solitudes. [O Canada (1965)]

On the contrary, one feels that MacLennan's imagination was excited by the theme—the first part of the book surely proves this—but that he fails to find enthusiastic critical approval rather because he refused to make a conscientious effort at sustained artistry. There is a suggestion to support this idea in an essay of the author's [in Scotchman's Return]:

… I published at the height of the King era a book called Two Solitudes which sold more copies in Canada than any Canadian novel since Maria Chapdelaine. Literary merit had no connection with this sale; the book merely happened to put into words what hundreds of thousands of Canadians felt and knew.

MacLennan seems almost to be daring us to attach too much importance to "literary merit"—instead, we are meant to applaud because he got his message over, loud and clear. But, after all, since MacLennan has chosen to deliver his nationalistic campaign through the medium of fiction, he has to be judged as a craftsman. While the overall impression left by Two Solitudes is perhaps more disappointing than that imparted by Barometer Rising, MacLennan has, to a great extent, improved his technique. And there is no denying that this novel said, in 1945, a number of things which the average Canadian reader was himself too inarticulate to express; in its day, Two Solitudes came as both a revelation and a confirmation of a situation—the French-English problem—that was, and still is, significantly and importantly Canadian. The title is drawn from Rainer Maria Rilke:

        Love consists in this,
        that two solitudes protect,
        and touch, and greet each other.

The story begins in 1917 in the riverside parish of Saint-Marc, Quebec. Almost immediately the plot takes shape; it develops through personal conflicts among major characters, conflicts which mirror the French- vs English-Canadian predicament.

Athanase Tallard is the protagonist of the first half of the novel. He comes of a long line of anti-clerical seigneurs, is better educated and far wealthier than anyone else in the parish, and is the local M.P. Despite his disenchantment with the power wielded by his church, he is proud of his heritage and of his own people; he has been frustrated by his failure to help them move ahead, before it is too late, into a new, steadily progressing world. The conscription crisis is raging, and Tallard is in favour of full mobilization.

Vehemently opposing him is Father Beaubien, the parish priest. He is proud of having, through his own efforts, built the largest church for forty miles around: "It was larger even than the largest Protestant church in Montreal where millionaires were among the parishioners. And Saint-Marc numbered less than a hundred and thirty families." Beaubien is sincere, but a simple man and in many ways a narrow-minded one: "Quite literally he believed that God held him accountable for every soul in the place." He epitomises both the weakness and the strength of the Roman Catholic clergy in Quebec; it is through men such as himself that the Church controls the population—yet he stands for a more traditional, and probably happier, way of life than that which is encroaching from the outside. Saint-Marc is cut off from the main current of world and national affairs, and the priest wants things to remain that way: "Let the rest of the world murder itself through the war, cheat itself in business, destroy its peace with new inventions and the frantic American rush after money. Quebec remembered God and her own soul, and these were all she needed." Beaubien is against the war and defies conscription. So there is, first of all, a conflict between these two men; Tallard aligns himself with the wider world of national responsibility while Beaubien stands for narrow provincialism.

Tallard brings two English Canadians to the village. John Yardley is a retired Nova Scotian sea-captain and a Protestant. Huntly McQueen, shrewd and calculating, is "rapidly becoming one of the richest men in Canada," and represents, in the novel, the Scots-Canadian businessmen who control Quebec Province from Montreal: "Being an Ontario Presbyterian, he had been reared with the notion that French Canadians were an inferior people, first because they were Roman Catholics, second because they were French." Yardley decides to buy a farm and stay on, and McQueen broaches the idea of building a power dam on a local river—it would bring in a factory, which in turn would produce revenue for the debt-ridden parish. Beaubien opposes both moves: he regards factory towns as beds of sin and intends to keep his people on the land, and he has no use for "English" men: "No English Canadian had ever owned land in this parish." Tallard, who has heretofore only seen the proposed location of the dam as a scenic spot, and who distrusts businessmen of McQueen's stripe, is nevertheless attracted to the proposition because it promises a chance for his people to develop their own resources. Also, however, he spots a personal opportunity. The site is on his property and, feeling his career in parliament to be a failure, he sees a chance to make a name, money, and a new position for himself.

In less than twenty pages MacLennan has established the thematic framework of his novel by showing the numerous antagonisms inherent in such a situation: French against English; Catholic against Protestant; Quebec against Montreal; old against new. Tallard, his priest, and McQueen are caught up in a maelstrom of differences and Yardley will be trapped in the middle.

Tallard has two sons, Marius, by his first wife, and Paul, by his second wife, Kathleen. Paul, in the first half of the novel, is just a boy; largely ignored by his father, he is comforted by, and becomes a close friend of, Yardley. In the full course of the book, however, he and his brother come to enact on a different level the same conflict that besets their father and priest.

