as well as in her journalism, Duncan presents her view that Canada is a philosophical middle path between the extremes of freedom and tradition represented respectively by the United States and England, capable of judging the two and bringing their respective strengths into harmony. Canadian nationality is the implied norm from which she judges Britain and the United States. In her approach, Duncan agrees with the views of many of her imperialist contemporaries. Canadian imperialists were centrally concerned, according to Carl Berger [inThe Sense of Power, 1970], with criticism of the political thought and reality of Britain and the United States; moreover, such criticism was not "primarily a fretful, sterile and rootless phenomenon." Duncan's imperialist contemporaries attempted to define Canada as "stable, ordered and destined to become a great imperial power" by examining and criticizing the negative aspects of Britain and the United States.

Canadian criticism of the United States centred on its Constitution. Many Canadians felt that equality, unrestrained freedom and individualism were not legitimately ruling forces in human nature, and thus were not a stable base for a community. This view held that political corruption in the United States government during the 1870s and 1880s, the accompanying violent labour/management confrontations, and the social evils resulting from industrialization and rapid urbanization were a direct result of the inferior United States Constitution. Berger sums up the Canadian attitude:

[Americans] could not have social organization because they espoused an unworkable theory of society. Rejecting the binding force of convention and the legacies of the past, possessing no secure anchor in human nature, lacking a sense of social obligation and bereft of all principle except money-making, American society stood as a living proof… that men cannot adopt a constitution any more than they can adopt a father.

Canadian imperialists considered the British Constitution superior to all others. The British mix of representative democracy and aristocracy, and of written and unwritten laws seemed to combine the best elements of government in a flexible way. In the Canadian view, however, British practice was not consistent with that fundamental political flexibility. Canadians emphatically criticized the "rigid class structure of England" and avowed, in contrast, that "Canadians did not need any antique code or musty rules from a Herald's office to tell them what to respect." They objected to the free trade policy of the British government which emphasized industrialization and resulted in "the gross slums and wretched poverty of industrial England which brutalised the poor and destroyed for them all the higher spiritual elements of life." Canadians saw the refusal of the British government to take Canadian advice on colonial trade policy and the Canadian fisheries and Alaska boundary disputes as further evidence of British shortsightedness and obtuseness.

For Duncan, as for other Canadians of her time, the social forces of freedom and tradition had to be in balance if there was to be an ideal society. The balance had been disturbed in the English-speaking community by the American Revolution. Britain was cut off from her educated, democratic citizens and from a source of wealth and economic energy, and so became stagnant and conventional. The United States, cut off from the stabilizing effect of British tradition, deteriorated into an individualistic society obsessed with money-making, having scant regard for the poor and no conception of social justice. Canada received the salutary influences of British tradition and American freedom, and discovered that these principles were not essentially in opposition; rather, for Canadians they became the complementary principles necessary in an ideal society. In Duncan's novels, evolving Canada is that ideal society which reconciles freedom and tradition.

Duncan's assessment of British, American and Canadian nationalities surfaces first in her journalism. In her columns for The Week she interpreted Canadian literary culture as a complex synthesis of elements from both British and American sources. She was wary of American cultural influence, which came across the border in a deluge of books, newspapers and magazines. She worried that American influence would stifle original method and content in Canadian writing:

It is not the taste or the literary culture implied in the fact, but the fact itself which is pertinent to our argument. Once Canadian minds are thoroughly impregnated with American matter, American methods, in their own work, will not be hard to trace.

Duncan does not argue that American taste is defective. Most critics acknowledge her admiration for the work of Henry James and W. D. Howells. But she does argue strongly that the Canadian way is not the American way. She is equally hostile to the British presence in Canadian literary endeavour, and draws a sharp line between the previous generation of colonial writers and the current generation of Canadian-born authors. Of the previous generation, she writes:

Their ideals were British, their methods were British, their markets were chiefly British, and they are mostly gathered to their British fathers, leaving the work to descendants, whose present, and not whose past, country is the actual, potential fact in their national life. There is a wide difference, though comparatively few years span it, between a colonial and a Canadian.…

Duncan rejects the United States and Britain as determining forces in Canadian culture, choosing to see both as formative influences. "There is no use endeavouring to disguise our complexity," she writes, for Canadians are not "a simple unit with a single purpose." She remarks that "candour compels us to admit the ramifications that history and geography have conspired to bring about in us," and goes on to explain, for the benefit of our southern neighbours, that we are not ashamed of our British heritage. Canadians choose to maintain the British connection while rejoicing in their freedom, with the confidence that English ways "can never become indigenous."

