Living Rooms: Domestic Material Culture in Fiction by Joan Barfoot, Marion Quednau, and Diane

244 Pages·2002·11.73 MB·English

Living Rooms: Domestic Material Culture in Fiction
by Joan Barfoot, Marion Quednau,
and Diane ~choem~erlen
December 1999
Susan Elmslie
Department of English
McGill University, Montréal
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research
in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
O Susan Elmslie 1999
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Abstract
My dissertation provides the first full-length study of representations
of domestic material culture in contemporary Canadian women's fiction.
The first chapter presents two metaphors, the elephant in the living room,
and the open secret, and indicates their usefulness in explaining the
cultural and critical tendency to overlook the meanings cornmunicated bu
contemporary domestic material objects and spaces. Drawing o n cultural
anthropologist Grant McCrackenls research into the role of consumptiori in
the preservation of hopes and ideals. the second chapter examines
gendered patterns of consumption in Joan Barfoot's first two novels. i
suggest that Barfoot's female protagonists reject their suburban homes out
of an awareness of the ways these spaces function as repositories of values
with which they can no longer live. In the third chapter. 1 situate mv
discussion of the Hardoy, or "butterfly chair." in Marion Quednau's novel of
the same name, against the backdrop of twentieth-centurv design dçbatrs
between modemists and traditionalists. The chair is the object in which the
riovel's main tensions, which relate to notions of comfort, history, and
authoritv, are embedded. In the fourth chapter 1 maintain that the central
concerns of Diane Schoemperlen's fiction are couched in her
representations of domestic material culture. Interpersonal relationships
are consistently represented in her fiction as mediated through domestic
objects and spaces. Her characters' struggles over issues of control, and the
ambivalence characteristically associated with these struggles. often
materialize in their manipulations of their domestic environmenfi. Such
manipulations make explicit the process of self-fashioning via material
culture which every individual engages in o n a dailv basis, albeit at the level
of the tacit.
Elmslie iii
Ma dissertation se veut la première étude approfondie des
représentations d e la culture matérielle et domestique dans la littérature
féminine contemporaine canadienne. Le premier chapitre présente deux
métaphores, à savoir l'éléphant dans le salon et le secret de Polichinelle,
métaphores qui démontrent à quel point la critique et la société ont
tendance à ignorer les significations communiquées par les objects et les
espaces domestiques contemporains. Inspiré des recherches de
l'anthropologue Grant McCracken sur le rôle que joue la consommation
dans la conservation des idéaux, le deuxième chapitre examine les normes
de consommation représentées dans les deux premiers romans de Joan
Barfoot. Je propose que les protagonistes féminins de Barfoot rejettent
leurs maisons de banlieu lorsqu'elles se rendent compte de la façon dont
ces espaces fonctionnent, c'est à dire comme des répertoires des valeurs
avec lesquelles elles ne peuvent plus vivre. Dans le troisième chapitre, mon
argumentation se concentre sur la chaise Hardoy (surnommé .<papillonm )
représentée dans le roman de Marion Quednau intitulé The Butter-y Chair,
et ce dans le contexte du débat entre les modernistes et les traditionalistes
qui a marqué ce siècle en design. La chaise est l'objet dans lequel
s'enfoncent les tensions principales du roman, tensions qui se rapportent
aux notions de confort, d'histoire, et d'autorité. Dans le quatrième chapitre
je prétends que les préoccupations centrales dans l'œuvre de Diane
Schoemperlen se retrouvent dans ses représentations d e la culture
matérielle e t domestique. Chez Schoemperlen les rapports personnels sont
constamment representés e t négociés à travers les objets e t les espaces
domestiques. Les difficultés qu'ont ses personnages avec l'autorité, et
l'ambivalence qui en résulte inévitablement, se répercutent dans leurs
interactions avec leur environnement matérielle e t domestique. Ces
interactions rendent explicite le processus de creation de soi à travers la
culture matérielle, un processus auquel chaque individu participe
quotidiennement, quoiqu'au niveau du tacite.
Elmsiie v
Acknowledgements
Thanks first to the Great Designer. This dissertation was completed
with the assistance of the Robert and Mary Stanfield Dissertation Fellowship.
My deep thanks go out to donors of this award. 1 am also enormousl?*
grateful to Robert Lecker for sharing his experience and expertise with me
while seMng as my thesis advisor and contributing to my professional
formation in other research and teaching capacities. Wes Folkerth cvüs a
careful reader of rny work, my techno-guru, and mv Rushmore.
Throughout mv graduate education, Janet Roberts, Hartley Elrnslie, Lenora
Shrewsbury, Ted Folkerth, and Beth Folkerth have given me
encouragement and other forms of assistance for which 1 am trernendouslv
appreciative. Thanks to Alex Folkerth, for not growing al1 the wav u p before
I finished this. Thanks also to Masarah Van Eyck for the use of her
apartment as a summer writing haven, and for her manv perceptive and
helpful responses to portions of this work. Sam Trudeau made helpfiil
suggestions for the translation of the abstract. I am grateful to Annmarie
Adams for the loan of materials, suggestions on reading, and for her
insights on the Hardoy chair, and to Galen Cranz for helping me to track
d o m an elusive source on the same. Thanks are owing to the staff at McCill
Inter-Library Loans for their assistance in obtaining research materials.
Elmslie vi
Several people assisted me in my research on the Leveridge cabin, depicted
in The ButterjZy Chnk Marion Quednau shared with me, in telephone and
email conversations, her memories of the place; Carson Cross and Elizabeth
Mitchell of the Hastings County Historical Society, Luke Hendry at the
BancroJ Times, and Cate Giroux at the Wollaston & Limerick Public Librarv
undertook searches and made queries on my behalf; and Richard Trounce,
a descendant of the Leveridge family, very generouslv shared with me
information about, and photographs of, the Leveridge homestead. Warm
thanks to all. Manv people at McGill have offered me terrific support and
opportunities, making my time here very rewarding. I am therefore happv
to thank Maggie Kilgour. Dorothy Bray, Gary Wihl, Nathalie Cooke, Brian
Trehearne, Michael Bristol, and Peter Gibian.
This dissertation is dedicated to 26 Brisco Street, Brampton, Ontario,
because, in the words of Eudora Welty, "A place that ever was lived in is l i k r
a fire that never goes out" ("SomeN otes" 186).
Elmslie vii
Contents
Abs trac t
Résumé
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Corne into the Foyer
Notes
1 The Elephant in the Living Room 12
What is Material Culture?
Material Culture in Literary Studies
Threads of Connection
Notes
Wallpaper 3 O
2 Possessions and Dispossession in Fiction by Joan Barfoot 53
Finding the Right Pattern
The Politics of Purchasing Power
Cracks in the Garrison, or, A Theme of One's Own
Notes
Tray 93
3 The Butterfly Chair
The Butteiifly Chair in the Gendered Aesthetics
of Contemporary Design Debates
Elmslie viii
The Butterfly Chair and Notions of Comfort and Discornfort
'Historian of My Infancy": The Butterfly Chair and the Past
The Seat of Authority
End of the Line
Yotes
Linen
4 The Power of Rooms
The Quest for Control
Clues
Reflecting Surfaces
"Complete Quiet Benevolent Control"
Small Comfort
Sotes
Ribbon (Conclusion)
Xo tes
M'orks Cited