by Quyen Schroeder
A Bird in the House is a collection of stories narrated by a character named Vanessa. While Vanessa the narrator is an adult, the collection is about a younger Vanessa, who is a writer in her own right. This young Vanessa creates her own narratives about fictional characters that reflect her life, her desires, and the people around her. Though Vanessa is the only character who writes stories in the traditional sense, her entire family creates and shares narratives about themselves and the world that inform their identities. These narratives are often as important as reality in creating identity, understanding the world, and providing space for comfort and reflection.
Through stories, characters in A Bird in the House are able to indirectly reflect on their situation, learning more about themselves in the process. This is most evidently seen through the numerous stories that Vanessa begins writing then stops after finding that they mirror her own life too closely to be comfortable. One story that Vanessa begins working on is about a girl named Marie that is “set in Quebec in the early days of the fur trade.”[1] However, Vanessa quickly becomes disillusioned with writing the story as she struggles to create a compelling reason “to get Marie out of her unpromising life at the inn and onto the ship which would carry her to France.” [2] Vanessa’s struggle to write this part of Marie’s story parallels her own feeling of being trapped in Manawaka. Just as “Marie would not get out of the grey stone inn,” Vanessa feels as though she will never leave the Brick House. [3] The similarities—even superficial—between the “grey stone inn” of Marie’s fictional world and the Brick House of Vanessa’s are stark. Vanessa feels limited by the Brick House, having to sneak away to write in her scribblers, which is reflected within Marie’s story. Vanessa finally gives up on writing Marie’s story by wondering “what was the use, if she [Marie] couldn’t get out except by ruses which clearly wouldn’t happen in real life?”[4] Through this story, Vanessa creates an opportunity to reflect on her own life and situation. She concludes that leaving the Brick House—at least quickly—is a fantastical notion, which leads to her giving up on that dream.
Nora Stovel explores Vanessa’s writing and utilization of narratives, especially with how Vanessa’s writings connect to the world around her. Stovel describes how “Vanessa learns to employ fiction to understand real life.”[5] Directly facing daunting forces and concepts such as the future or love is difficult. So, to explore these real-life concepts, Vanessa turns to writing stories, such as the one about Marie. In doing so, she can create a safe environment in which she can reflect and “become an explorer of the heart.”[6] However, when she is forced to face reality, Vanessa retreats away from her reflections. Vanessa also starts “making up another [story]… called The Silver Sphinx.”[7] This new story is about love, inspired by Vanessa’s readings in the Bible. She is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this new project, claiming “it’s miles better” than her previous writings.[8] The Silver Sphinx is Vanessa’s first time truly thinking critically about romance—her only previous experience being the Bible. However, as soon as she overhears a conversation about Aunt Edna’s tumultuous romantic life, Vanessa is no longer willing to reflect on love, and instead wants to “get home quickly [to] destroy [her writings].”[9] These stories and fictions allow for Vanessa to maintain a veil of separation between the reality of the world and the themes she is exploring. When she starts writing about love in The Silver Sphinx, it is safe because it does not affect her reality. Despite—and perhaps because—this introspection’s taking place at a safe distance, Vanessa still has an opportunity to grow through writing this story. But once her writings become too similar to reality, Vanessa shelters herself off and decides to stop exploring this aspect of the world and her identity. Throughout both Marie’s story and The Silver Sphinx, Vanessa’s experiences inform her writing, which offers her, separate from her complicated reality, a space for introspection and exploration.
Vanessa’s family shares and believes in narratives about themselves, which create a sense of self-identity, even when the narratives are not necessarily true. Carolina de Pinho Santoro Lopes is especially interested in exploring this concept of the formation of an identity. She writes that “claiming a certain identity involves creating a story of the self that gives an impression of stability and coherence between one’s past and present selves.”[10] One character who exemplifies this claiming of an identity is Vanessa’s Grandfather Connor. Grandfather Connor presents himself as the strong, patriarchal, and independent man that carries the burden of the entire family. Vanessa says that “nobody had ever given him [Grandfather Connor] a hand, he used to tell me. I am sure he believed that this was true. Perhaps it even was true.”[11] Even as Vanessa to some extent questions the veracity of this story, Lopes notes that “Vanessa’s perception of her relatives is influenced by what other people tell her about them.”[12] This is true of all relationships and conceptions of people: not only are they based on personal experiences and interactions, but also on the stories and gossip surrounding them. Regardless of the factual basis of this tale of Grandfather Connor’s independence, it is an important facet of how Grandfather Connor thinks of himself. He values independence and hard work, claiming that “if people were unemployed it was due to their own laziness.” [13] Self-reliance is integral to Grandfather Connor, as informed by the stories he tells about himself. In much the same way, Grandfather Connor does not publicly acknowledge his age. While in front of the family and in the main section of their house, “he would not have been found dead sitting in a rocking chair,” as he believes that rocking chairs are “suitable only for the elderly.”[14] While this is the image of himself that he puts out into the world—what he wants others to believe about him—within the privacy of his basement, where no one but him is allowed, he freely uses his rocking chair.[15] Grandfather Connor conveys specific stories about himself to his family, and though they do not perfectly align with his actions, these stories are representative of how Grandfather sees himself, and therefore inform how his family sees him. Laurence’s use of these identity stories demonstrates the role that narrative plays in self-conception: often, what one says about themselves is more important than what they actually do.