In Duncan's novels, an American spirit of freedom and a British respect for tradition are united in Canadian society and Canadian individuals. For Duncan, Canadian society satisfies the two important needs in political man: the need for self-government, and the need to look up to an ideal example. With these two important principles firmly embedded, the nation has the capacity to move to material prosperity without giving up the humanistic goals of charity, political stability, and universal education.

G. M. Grant and George Parkin, two of Canada's most important imperialist thinkers and Duncan's contemporaries, agree that the distinguishing element of Canada is the reconciliation and harmonizing of the republican and monarchial tendencies. "In many ways Canada holds a curious middle position in political thought between Great Britain and the United States," Parkin writes in The Great Dominion. "In framing her system, Canada took many hints from the United States." However, "in the practical work of government the United States might well take lessons from Canada," he adds, citing political corruption, partisan organization of the Civil Service, and regional marriage laws as instances of the contemporary failure of United States republican government. He praises Canada's adoption of the American federal system, "in harmony with British institutions," expressing the hope that federalism will become a model for the Empire.

Grant believes that good government "consists in the union of two truths that are contrary but not contradictory." He criticizes the United States because it is based only on his first truth,

That the people are the ultimate fountain of all power.… In consequence, all appeals are made to that which is lowest in our nature, for such appeals are made to the greatest number and are most likely to be immediately successful. The character of public men and the national character deteriorate. Neither elevation of sentiment, nor refinement of manners is cultivated. Still more fatal consequences, the very ark of the nation is carried periodically into heady fights; for the time being, the citizen has no country; he has only his party, and the unity of the country is constantly imperilled.

According to Grant [in Ocean to Ocean, 1925], the will of the people must be countered by a second truth, "That Government is of God, and should be strong, stable and above the people.… "These two truths are perfectly balanced in the British Constitution, he states, and for that reason are balanced in Canadian government.

Canadian imperialists felt that Canada's reconciliation of freedom and tradition gave the nation an international role. For Grant, Canada's duty is to "make this world the home of freedom, of justice and of peace" by forming a living link between the powerful and often belligerent countries, Britain and the United States, as an initial step toward the spiritual unification of all peoples. Both Grant and George Parkin subscribed to the "popular creed of Idealism" of their time that has been analysed by Terry Cook [in Journal of Canadian Studies X, No. 3 (1975)]. The creed held that human beings are not merely material creatures, but aspects of a unified, ideal spirit which is akin to God and which opposes "materialism, secularism and anarchic individualism." For Duncan, Canada stood forth as the first nation to approximate the realization of idealist aims by reconciling material prosperity with Christian social and spiritual values. Canada could thus contribute to the spiritual unity of mankind by promoting peaceful cooperation among nations through the mechanism of the Empire. It could show other nations the way to spiritual self-improvement by reconciling the forces of freedom and tradition.

Duncan's first four international novels reflect this Canadian judgement of the United States and Britain. Duncan shows the ease with which Americans give up their supposed democratic views and adopt a system of entrenched privilege when it flatters their own egos. Americans lack a sense of social obligation in Duncan's novels and promote individualism in its place. In A Daughter of Today the two poles of freedom and tradition are represented as United States' egoism faces strict and artificial standards in British society. Britain is dominated by contrived formulas which stifle intuition and make communication difficult. The author invites the reader, by her exposure of the characteristics of the two nations, to reject both, and embrace the implied Canadian alternative which she eventually dramatizes in Cousin Cinderella.

An American Girl in London is the story of Mamie Wick, an American heiress who goes to London hoping to gain an understanding of British culture. She is recognized as a typical American girl by Lady Torquillin and her nephew, Charles Mafferton, who is seeking an American heiress to marry. Mafferton arranges for Mamie to visit most of the tourist attractions of London and escorts her through London society. After her presentation at court, Mamie is forced to leave Britain because of the scandal created when she refuses Mafferton's offer of marriage.

An incomplete reading of Mamie's character has caused misinterpretation of Duncan's purpose in writing the novel. Thomas Tausky interprets Mamie as a literary derivative of W. D. Howells' Kitty Ellison in A Chance Acquaintance and sums up the correspondences he finds:

Both are innocent, in the sense of having a limited experience of life, yet shrewd and observant. Both seek out an older civilization (in Kitty's case Quebec, in Mamie's case London) and they react in similar ways, rejecting what they take to be snobbishness and arrogance but feeling attracted to the romance inherent in charming traditions. Both record their impressions in an engaging, flippant style.