Marius is a university student and a Quebec nationalist. Like Father Beaubien, he loathes the British and is an unswerving Catholic. Rifling his father's desk, he comes across some writing criticising the Church. He regards this as heretical and considers his father not only a traitor to his race for his stand on conscription, but now a traitor to his religion as well. Jansenism, puritanical Catholicism, is the trouble with Marius; his nature is secretive, and he feels himself to be an outcast within his own family. Kathleen, who is not much older than himself, he both resents for superseding his own mother, a nun-like woman, and desires for her beauty. But Tallard, whose time has largely been given to politics, must share the blame for Marius' attitude; he has not been a companion to his sons and is, for all his logic and intelligence, a distant, rather cold man. This lack of parental consideration has spurred Marius' alienation.

We see Marius at a political rally in Montreal, howling against conscription, his ego inflated by applause. Accused by an English soldier of being a "yellow son of a bitch," Marius smashes him to the ground and goes into hiding "to keep out of the army in order to defy the English and assert his rights as a French Canadian. And he would be doing even more than that. He was saving himself for his career, a career that he knew now would be a crusade." Thus, depth is added to the already internecine atmosphere of the plot.

Tallard's wife, Kathleen, provides yet another conflict within the story. She hates Saint-Marc. Of Irish descent, she comes from Montreal and her main desire is to live there again. Saint-Marc regards her as a foreigner and condemns her "for not having a child a year." The marriage of Tallard and Kathleen is a very weak link in the plot. She comes of a working-class background, has had no education to speak of, and has held jobs as a salesgirl and a hat-check girl "in one of the fashionable hotels." Sex was her favourite extracurricular activity and Tallard met her in bed, and "to her surprise" asked her to marry him when his first wife died. This strikes one as being extremely improbable when the contrasting social backgrounds of the two are taken into consideration. MacLennan never satisfactorily explains Tallard's infatuation; it is suggested that Kathleen's "lush body" is the only reason.

Kathleen's apparent purpose in the novel is to make Paul half-"English." She is successful there. Also, she adds another dimension to Tallard's dilemma. Kathleen figures in the weakest episode of the first part of the book, a lovemaking scene with a returned army major. One sees here how easily MacLennan falls, when discussing sex, into the romantic clichés of the women's magazines:

"You're miraculous! Are you always like that?"

"Are you?"

"No."

"I'm not either."

etc.

Such clumsy writing makes a sham of MacLennan's pretensions to realism and, of course, forms a hollow spot in what is, for the most part, an interesting and convincing story.

Father Beaubien learns of Tallard's "heretical" writing from Marius, and eventually takes him to task on this score and also for his "failure" in having only two children. In one of the best scenes in the book, Tallard is confronted by the priest in his library. The latter's narrowness is painful to read about: prints of Voltaire and Rousseau he mistakes for family portraits, and he distrusts the many English books on the shelves. But this ignorance is countered by his insight into Tallard's character. They discuss Marius and Beaubien asks, "Have you ever shown a father's natural feeling toward him? Have you ever really gone out of your way to help him?" Tallard has decided to send Paul to an English school so that he'll learn to mix naturally with English boys and so he can get a scientific education. Beaubien insists upon a French, Catholic school and flays Tallard for backing "materialism" and war.

Shortly afterwards, Marius, bitterly cynical and on the run, returns and goes into hiding. In the ensuing confrontation the fanatical priest threatens Tallard, who has refused to back down on the factory scheme, with a disclosure that shocks and weakens the older man: Marius has known, and this we now see to be the underlying cause of his rebellion, that on the night of his mother's death his father slept with Kathleen in a hospital room near that containing the body.

Marius is captured and taken off to the army. An informer, Janet Methuen, gave him away; she is Lardley's daughter, and turns informer because her husband has died fighting in France. Also, and more importantly, she is an agent, and a victim, of her social background; having married into the English "aristocracy" of Montreal, she has been trained to despise the French. Yardley remonstrates with her and she replies: "It makes me furious, all this pampering of them. It's time they were brought to heel." Beaubien taunts Tallard with what has happened and with having let Paul, who has been their companion on their vacations, associate with Janet's young daughters. He demands that Tallard, once and for all, dismiss the plan for the factory—if he refuses, his name will be read out in church; every voter in his constituency will know that he is condemned.

The outcome is tragic and manifold: the Tallard family is ostracised in Saint-Marc, and Kathleen turns upon her husband, accusing him of being an old fool. He and Paul join the Presbyterian Church in Montreal, and the family moves to the city. As Part One (1917–1918) of the novel ends, Tallard is hanging on to his final shred of hope—that the factory will be built and that the money from it will vindicate him, in his own eyes and Kathleen's.

