Two Solitudes has much of the panoramic quality of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga (1922), though it is informed by a more partisan attitude. Superficially a chronicle of two generations of Canadians in the Montreal region~, it is in fact a penetrating study of the beliefs and behaviors, the myths and animosities, that have caused French-Canadians and English-Canadians to resist amalgamation into a homogeneous nation and to exist as two separate peoples, uncommunicative and isolated. Yet the novel transcends the communal barriers and abstractions in its delineation of individual differences, attitudes, and yearnings; not only are the two racial groups solitary, but also individuals fail to establish meaningful communications.

When Athanese Tallard, the Seigneur of Saint-Marc-des-Erables, introduces the non-Catholic Captain John Yardley to the parish as purchaser of the Dansereau farm, he arouses latent hostility in the closed society; when he proposes building a small power station and a factory in association with Huntly McQueen, Father Emile Beaubien interprets this as a threat to his hegemony and to the parish’s traditions. Marius, a protegee of Beaubien, believes that his father is a heretic, “a traitor to his race and religion,” and speaks against conscription, which Tallard supports. Marius’ animosity to his father, however, is largely the result of his having heard Athanese having sex with Kathleen while Marius’ mother was dying.

Captain Yardley’s daughter, Janet Methuen, a war widow, informs on Marius, who is a conscription dodger. Beaubien persuades the villagers to ostracize Athanese, who decides to send his younger son, Paul, to a Protestant school near Montreal and becomes a Presbyterian and advocate of scientific education. He and Kathleen move to Montreal.

Part 2 opens with a victory parade in Montreal and McQueen’s dissolution of his partnership with Athanese on the ground that his departure from Saint-Marc-des-Erables has created ill will that jeopardizes the projected industrialization. Athanese is a ruined man: he has lost the respect of Marius, his village property and position, his political future, and his financial stability. He dies after a heart attack, and Marius and Kathleen vie for custody of Paul, though both are in quite straitened circumstances as a result of Athanese’s bankruptcy. Paul sees Heather Methuen, with whom he had played when she visited her grandfather, Captain Yardley, at Saint-Marc-des-Erables, having riding lessons.

Part 3 resumes the story, after a thirteen-year hiatus, in 1934. Paul is now a professional hockey player, though lonely; Heather is a university graduate with Socialist inclinations; Kathleen is the wife of a Pittsburgh entrepreneur; Captain Yardley is a McGill University part-time student; and McQueen is a portly, sanctimonious financier. Heather’s older sister Daphne, who has married an English aristocrat for wealth and position, confides that she is lonely and sexually abused; Heather, equally lonely, visits her grandfather, who is being coached in Greek by Paul. Heather and Paul reminisce, go on a picnic, but resist a compelling intimacy: they remain “Two solitudes in the infinite waste of loneliness under the sun.” Paul becomes a merchant seaman, studies at Oxford, and goes to Greece to write a novel, “Young Man of 1933,” which he destroys. He returns to Canada.

Part 4 is devoted to events during 1939. Janet Methuen visits the captain, now reduced to a room in a residential hotel in Halifax, and explains her worry over a possible union between Paul and Heather, who are secretly married two days after Yardley’s death. Heather vacations with her mother and tells her of her marriage; Paul starts work on a new novel about Canada but puts it away and announces his intention to enlist.