There is no doubt that Mamie resembles Kitty, and that the novel is influenced by Howells. But Kitty is an idealization of American womanhood, while Mamie is a parody of it. The snobbishness Kitty reacts against is the snobbishness of a Bostonian man who woos her; and her rejection of his life is an affirmation of her American self-image. Mamie parodies the American self-image, revelling in British elitism while insisting that her "democratic principles are just the same as ever." She voices Duncan's own criticism of British society, but her egoism, cultural blindness and acceptance of the rigid British class system are self-condemning and permit Duncan to make a strong criticism of the roots of action in United States society.

Mamie arrives in London with the conviction that the British mix of political equality and elitism is inferior to American equality, but she leaves with that conviction shaken. While riding on the top of a double decker bus, she begins to enjoy looking down on others, and "to understand the agreeableness of class distinctions." She admits that Americans find the elitism of British society very attractive, even though she discovers that American ideals of equality are not universally applicable, as she thought they were, but seem confined only to her little bit of the United States: "Americans coming over here with all their social theories in their trunks, so to speak … very seldom seem to find a use for them in England." She discovers that her own standards, which she believes are based on freedom, the most true and important fact of human existence, are not fully shared by mankind. Instead, she begins to see that the pageantry of the monarchy and the elevation of the aristocracy in England "encourages sentiment, and is valuable on that account."

Mamie's acceptance of British elitism is based not only on her observation of the workings of society, but on a trait which Duncan implies is culturally acquired: egoism. Mamie was raised in a nation founded on the "good-asyou feeling carried into politics"; in England she discovers that she can be set on a level with people who seem much higher than her friends in the United States. She appreciates the class structure because it places her on its highest pinnacle. Mamie's presentation at court is the most striking example of the way her egoism affects her principles. The elaborate and strictly regulated preparation of a gown and hairstyle suitable for the occasion give her an exalted sense of self-importance. She describes her appearance as she steps into the carriage that will take her to the palace: "I was wearing, as well as a beautiful sweeping gown, a lofty and complete set of monarchical prejudices … I was too much fascinated by my outward self." Mamie is enchanted by the effect which monarchical pageantry has on her own person; she is made to feel important and elegant. When she finally is called forward to curtsy to the Queen, her adoption of England is complete: "Didn't you believe in queens, Miss Mamie Wick, at that moment? I'm very much afraid you did."

Duncan does not criticize Mamie for giving up her democratic principles. She implies that Mamie's conversion to monarchy is a predictable phenomenon, one which is overwhelmingly appropriate given the experience of a presentation at court. Mamie is quite rightly overwhelmed by the ideal represented by the monarch. In comparison, American presidents "didn't look like anything." Her continued defense of equality is, thus, in complete conflict with her actions and points out the essential contradiction Duncan senses in American social identity.

Mamie's relationship with Charlie Mafferton is the initial clue to the fact that Mamie's pronouncements are not always to be taken seriously. Despite numerous hints in the text which communicate to the reader that Charlie Mafferton considers he is almost engaged to Mamie, she seems to consider his special attentions as simply hospitality. Mafferton takes pains to explain his family situation to Mamie, and his aunt, Lady Torquillin, arranges for Mamie to live with her. Mafferton escorts Mamie to various tourist attractions and engages in the sort of bantering conversation which would seem to be reserved for acknowledged lovers. Mafferton's family expresses great interest in meeting her, and in fact Mamie realizes Mafferton's intention only when she is introduced to his father. Until then she believed her position as an American entitled her to such special treatment.

Mamie's misinterpretation of Mafferton is based, in part, on the fact that in the United States his attentions would not have seemed remarkable. Mamie repeatedly compares him to Mr. Winterhazel, a young American man who corresponds with her and escorts her in the evenings without benefit of a chaperone. Mamie simply assumes that, like Winterhazel, Mafferton has no intentions of proposing marriage and simply enjoys her company. Mamie's misinterpretation of Mafferton is based on her assumption that American standards of social conduct are universal.

Duncan's criticism of Mamie is transferable to the United States as a whole because Mamie is intended to represent the typical product of American society. Her family rose from obscurity by fulfilling the American dream of making a business fortune. Her father, who manufactures baking powder, remarks that "it is to baking powder that we owe everything," pointing out that honest, Christian charity and hard work are not necessary in the United States—the rising effect of baking powder alone is responsible for his success. Mamie presents herself from the outset of the novel as a typical American girl attempting to set right a few popular misconceptions: "It has occurred to me that, since so much is to be said about the American Girl, it might be permissible for her to say some of it herself." Lady Torquillin confirms that she is everything the British expect of an American girl: "This is an independent American young lady—the very person I went especially to the United States to see.…" Other aspects of Mamie's background which make her typical of fictional American girls of the period include her father's intention to run for the American Senate, and Mamie's instinctive, practical business sense.