With Part Two (1919–1921) the first half of the novel finishes in a satisfactorily inevitable fashion. The last meeting between Tallard and McQueen is convincingly portrayed. They were to have been partners in the factory scheme but now McQueen has backed out—he refuses to go ahead with plans in conjunction with a man toward whom Saint-Marc is antagonistic. In reply to Tallard's furious protests that this will mean his ruination, McQueen answers: "Come, Tallard, be reasonable. You French-Canadians make too much trouble for yourselves—far too much." Tallard is broken, bewildered, and embittered:

He remembered a sentence of McQueen's and gave it a different twist: "The tragedy of French-Canada is that you can't make up your minds whether you want to be freethinking individuals or French-Canadians choosing only what you think your entire race will approve …" Like all you English, free with advice! But do they ever help a man? Do they ever stretch out a hand? Do they ever really want us to have a chance?

Three years pass, and Tallard dies. On his deathbed he calls for a priest and returns to his Church. Marius, a law-student now, is jubilant. His young brother is confused, and as Athanase breathes his last, Marius and Kathleen fight for possession of Paul. Kathleen wins, and the first half of Two Solitudes closes with her and her son in a cramped Montreal apartment. Tallard has died bankrupt.

The plot of the first half of Two Solitudes is, despite a few flaws, extremely convincing and satisfactory. This is because the plot and its characters contain the theme within themselves. It is through the actions and personalities of the characters that the theme becomes clear; and the plot develops logically out of these actions and the natures which incite them.

Tallard, we realise, is a man caught between two views of life, each of which is pulling him in a different direction. He scorns his Church, yet he returns to it in the end; he is repelled by McQueen, but he can't help envying the wealth and progress for which the man stands; he loves Saint-Marc and its old ways, yet he is certain that it is his duty to radically alter the tempo and flavour of the parish. MacLennan handles internal revelation far more competently in this novel than he did in Barometer Rising. Thematic ideas are contained principally in dialogue, rather than in contemplation, and thus become far more credible and vital. Tallard's debates and conversations with Beaubien, McQueen, and Yardley are heavily weighted on the thematic side, but, when one takes into account the circumstances of the plot, this is not objectionable. Here, for example, is Tallard speaking to Yardley:

"The trouble with this whole country is that it's divided up into little puddles with big fish in each one of them. I tell you something. Ten years ago I went across the whole of Canada. I saw a lot of things. This country is so new that when you see it for the first time, all of it, and particularly the west, you feel like Columbus and you say to yourself, 'My God, is all this ours!' Then you make the trip back. You come across Ontario and you encounter the mind of the maiden aunt. You see Methodists in Toronto and the Presbyterians in the best streets of Montreal and the Catholics all over Quebec, and nobody understands one damn thing except that he's better than everyone else. The French are Frencher than France and the English are more British than England ever dared to be. And then you go to Ottawa and you see the Prime Minister with his ear on the ground and his backside hoisted in the air. And Captain Yardley, you say God damn it!"

MacLennan has said [in Scotchman's Return] that this is "a passage which dozens of strangers mentioned when they wrote to me about the book." Obviously, MacLennan was able to put into words what a great many Canadians felt but were unable to define; and, generally speaking, such material is fitted—as here—effectively into the pattern of the first half of the novel.

Tallard is by no means simply a vehicle for the theme. One sees him to be driven by his own nature, by his sense of family pride and his disillusionment in not having lived up to his own expectations. He has lost his first wife, whom he loved deeply but whose aversion to sex he deplored, and finds himself, when we come to the novel, too old and staid to satisfy Kathleen. Politically, he has never attained high rank, and his career—as well as his second wife—has alienated him from his sons. He is hurt by the parish's rejection of him, however his growing bitterness is not directed only against them but against himself as well. He stands to make a fortune by the factory, and thus his scorn for both his priest and his business partner is mixed with guilt. Because we understand Tallard's temperament we believe in these divisive conflicts.

He is a man beset by many dilemmas, all of which combine to crush him in the end. Like Hamlet he is indecisive; like Lear he wrecks his own family life and the order of his "state"—for McQueen goes on to build the factory alone, and Saint-Marc is transformed; like Michael Henchard he is a victim of his own environment; there is something of Prospero about him, too: through the life he plans for Paul—partially, one must remember, out of selfish motives stemming from divided loyalties—he hopes that, one day, there will be reconciliation and new hope. Clearly, Tallard is a tragic figure; flawed by pride, a vacillating sort of stubbornness, and ambitious but well-meaning gullibility, he falls from fortune to misery and is wiped out. Certainly his misfortune is more than he deserves, and we are moved to pity. Do we, however, consider him a tragic hero? How much "greatness" is there in Tallard? and how much "goodness?" Unfortunately, there is little, if any, of either. He is the outstanding figure in Two Solitudes, and is very real—but, like most of MacLennan's heroes, he is too much given to self-pity and to an almost painfully sincere sense of purpose. Where one looks for stoic humour or strength there is only bitterness, irresolution, and weakness. One sympathises with Tallard, one understands him and hopes for him—but one neither likes nor admires him.

The sympathy that is generated for him derives from the actions not so much of himself as of others; one is reacting against McQueen, Beaubien, Marius and Kathleen instead of for Tallard. From a technical standpoint he unifies the first half of the book. It is because of the relationships that others have with him that the plot develops, and with it the theme. Each of the other major characters gains importance and holds our interest mainly because of his involvement with Tallard.