The Preface to the American edition denies that Mamie is a typical American girl. Supposedly written by Mamie, it states that "while it is unreasonable to apologize for being only one kind of American girl, I do not pretend to represent the ideas of any more." However, the Preface was included in the New York edition only, and may have been added by an editor. Perhaps Duncan's publisher was attempting to forestall critical condemnation in the United States with a clear and strategic statement. However, the rest of the novel gives sufficient evidence to warrant presentation of Mamie as representative of the United States and to transfer Duncan's criticisms of Mamie to the country as a whole.

Mamie's judgements of British society closely resemble those of Duncan's Canadian contemporaries. She finds a great deal of poverty in London, and is repelled by the tired conventions which seem to govern individual lives. She is introduced to London by a newspaper column of want-ads which disclose its large number of financially embarrassed or poverty stricken citizens:

'A young subaltern, of excellent family, in unfortunate circumstances, implores the loan of a hundred pounds to save him from ruin. Address, care of his solicitors.'

We have nothing like this in America. It was a revelation to me—a most private and intimate revelation of a social body that I had always been told no outsider could look into without the very best introductions. Of course, there was the veil of… the solicitors' address, but that was as thin and easily torn as the "Morning Post," and much more transparent, showing all the struggling mass, with its hands outstretched, on the other side.

The creeping poverty of the British upper classes is brought home more forcibly to Mamie when she encounters Lady Bandobust, an impoverished aristocrat who is in the business of arranging marriages between commercial money and old families. She tells Mamie that entry into almost any level of British society can be had for money.

The inflexibility of British society is represented by Charles Mafferton. His stodgy manner constantly frustrates Mamie's desires for new experiences: "It took very little acquaintance with Mr. Mafferton to know that, if he had never seen it done, he would never do it." Mafferton clings to his preconceptions concerning Americans (mostly gained from reading American novels) and refuses to modify those ideas even when faced with an actual American. Mamie is dismayed by his British inability to recognize a joke which focusses on his own shortcomings: "You are never in the least amused at yourselves," she tells him.

The Bangley Coffin family illustrates the British tendency to live according to social convention. The parents and the two Misses Bangley Coffin invite Mamie to accompany then to Ascot, where they are unable to secure lunch in socially acceptable surroundings and reluctantly allow themselves to be taken to a restaurant. Mamie is frustrated by the fact that they would beg for an invitation to an Ascot box rather than simply buy their own lunch, even though the cost is unimportant. Mamie finds the Misses Bangley Coffin completely dominated by their mother, and she feels that their individual personalities are lost behind their fantastic "Ascot frocks." She remarks that their entire lives are governed by unwritten rules and conventions:

The Bangley Coffins were all form. Form, for them, regulated existence. It was the all-compelling law of the spheres, the test of all human action and desire. 'Good form' was the ultimate expression of their respect, 'bad form' their final declaration of contempt. Perhaps I should misjudge the Bangley Coffins if I said form was their conscience, and I don't want to misjudge them—they were very pleasant to me. But I don't think they would have cared to risk their eternal salvation upon any religious tenets that were not entirely comme il faut.…

The Bangley Coffins are not only stifled by rules; they are immoral in the sense that they allow fashion to dictate such important matters as their religious principles. Duncan shows her judgement of such persons by giving them a name which comically suggests physical death, the lid banging on a coffin.

Duncan continues to explore American and British personality in A Voyage of Consolaion, the sequel to An American Girl in London. The focus of the irony shifts from Mamie to her father, Senator Joshua P. Wick, who tends to judge everything by standards governed by "the perfection of enlightenment found in Chicago." Senator Wick believes that all men are equal, but his manner and his social position contradict that belief. Accustomed to servants who resent their position and who make him feel less like the privileged wealthy man he knows himself to be, he is surprised and offended by the servility of the lower classes in England. A servant who acts like one makes him feel guilty:

He said he was glad to leave England, it was demoralizing to live there; you lost your sense of the dignity of labour, and in the course of time were bound to degenerate into a swell. He expressed a good deal of sympathy with the aristocracy on this account, concentrating his indignation upon those who, as it were, made aristocrats out of innocent human beings against their will.

Mamie's British "relation," Mrs. Portheris, her daughter Isabel, and Mr. Mafferton reappear exhibiting the same stuffy conventionality which is the dominant British trait in An American Girl. Europeans who appear in the novel are slickly polite and well versed in all the arts necessary for removing money from American pockets. Neither the British nor the Europeans are very sympathetically portrayed.

In An American Girl in London and A Voyage of Consoladon, Duncan characterizes Americans as egotistical and naturally inclined toward rigid class distinctions, the British as ruled by convention and artificial standards of morality. Excessive personal freedom is the weakness of American personality, while inflexible adherence to tradition enslaves British personality. The novel implies a standard of judgement which is a mean between the two—the possibilities of Canadian nationality.

A Daughter of Today explores the serious moral consequences that result from the emphasis on individual freedom in the United States. Elfrida Bell, the heroine, is an undisciplined, self-confessed egoist who recognizes none of the conventions of society. Encouraged as a child to think of herself as an artist, and to think of art as the expression of individual personality, her self-image has grown to dwarf her legitimate artistic talent. The egalitarianism of the United States is evident in Elfrida's feeling that she is equal to the best artists of her day, and thus superior to her contemporaries.

Elfrida goes to France to study painting, but when she meets with obstacles in Paris she gives up visual art for a career in journalism in London. While in London she socializes with her artist friend John Kendall, and accepts as her literary mentor the cold and distant Janet Cardiff. Kendall and Cardiff are alternatively attracted and repelled by their unconventional friend, but tend to excuse her on the grounds of her national background rather than to confront her with their criticisms. Elfrida is personally destroyed when she encounters a reflection of her amorality and egoism in a portrait of herself by John Kendall. Her response is to commit suicide.

Elfrida's egoism begins with childish vanity, but grows into a conception of artistic personality. While in Paris she takes to wearing a remarkable cloak which is very becoming: it "suited her so extremely well that artistic considerations compelled her to wear it occasionally, I fear, when other people would have found it uncomfortably warm." Elfrida's extravagance in dress is, for her, an artistic tent. In the United States, her artistic impulses had the function of "tacit exhibition of her superiority to Sparta [her home-town]," rather than the creation of any serious work. She tells John Kendall, "my egotism is like a little flame within me. All the best things feed it, and it is so clear that I can see everything in its light." All of Elfrida's ideas and judgements are formed in relation to the enhancement of her own ego.

Elfrida's subordination of moral principle to the satisfaction of her ego results in false judgements about sexual morality. She can accept her friend Nadie's liaison with a fellow art student because she feels that an artist should have liaisons. Elfrida judges her friend Golightly Ticke to be "of the elect" (despite his dependence on the favours of a popular actress) simply because he maintains the same posture of artistic suffering which she exalts. Elfrida's own relationship with Lawrence Cardiff, in which she calculatingly tantalizes him with favours but refuses to make a commitment either sexually or in terms of a conventional marriage, is immoral because insensitive on her part and violently painful to Cardiff. In each of these cases, Elfrida's assessment of herself as free from convention and uniquely superior to others is her governing principle.

Elfrida's art suffers from her egoism. In Paris, her teacher Lucien remarks that her work is inferior to Nadie's because she cannot subordinate her femininity and her ideas to the demands of the subject material. Her rejected journalism consists of personal impressions and idiosyncratic theories which suffer from her lack of moral judgement and position. Her editor explains that "their public wouldn't stand unions fibres when not served up with moral purpose—that no artistic apology for them would do." Her work is not "designed to please the public of the magazines—in England," Lawrence Cardiff remarks, arguing that England is afraid and ashamed of the American freedom which characterizes Elfrida's journalistic style. Elfrida's British friends emphasize her American origin in order to explain her character and help ease her failures. John Kendall explains his compromising behaviour with Elfrida by saying that she is "from America." Janet Cardiff begins to introduce Elfrida to George Jasper as her American friend, but quickly corrects herself by saying "my very great friend." Kendall and Janet are not sympathetically portrayed; in a sense they manipulate Elfrida's reputation to protect their own. But clearly Americanness is a determining factor in their view of her and, consequently, in the reader's view.

Elfrida offers her work to the British public but does not realize that Britain is a closed, conventional society. Ashamed of her American background, she believes success in England is superior to success at home. Lawrence Cardiff's remark implies that while Elfrida will never "please the public" in England, her methods and attitudes might be perfectly acceptable to an American audience. Her great mistake is her assumption that Britain is some-how superior to the United States; Duncan shows through the characters of Kendall and Janet Cardiff that it is not.

John Kendall and Janet Cardiff are destroyed by their Britishness just as Elfrida is destroyed by her Americanness. Like Elfrida, Janet and Kendall have real artistic talent, but neither of them can create art without the inspiration that characterizes Elfrida's freedom. Their art is formed upon a structure of control which is arid and lacks intuition and emotional force. Janet is almost ashamed of the impropriety, as she sees it, of her creativity:

As for [her] own artistic susceptibility.… She breathed it, one might say, only occasionally, and with a kind of delicious shame. She was incapable of sharing her caught-up felicity there with anyone, but it was indispensable that she should see it sometimes in the eyes of others less contained, less conscious.… Her own nature was practical and managing in its ordinary aspect, and she had a degree of tact that was always interfering with her love of honesty.