This is true of Huntly McQueen. His relationship with Tallard resembles, in several ways, Donald Farfrae's association with Henchard. In each case a cold, practical businessman is brought into a backwater; his up-to-date, progressive ideas shatter the old order, and the main representative of that order gets caught up in a predicament of his own making, cannot cope, and eventually is driven, broken and penniless, to his death.

The minute McQueen saw the falls of Saint-Marc he thought of power and profit; Tallard had seen them all his life and only thought them beautiful. McQueen respects Tallard's authority, but sums him up as being "probably a poor businessman." To Athanase, McQueen belongs to that class in Montreal on whom dollars grow "like barnacles; and their instinct for money was a trait no French-Canadian seemed able to acquire."

MacLennan's explanation of his background contributes greatly to our belief in McQueen's character. The fat son of poor Presbyterians, he came up the hard way—on the Bible and on beatings at his school. His intelligence carried him through university, after which he inherited a dying business and made it flourish. Discovering that he had this flair, he devoted his life to business. Aside from being a trustee in the Presbyterian Church he has virtually no outside activities; money is an end in itself, an end justified by his nightly prayers for his dead, strict mother; he is unmarried and "no woman with a bosom could be quite a lady in his eyes." Tough and unscrupulous, he is so dedicated to his way of life that he believes himself to be a fair and honest man. His moral values and his business "ethics" are practically one and the same thing.

McQueen has, because of his wealth and financial acumen, been accepted almost as an equal by Montreal's social elite; he moves among his fellow barons of St. James Street comfortably and is taken into the confidence of leading Westmount families. It is when one sees McQueen in his own particular environment that he becomes especially life-like. In Barometer Rising one couldn't take Geoffrey Wain seriously because he was too "flat" a character—one never sufficiently understood why he acted as he did nor what he was really like. McQueen is, in a sense, a rounded, believable Wain; the reader knows his early background and his present one, is a party to his thoughts, and sees his special brand of reasoning develop and take form in action. MacLennan forces us not only to detest McQueen, but also to give him our grudging respect.

One may not respect Marius, but, again, one finds him a thoroughly convincing figure. His fanaticism is a logical development of his dedication to his saintly mother; of the "traumatic shock" he suffered that night in the hospital; of his father's unintentional rejection of him; and of the disturbing, sensual presence of Kathleen. The end result of these factors is Marius' alliance with Beaubien and the subsequent action. Marius is not a simple, flaming separatist, but a young man reacting in a realistic manner to psychological and environmental influences. His cynical disillusionment, hypocrisy, and misguided sincerity and dedication all help to make him a solid, living presence.

MacLennan deals briefly with Beaubien's early life—enough so that we find his beliefs and actions a natural element of the context. His simple, one-sided personality would not hold up were it not for the fact that one is always aware of his power; he shows himself a good judge of human nature, speaks with vitality, and his presence is constantly reflected, even when he is not on the scene, in the conversations and contemplations of other characters, minor and major—notably Tallard.

Janet Methuen is just as real in her way as Beaubien is in his. She is neurotic, misguided, and singularly unpleasant. Once more, this can be explained by her background. Having married into Town of Mount Royal society from more humble origins, she has been twisted by her desire to live up to unfamiliar but socially desirable standards. Early on, her nature was being moulded into a sort of conformity that MacLennan detests: "Her voice was a clipped imitation of the British. The Englishwomen who had run the finishing school to which her mother had sent her had done all they could to prevent her from talking or thinking like a Canadian." Barely thirty, she is lean and severely English in dress and appearance. She rations herself on food, is willing to go hungry "to make herself feel worthy of the British." In the first half of the novel Janet serves a triple purpose: her young daughters meet Paul at Saint-Marc; she betrays Marius, thus giving impetus to Tallard's ouster from the parish; and she, along with McQueen, enables MacLennan to deal in considerable depth with a branch of society that is just as distinctively Canadian as the parish on the Saint Lawrence.

The above characters are successful; one believes in them, finds their actions and beliefs the logical result of their environments and natures. There are, however, two characters who are not fully believable and who do not fit comfortably into the first-half context—Kathleen and Yardley.

Kathleen, we have already noted, is a bizarre choice for Tallard to have made. This awkwardness might have been partially overcome had MacLennan invested her with some sort of distinction, or at least force. But she is a phantomfigure and never comes alive. About all one knows about her is that she is too young for Tallard, out of place in his home, and self-centred and aloof in her relationships with other human beings, including her son.

Nor can one reconcile oneself completely to Yardley's presence in the novel. Taking into account his nautical life, MacLennan has endowed him with an artificial leg and a flow of witticisms uttered in the Maritime vernacular. It is hard to believe that such a man would choose Saint-Marc as his home; but he wants to be near his daughter, and an old ship-mate of his hailed from the parish—this we are meant to take as sufficient justification for his removal to a hot-bed of French-Canadian Catholicism.

Nonetheless, his role is clear. He is, because of his down-East background, able to view the Quebec situation with detachment; he is the chorus of the tragedy. As such, his comments are usually valid and helpful in illuminating the theme. Where the trouble comes in is in his personality. Despite his salty and often ungrammatical dialect he is given to reading Shakespeare and to playing chess; he is kindly, benevolent, and always has the right answer, is the second of a line of "sages" in MacLennan's novels. Besides acting as the chorus, he becomes a second father to Paul and moulds him, as best he can, to his own far-seeing, non-fanatical attitude. When the novel moves into its second half, Yardley, having left Saint-Marc, seems much more acceptable; but stumping his hearty way about the parish he strikes a jarring note.

If Yardley represents the homespun Maritimer, Major Dennis Morey, the man who sleeps with Kathleen, is the Spirit of the West. He praises Winnipeg to the skies, and one suspects that he was included as a "filler" to build up the over-all image of Canada for the reader. Also, he may have had a few talks with Neil MacRae in France:

"… Canada isn't England, and too many Canadians try to pretend it is, generally they're the rich ones, and they pay the money and make the choices. Does our Western prairie look like anything in England, for God's sake? Then why try to cover it with English architecture?" He shrugged his shoulders. "After a while they'll get another idea. They'll pretend we're exactly the same as the States. And they'll start to imitate ideas from down there. But is there anything in the States like the Saint Lawrence Valley? For that matter, is there anything in the States like us—the collective us?"

This has the familiar ring of the MacLennan lecture, but it is rendered credible by being expounded in the course of conversation.

It can be seen, then, that the majority of the leading characters unify and illuminate, through their personalities, and actions, the plot and the theme. The awkward, unsure treatment of theme so noticeable in Barometer Rising, has, except for a few minor recurrences, disappeared in the first half of Two Solitudes. While the characters do, of course, symbolise divisive elements in the Canadian population, they are by no means simply vehicles for MacLennan's opinions. We can see, as we read, why there is distrust on one side and condescension on the other, why the problem is so intricate and explosive. But at the same time we have an affinity with the actors and are caught up in the tragic course of their lives.

Another major strength, and one tightly interwoven with the single unity of characterisation, plot, and theme, is the setting. We move, for the most part, between Saint-Marc and Montreal. The leisurely, time-honoured pace of life in the parish is memorably portrayed: Polycarpe Drouin's general store with its jumble of merchandise and perpetual checker games; Tallard's house, "built by the first member of the family who came to Canada in 1672;" the local customs and the local characters—all make a lasting impression on the reader. MacLennan draws these scenes with affectionate honesty. He also captures the spirit of Montreal, and there are fine general descriptions of that city. But, because he is dealing with Montrealers such as McQueen and Janet, these pictures of a locale and its special life are often satire:

It was a huge stone house on the southern slope of Mount Royal. Harvey Methuen's family was decidedly rich, the money coming from government bonds and stocks in breweries, distilleries, lumber, mines, factories and God knew how big a block of Canadian Pacific. It was a large family and every branch of it lived in stone houses with dark rooms hung with wine-red draperies, and they all had great dark paintings on their walls framed in gilded plaster.

Here is a snapshot of Paul's school in the city:

… the school bowed heads for a short prayer and then stood at attention and sang God Save the King, looking up to the picture of King George, draped with the Union Jack, their eyes lighting at the same time on the large group-photograph that also hung behind the platform, containing the picture of … the men who formed the guiding committee of the board of governors.

..…

The boys never worried themselves about national problems of any sort; indeed, they did not know they existed. Their home was the English section of Montreal; as a result of what everyone told them, their country was not Canada but the British Empire.

Sociological information, one sees, is effectively conveyed through such descriptions. MacLennan's sympathies, it is plain, do not lie with England. One wonders, however, whether such criticism of Canada in 1917–1921 is helpful or even meaningful. She was a young country, and it was only natural, given her history, that she should identify with Great Britain—it is only very recently that Canada has come to grips with the problem of self-knowledge. On the other hand, one cannot deny that MacLennan is right to emphasise the harmful effects of what he, one suspects, would call secondhand tradition. It nourished, in the upper levels of English-speaking society, the attitude which was partially responsible for Janet Methuen's betrayal of Marius—an inhuman action—and, generally speaking, a patronising discrimination toward French Canadians by the denizens of Westmount and the Town of Mount Royal.

If one were to choose a typical landscape description of MacLennan's, the following would be as good as any:

That afternoon it blew cold from the northeast, the wind built itself up, towards evening the air was flecked with a scud of white specks, and then the full weight of the snow began to drive. It whipped the land, greyed it, then turned it white and continued to come down hissing invisibly after dark all night long until mid-morning of the next day. For a few days after that the river was like black ink pouring between the flat whiteness of the plains on either side. Then the frost cracked down harder, the river stilled and froze. Another blizzard came and covered the ice, and then the whole world was so white you could hardly look at it with the naked eye against the glittering sun in the morning. The farmhouses seemed marooned….