Janet is too dominated by the forms of social intercourse to be a complete artist in herself; she needs the refreshing influence of Elfrida, who reflects Janet's artistic sensibility without threatening her essential "managing" nature. For John Kendall, art is the imposition of controls on the uncontrolled freedom represented by the American girl, and Kendall feels as he paints "a silent, brooding triumph in his manipulation, in his control." Neither Janet nor Kendall recognizes that each needs Elfrida and the freedom she represents in order to become whole. When she is destroyed, their own artistic talent is also destroyed, and they settle into a mediocre middle age.

The only true art in the novel—Kendall's portrait and Janet Cardiff's novel—is created through a conjunction of freedom and convention. The tragedy of the novel is that no character recognizes the essential connectedness between the two seemingly exclusive tendencies. Cardiff and Kendall impose their moral judgement on Elfrida without realizing how they need her; Elfrida rejects their conventionalism and follows her own path without realizing how much she needs a measure of their tact and control. Ironically, after her death Elfrida's sensationalist novel is published successfully by the same firm which handled Janet Cardiff's novel. The moral seems to be that British conventionality is suitable for a British audience, and American freedom for an American one, but that to create great art a mix of the two is necessary.

Duncan thus repeats her serious criticism of British and American personality through her characterization of Kendall, Janet Cardiff, and Elfrida Bell. Moreover, she adds a dimension by employing the language of aesthetics. She shows that the wholeness necessary to produce art of merit requires that the fragmentary personalities interact and influence one another. Kendall reveals Elfrida Bell to herself in his best painting. But she destroys it instead of facing the revelation; and she destroys herself rather than face the disciplines she would have to learn in order to be whole. For their parts, Kendall and Janet Cardiff are moved by the liberating influence Elfrida has upon them. When she is withdrawn they shrivel as artists and as people. The condition of the three characters is examined by the third person narrator who reveals all that the reader must see to know life and to judge the actions of the characters. The narrator is, of course, Sara Jeannette Duncan and she provides the normative point of view, the argument for a reconciliation of qualities that makes wholeness—and indeed greatness—possible.

Those Delightful Americans reverses the formula of Duncan's international novels by employing an ironic narrator from Britain who observes and judges the United States. The tone of the novel is light, the dialogue witty, and the plot, in general, mere entertainment; like An American Girl in London, Those Delightful Americans is primarily a popular work written to appeal to an audience with few artistic pretentions. Yet a vein of serious comment underlies the obviously popular appeal of the novel, and the surface irony should not blind the reader to the subtext of social criticism. The veil of irony is often a protective garment for the writer who belongs to a marginalized group, and Duncan was marginalized both as colonial and as woman.

The protagonist, Carrie Kemball, is a young British woman who travels to New York with her husband and is hosted by his business acquaintances, both in town and at a summer home outside the city. Carrie is dismayed to discover a new aristocracy in the United States which lacks a sense of social obligation to the poor and politically disenfranchised majority. But Carrie undercuts the strength of her observations by revealing herself to be narrow and governed by social convention.

The Ham family, the Kemball's hosts in the United States, shows the deterioration of American egalitarianism and its replacement with an aristocracy of wealth. The elder Hams grew up in stable New England, surrounded by neighbours they had known from childhood, on an economic level with their friends. The new emphasis on social freedom and the corresponding focus on money-making elevated the Hams above their friends. Carrie discusses the changed life of the Hams:

"… I expect she talked Emerson and Thoreau to Mr. Ham when he was paying her attention—very likely they used to repeat the Psalm of Life together. And now—"

"And now?"

"Now he listens to her worries with the servants and she looks at his beans."

The glorious future of the United States, symbolized by the names of Emerson and Thoreau, has been defeated by the principle of money-making. The Hams' peace of mind is destroyed, and all that remains of Thoreau's dream of peaceful co-existence with nature is Mr. Hams' lonely patch of beans. The second generation of Americans, represented by Violet Ham and her friends Verona and Val, accept their privileged status and make no attempt to bring their own lives in line with egalitarian principles. They have no sense of social obligation, nor do they consider offering help to those below them. Carrie feels guilty when she dines with Val and Verona at an elegant hotel, "enjoying grapes in June and fresh asparagus in December," and is shocked by the fact that her hosts do not: "there we were, every mouthful exposed in the highest light, and there was the shifting, staring multitude outside in the dark, and not one of the 500 diners apparently wished to have it otherwise." Val Ingham confirms that the idea of democractic equality is dead in the United States, referring repeatedly to the difference between "the masses" and "the better class of Americans."

Carrie shows her own moral stance when she seems relieved and almost fascinated by American amorality. Dominated for so long by dusty conventions which have little relation to reality, Carrie sees the United States as an escape: "I hope it does not reflect on one's loyalty, but I had a tremendous feeling of escape for the time being from what one was expected to do into a wide and wonderful region where one could do exactly as one pleased." Carrie's long devotion to tradition has destroyed her independent sense of right and wrong; instead, she only sees the opposition between doing "what one pleases" and doing ''what one is expected to do." There is no possibility in her mind that the two could be synonymous, or that morally right action could be separate from both.

Carrie is convinced that she has an open mind, and that the United States deserves a fair consideration from the British. However, she proves herself narrow-minded and arrogant when she meets Mrs. Adams, the wife of her husband's business associate in the United States. Mrs. Adams, Carrie states incredulously, "seemed to think that, because the people of the States thought a thing right and proper, it was right and proper—I mean, just as right and proper as any opposite habit that might prevail in England." Carrie has difficulty grasping that her own standards are not universal, and that any habit which differs from British convention could possibly be "right and proper."

In Those Delightful Americans, Duncan continues to criticize the United States and Britain from a detached viewpoint in harmony with the ideas of her Canadian contemporaries. The United States is almost proud of the excess of its moral deterioration, and its new ruling class is indifferent to the social obligations imposed by wealth. The British characters, Carrie and Kaye Kemball, return home with their British conventionality intact, and with little understanding of the driving forces which separate their nation from the United States. Both countries seem determined to continue their blunder downwards from the ideal.

For Duncan, as for other Canadians of her time, the process of defining Canada begins with the definition and criticism of Canada's two greatest influences, Britain and the United States. Canada emerges as a via media, a middle path between the extreme of freedom and tradition those nations represent. Of course, the idea of reconciling freedom and tradition in an ideal society is not original with Duncan; she was greatly influenced by Matthew Arnold, whose Culture and Anarchy seems to have provided a vocabulary for Duncan's discussion of Philistinism and Culture in The Week. But Duncan locates the possibility of an ideal social order in Canada—in the farmers of TheImperialist (1904), who represent the "development between" Britain and the U.S.; in Arthur Youghall of His Royal Happiness (1914), who politically reconciles Britain and the United States; and in Mary Trent, who discovers Canadian identity in Cousin Cinderella.

Ironically, Mary Trent discovers her own country while on a visit to London, England in company with her brother Graham. Up until that time Mary has experienced life as a child, daughter and sister; in England she takes upon herself the role of observer while Graham becomes involved in social and political issues. Like Canada, Duncan seems to suggest, Mary has ordinarily felt herself to have little identity beyond that given her by parental association and material wealth, and so she has been content to be directed by others. But in London Mary's view of herself and her country changes. She is invited to become a naturalized Briton by allowing herself to be moulded by British social standards. She watches her brother change under the influence of London, and discovers that he loses more than he gains when he forsakes his Canadian nationality. Mary discovers her Canadian identity together with her personal role in life; she fulfills both when she marries Lord Peter Doleford, the Prince Charming of the novel.

While Mary comes to understand her nationality through inaction, Graham Trent is crippled by his ability to act. His actions almost bring about the loss of his identity, and stimulate Mary to a recognition of her own. Graham feels a "mission to bring the morality of the 'true north strong and free'… as well as its practical benefits, in terms of natural and financial resources, to the preservation of Britain." He feels himself to be the bearer of something infinitely precious and important to the history of the world, and becomes bitter and sarcastic when rebuffed. He attempts to find the appropriate method of bringing his wealth to the aid of Britain, and explores the alternatives of collecting antiques, salvaging manuscripts, and contributing to research. He eventually determines to save the ancestral home of the Pavisay family from the auction block by marrying the daughter, Lady Barbara. In doing so, Graham discovers that he must give up his distinctive Canadian identity and become an English Country Gentleman. Graham attempts to be absorbed by Britain, but he finds the task difficult. His decision to bury himself in British identity is not in keeping with his Canadian sense of independence and makes him unhappy. His ability to take the lead, to act, prevents him from seeing that he is not taking the appropriate path, and Mary remarks that "it is not wonderful that you have trouble with your heart."

From Graham's experience, Mary learns that Canada partakes of freedom and independence as well as British tradition. Graham cannot be happy in a union which subjugates his birthright of Canadian freedom to the authority of convention. Mary discovers, moreover, that her Canadian nationality gives her a distinctive understanding of the balance between tradition and freedom, as well as a responsibility to help other nations of the Empire. Her union with Peter Doleford, based upon love and equality, represents the fulfillment of both her personal and national identity.