MacLennan is not fond of figurative language—metaphors and similes are few and far between in his writing. The strength of this spare prose lies in its clarity; ordinary language is used to convey the sense of something seen and remembered. To the reader such pictures are real; if he is familiar with Montreal or the Saint Lawrence Valley, say, the impact is immediate, and he is liable to give the author more credit than he deserves, artistically speaking. Familiarity negates, to some extent, the lack of an original or really exciting prose style, but certainly straight-forward visual, often sensuous, description serves its purpose admirably.

One outstanding fault in the novel is a deliberate tilting of the story towards an American audience. "Since the confederation of the provinces into the Dominion of Canada just after the American Civil War, a Tallard had always sat in parliament in Ottawa." This is far too explicit, and is a blatant concession to the American reader. If Americans don't know the date of Confederation or the location of Canada's parliament, let them look up the details elsewhere. A more flagrant and annoying instance reads: "A year ago Drouin had introduced another decoration for the store-front, a small bracket over the door holding three faded flags. One was the Red Ensign of the British Mercantile Marine with a Canadian crest in the corner." A Canadian reader was bound to be indignant at the assumption that he did not know what his own flag looked like. It is as if an American writer were to describe his flag not as "the stars and stripes," but rather as "a design originated by Betsy Ross, who lived in Philadelphia…." MacLennan's audience is, after all, predominantly Canadian—and most Canadians, one imagines, particularly if they are as concerned about nationalism as MacLennan is, will resent this clumsy bowing and scraping toward the south.

Except for this flaw, the banal bedroom scene, and the disturbing presence of Kathleen and Yardley, the first half of Two Solitudes is skilfully and convincingly written. One sees in microcosm, and begins to comprehend, a major problem that besets this country. More important, one arrives at this understanding through being involved in the tragic predicament of living characters. Here, in the first two hundred and twenty-five pages of Two Solitudes, MacLennan comes very close indeed to creating a "whole which is harmonious."

Nothing like as much can be said for the second half of the book. George Woodcock has written that

If Two Solitudes had ended with Tallard's death, it would have been a moving and cohesive book. But up to this point it merely presents the problem of racial relations; it does not have the logical completeness of presenting a solution, and this MacLennan seeks, at the expense of his novel, in its later chapters. ["A Nation's Odyssey: The Novels of Hugh MacLennan," in Masks of Fiction, edited by A. J. M. Smith, 1961]

—and he is right, as is Desmond Pacey, who [in his Creative Writing in Canada, 1961] calls the second half "much inferior." In this part of the book, structure, plot, characterisation, theme, and style all collapse, and one finds it hard to understand how a man who had been writing at the top of his form up to now could be responsible for this turgid shambles.

We leap a gap of thirteen years, from Tallard's death to 1934. Heather, Janet's younger daughter, breaks away from the cloying restrictions of the elite society in which she has been brought up and falls in love with Paul. The two of them meet at Yardley's Montreal apartment—he has left Saint-Marc, which by now has long been a factory town. Paul has, since his father's death, travelled across Canada on various jobs and has played professional hockey to put himself through college; he has taken a degree and, with Kathleen remarried, is entirely on his own. He has intentions of becoming a novelist, and he and Heather are together for only a short time, for he wants "to see the world" and Part Three of the novel, 1934, ends with him outward bound from Halifax Harbour.

Five years flash by and we find ourselves in 1939, the final quarter of the book. Paul has, in the interim, not only been a seaman; he has sold short stories to American magazines and, on the strength of his Canadian degree, has gone to Oxford. (His college, like MacLennan's, was Oriel.) There he began work on a novel and he has come to Greece to finish it. Unable to, however, and homesick, he has planned his return to Canada.

Back home, Yardley has returned to Nova Scotia. He lives in a lodging house in Halifax where Janet and Heather have been visiting him. Janet is worried about Heather's having discarded her proper social circle (She has been studying art in New York.) and also about her lasting infatuation for Paul. Yardley, having rebuked his daughter for her attitude, dies. The scene dealing with his death is easily the best in the second half of the book. Paul has come back, and he and Heather are secretly married in Halifax. Three unmemorable chapters are given to their honeymoon trip to Montreal via the Gaspé. In Montreal, Paul refuses to concede to Janet's wishes for him, and gets down to work on a novel. He visits Marius, who lives with his wife and a slew of children in a grubby working-class neighbourhood; the older brother is an impoverished lawyer, and his bitter nationalistic idealism has become almost his sole purpose of existence.