Mary Trent discovers her own autonomy and her Canadian identity in two moments of extraordinary clarity. The first takes place when she is riding in Mrs. Jarvis' electric car, and realizes that she is being offered an active role in the trans atlantic dream. Mrs. Jarvis has a son, Billy Milliken, whom she would like to settle in life; Mary and her money seem to be the ideal anchor for the empty-headed Billy. Mary realizes that she has something London wants, or perhaps needs; she loses her awe of London, and gains a sense of independence:

It is the kind of thing one is ashamed to write, but I must confess that I drew from Mrs. Jarvis at this moment the definite thrill of a new perception, something captivating and delicious. Suddenly, without Graham, without anybody, moving through the lovely, thronged, wet, lamplit London streets in Mrs. Jarvis's electric brougham, I felt myself realised—realised in London, not only by the person who happened to be near me, but in a vague, delightful, potential sense, by London. Realised, not a bit for what I was—that wouldn't, I am afraid, have carried me very far—nor exactly for what I represented, but for something else, for what I might, under favourable circumstances, be made to represent.

Mary's moment of self-discovery is not egotistical—she does not feel that her essential essence has been recognized and rewarded—but that her independence has been given to her. Her dowry allows her to dictate the terms of a marriage, and the "solicitation" of London makes her realize that she, like Canada, can use her wealth to a purpose. Her mere existence, as a woman with a dowry, gives her the power to act, as it gives Canada the basis for power in international affairs.

Mary also realizes that she can have London, if she wants it. As a colonial, she has no history, as a girl from the manufacturing north would have a history; she can be part of the aristocracy if she chooses. Mary states that she is accepted for "what I might, under favourable circumstances, be made to represent": "I was only a possibility, a raw product, to be melted or hammered or woven into London, by my leave." Mary understands that she needs only give leave in order to be accepted as part of the new aristocracy, one of the "geographical anomalies" who become Canadian Lords and MPs. From her new perspective, Mary feels it is possible to know a "divine disdain of London" and senses that she has the power to make a choice, once and for all, whether or not she wants to become more than just a colonial, whether she wants to become a Briton. When Billy Milliken finally proposes, Mary refuses to marry him. By then she has discovered both that she does not want to be a Briton and what makes her own nationality unique.

Mary begins to understand what Canada is when she contemplates her brother's decision to marry Barbara Pavisay. Mrs. Jarvis introduces the key idea when she dismisses Canada as an element of Graham's character which is a minimal influence and easily erased:

"Colonial he certainly is, but only to the extent of a few mannerisms, which he would soon lose. Try to think of him as a country gentleman in England, and he's quite in the picture, isn't he?"

Mary begins to wonder if Canadian nationality is simply a few mannerisms, and she concludes that it is more. She discovers that Graham would give up more than he would gain by adopting the manners and the standards of judgment which characterize his British counterparts. She experiences her second moment of clear understanding when she watches Graham walking along the railway platform at Lady Lippington's departure for Canada:

He, Graham, was more free than they, more free of a thousand things—traditions and conventions and responsibilities, privileges and commandments, interests and bores, advantages and disadvantages and fearful indispensable signmanuals. That was the great thing that was published in him as he went swinging up and down the platform with the other man; and surely it was something as precious in its way, I reasoned, as any opportunity or any possession, something which gave even Pavis Court one aspect of a mess of pottage.

Graham's birthright of freedom is just as important as his birthright of tradition, and Mary realizes that she, too, has not only the power to act autonomously, but that she has a heritage of values to guide her actions. Her nationality is built on the balance between freedom and tradition, on a revitalized British ideal, the median point between the present excesses of American immoral adaptability and British insensitivity and commercialism.

Mary's discovery of her own identity does not shut her off from her community, but rather underlines her responsibility to it, and in this Mary demonstrates Duncan's idealization of Canadian identity. Mary discovers herself in the context of the ties of family, of society, and of nation; she has no desire, indeed no need, to free herself from the rules and responsibilities imposed by those ties. Duncan shows that the essential difference between Canadians and their British and American counterparts is the ability of Canadians to express themselves as individuals within the structure of society. Evelyn Dicey, the American, is indifferent to that structure; Barbara Pavisay, her opposite, will never know herself as an individual. But Mary can reconcile her personal goal of marriage to the man she loves with the community will to save Pavis Court and to strengthen the bond of filial love between Canada and Britain.

Duncan's initial project in her fiction, the definition and criticism of Britain and the United States, is thus clearly related to her attempt to articulate Canadian nationality. The early rejection of the possibilities offered by Britain and the United States in the early international novels implies the context of a third standard, Canada, and this context radically informs all her work. For Duncan, Canada continues to strive toward the ideal, offering a basis for social reform in the balance of freedom and tradition which is her unique heritage.