As the novel moves to its close, Heather and her mother—who does not know of the marriage—are vacationing in Maine. McQueen, who has remained Janet's intimate advisor, is encouraged by her to persuade Heather to break with Paul. This forces Heather's hand, and her mother, when she learns the truth, feigns a serious attack. As this is going on, the war begins, and Paul, who is to enlist the following day, arrives to join his wife. Heather has at last made a clean break with her mother and all that she stands for; but reconciliation on Janet's part is implied at the end.

The plot of the novel finishes there. But then comes an incredibly poor, if brief, concluding chapter. We are given a quick cross-country tour of Canada, we read of its preparations for war, and, finally, we are subjected to this fuzzy piece of pontifical philosophising:

Then, even as the two race-legends woke again remembering ancient enmities, there woke with them also the felt knowledge that together they had fought and survived one great war they had never made and that now they had entered another; that for nearly a hundred years the nation had been spread out on the top half of the continent over the powerhouse of the United States and still was there; that even if the legends were like oil and alcohol in the same bottle, the bottle had not been broken yet. And almost grudgingly, out of the instinct to what was necessary, the country took the first irrevocable steps toward becoming herself, knowing against her will that she was not unique but like all the others, alone with history, with science, with the future.

This paragraph is, regrettably, an almost inevitable conclusion; for MacLennan, in the second half of Two Solitudes, is primarily interested in proselytizing. The plot and the characters are subjected to the theme, and as a result the theme degenerates into a tiresome lecture.

A plot is sustained by the actions of its characters, actions which must, in a realistic novel, develop from convincing emotions and beliefs, which in their turn must stem from believable, living, personalities. The two protagonists here, Paul and Heather, are, artistically speaking, failures. Paul is meant to symbolise, through his union with Heather, the desired harmony of French- with English-speaking Canada. But he is just as unreal as his mother. One never really learns why he has developed into the person he is—only that he had a tough time in the depression, that he went to sea and to Oxford, etc. Rather than take the time to illuminate Paul's character in Part Three, MacLennan hurriedly jumps to Part Four, anxious, seemingly, to deliver his message. Our discomfort with Paul is generated in large part by this emptiness of understanding. He steps into the second half of the book a ready-made hero. He does too many things which, taken together, have a "romantic" aura about them: labourer to hockey-star to sailor to Oxford man to novelist. Indeed, by the time he gets to Greece—just twenty-nine—his hair is, in the best women's-magazine tradition, "foxed with grey."

It is apparent that Paul is mainly a projection of the author himself—not entirely an autobiographical figure, but certainly one whose activities bear a striking resemblance to MacLennan's. This is borne out not only by Paul's time at Oriel and in Greece, but, more obviously, through his ideas on the novel. There is no good reason for his being a novelist, and one can only suppose that this was done so as to give the author a chance to air, and defend, his own views on writing about Canada. One sees that Paul's developing attitude is the same as was MacLennan's:

In every city the same masses swarmed. Could any man write a novel about masses? The young man of 1933, together with all the individuals Paul had tried to create, grew pallid and unreal in his imagination beside the sense of the swarming masses heard three stories below in the shuffling feet of the crowd. For long minutes he stood at the window. To make a novel out of this? How could he? How could anyone? A novel should concern people, not ideas, and yet people had become trivial.

This refers to that novel MacLennan tried to write before the war—the one with "an international setting." By the time Paul goes on his honeymoon, his artistic philosophy is carried to the conclusion that, as we have seen earlier, MacLennan himself reached. Heather (Dorothy Duncan?) has read Paul's now-finished book. Her criticism leads him to exclaim,

"Maybe I shouldn't have chosen a European scene. Of course, Europe is the focus …" He jumped up and began walking back and forth. "My God!" he shouted, "I've been a fool! A year's work! Heather—I've wasted a year's work!"

She looked at him in excitement. Her thoughts were on the same track as his own. "Paul, why didn't you set the scene in Canada?"

Paul follows this up with the following argument:

Must he write out of his own background, even if that background were Canada? Canada was imitative in everything. Yes, but perhaps only on the surface. What about underneath? No one had dug underneath so far, that was the trouble…. Canada was a country no one knew…. There was the question of background. As Paul considered the matter, he realised that his readers' ignorance of the essential Canadian clashes and values presented him with a unique problem. The background would have to be created from scratch if his story was to become intelligible. He could afford to take nothing for granted. He would have to build the stage and props for his play, and then write the play itself.

Two Solitudes preceded MacLennan's first volume of essays, Cross Country, the contents of which were all written after the novel was published. So this passage is his first declaration in print of what he has set out to do, and why he is following the pattern that he does; in that respect it is both interesting and informative. But, seen in its entirety, this passage does not read much like a thought process and, unfortunately, could be taken as a justification, or defence, of the methods employed in writing Barometer Rising (a belated reply to critics?) or Two Solitudes. "A novel should concern people, not ideas, and yet people had become trivial." thought Paul. Here we see ideas taking over, and Paul's own reality is diminished.

MacLennan tends to fall back on a style which wrecked Barometer Rising, but which had all but disappeared in the first half of Two Solitudes. Stilted philosophising takes the place of internal revelation. Here is Paul as he works on his new novel:

Out of the society which had produced and frustrated him, which in his own way he had learned to accept, he knew that he was at last beating out a harmony…. In all his life, he had never seen an English-Canadian and a French-Canadian hostile to each other face to face. When they disliked, they disliked entirely in the group. And the result of these two group-legends was a Canada oddly naive, so far without any real villains, without overt cruelty or criminal memories, a country strangely innocent in its groping individual common sense, intent on doing the right thing in the way some children are, tongue-tied because it felt others would not be interested in what it had to say; loyal, skilled and proud, racememories lonely in great spaces.

If one assigns these ideas to MacLennan as well—and one must—there is a discrepancy, petty though it may seem; in this novel we have seen English- and French-Canadians "hostile to each other face to face;" McQueen and Tallard, Marius and the soldier who accosted him, and, shortly now, Janet and Paul. Paul, then, is emasculated by the author's style; he is like Neil MacRae—a humourless hollow man, and too obviously an unreal symbolic figure for us to identify with him.

Heather has no real impact. She acts as a foil for Paul's usually turgid polemics and is in all respects an extremely commonplace heroine; like Penelope Wain, she is mature, intelligent, attractive, and strong-willed but loyal to Paul. She is used mainly as a commentator on the faults of Montreal high society, and is a representative of new tolerance and harmony between the English and French. Also, she is employed—as was Penny—as a weapon against Canadian restrictions on women who desire a career of their own.

As protagonists, both Paul and Heather fail because they never capture our imagination or admiration. The ideas they extol are interesting enough, but, as in Barometer Rising, these ideas lose their attraction because one is always conscious that one is reading a work of fiction—the frequent interruptions while dreary characters deliver lectures diminish our interest; MacLennan, as a craftsman, never makes up his mind whether to fish (write fiction) or cut bait (write non-fiction), and this indecisiveness is all too apparent to the reader.

The other four major characters are more successful. McQueen retains his pompous stupidity and Janet her neurotic unpleasantness. The two of them, along with Daphne, Heather's older sister, enable MacLennan to continue in this half of the book his sarcastic satire of their background. These three, and other peripheral figures, live in the pages because they speak far more than they think, and MacLennan's handling of dialogue—he has a good ear for regional accents and idiom—is crisply competent. Yardley sagaciously admonishes us and the characters until he dies, but he is more believable now that he is out of Saint-Marc. His reminiscences of his years at sea as he lies dying appeal to our emotions and imagination more than anything else in this half of the novel; these memories are vivid and have a sensory quality that typifies MacLennan's writing at its best. And then, this:

It was strange how a man's life passed like a ship through different kinds of weather…. Wonder in childhood; in the twenties physical violence and pride in muscles; in the thirties ambition; in the forties caution, and maybe a lot of dirty work; and then, if you were lucky, perhaps you could grow mellow. It seemed to Yardley that with the talent and the courage there was no limit to what a man could obtain out of life if he merely accepted what lay all around him. But knowledge was necessary; otherwise beauty was wasted. Beauty had come to him late in life, but now he couldn't have enough of it. It was something a man had to understand. Pictures and colours, for instance, and fine glass.

This thematic undertone which we first noticed in Barometer Rising with Angus Murray—of thankfulness for the wonder of life—we will next see, in greatly expanded form, in The Watch That Ends the Night.

These characters, however, do not play a large enough part to rescue the second-half plot from the protagonists. Other debilitating factors—closely related, as we have seen, to the failure of Paul and Heather—are the crippling structure, the dead weight of thematic context, and an almost incomprehensible falling-off of technique. The structure is arranged, first of all so as to bring a mature Paul and Heather together, and secondly to bring them to the brink of the Hitler War, which, it is suggested in that disastrous concluding chapter, will forge a new national unity. The theme controls the structure and the characters, both of which aspects wreck the plot.

The first half of Two Solitudes is one of MacLennan's most disciplined and coherent efforts at craftsmanship. Clearly, however, he was artistically negligent in the second half of the book. Once one moves from 1921 to 1934 one finds oneself in a new story. The connexion between the halves is tenuous at best. The characters do, of course, provide a link, but one is concerned mainly with Paul's theorising and his affair with Heather. One misses the fiery Marius and Tallard's sad battle against overwhelming odds. Not only is unity of time and action lost, but also the unity of place, the intricate and meaningful contrast between Saint-Marc and Montreal. From a tightly knit, intelligently written, and believable tragedy we move into what is supposed to be a confident reconciliation—only to find it a boring, fragmentary denouement. With the death of Tallard, MacLennan's imagination failed him; falling back on his own experience and private philosophy he tried to keep the theme going; it did, but the novel stopped dead. Giving every credit to the first half of the book, one must in the last analysis condemn the author for starting a job and failing to finish it. The last one hundred and forty-one pages are a flimsy excuse for fiction; the halves of the novel are themselves solitudes.