Grandmother MacLeod also creates these legends about her family that she finds great value and identity in, even when they turn out not to be true. Grandmother MacLeod very confidently claims that “the MacLeods do not tell lies,” which seems to hold true for Grandmother MacLeod.[16] When Vanessa asks if her mother is going to survive childbirth, Grandmother MacLeod answers coldly, refusing to lie even if it would comfort Vanessa.[17] Not lying is a profoundly important aspect of what Grandmother MacLeod believes her family is and should be. However, much like Grandfather Connor’s stories, this legend of the truth-telling MacLeod family is not true. Grandmother MacLeod’s son, Ewen, is discovered to have lied for the comfort of Grandmother MacLeod. After Ewen’s brother dies in war, he writes to Grandmother MacLeod, describing “how gallantly [he] had died.”[18] However, Ewen acknowledges that “men don’t really die like that,” and that his brother’s death was a far more brutal and unpleasant affair.[19] Despite the grandiose claim that “MacLeods never lie,” it is clear that reality is not so clear cut. However, Grandmother MacLeod still finds comfort in the maxim. To her, the story is a useful shorthand that encompasses her family—who she sees as noble and honest. In much the same way, Ewen embellishes the circumstances of his brother’s death because it preserves his brother’s memory as noble and valiant to the rest of the family. In this way, the stories that Vanessa’s family tells about themselves and each other are their identities. Regardless of their veracity, the stories represent how each character sees themselves and how they want to be seen.
Lopes further explores this concept of Vanessa’s conception of her family and its history in relation to the stories that Vanessa is told. They write that “Vanessa learns about her family’s past through her own experience and through fragments retold by her relatives.”[20] The way that people exist in Vanessa’s mind is far more than just a result of her direct interactions with them. This is because “her mind is not a clean slate upon which memories are inscribed.”[21] She does not engage with these relationships in an unbiased way. These stories that her family tells about themselves fundamentally change how they perceive themselves and other people. Each interaction Vanessa has with her family members is framed through what she has already been told about them. For example, even before Vanessa meets her Uncle Terence, she hears stories about how he “drank more than was good for him” as “Aunt Edna and my [Vanessa’s] mother were always criticising Uncle Terence.”[22] Even before meeting him, Vanessa is predisposed to view him in a negative light—as one of her family’s “numerous fractured bones.”[23] These fragments of information and stories told by her relatives have predisposed Vanessa to how she should view her Uncle Terence. When Vanessa actually interacts with Uncle Terence, she finds herself actually quite “fond of him.”[24] Even among the other adults of the Connor family, Uncle Terence can be mature and empathetic. Following the death of Grandmother Connor, Uncle Terence is the one who begins to empathize with Grandfather, acknowledging his challenges and potential insecurities.[25] Uncle Terence proves to be a much more complex and nuanced person than the drunk and “fractured bone” than he is initially presented as. While Vanessa eventually comes to understand Uncle Terence in this more wholistic way, the initial stories of Uncle Terence still greatly affect and influence how Vanessa thinks of Uncle Terence—even as much so as her actual interactions with him.
However, Vanessa also finds herself at times overpowered by the narratives that she is told and is unable to acknowledge the real people behind those stories. One especially prominent instance of this is the way Vanessa writes about Harvey—a person who attacked her dog and stole her telescope—and his aunt, Ada Shinwell. When Grandfather Connor tells Vanessa about Ada Shinwell, he unflatteringly says “She was nobody a person would know, to speak of. She was just always around town, that’s all.”[26] Pam Chamberlain writes about the way that Vanessa and her family judges the “downright” members of their community, including Harvey and Ada Shinwell. “If, as the Connors and MacLeods believe, a house reflects the virtues of its inhabitants, it seems that this family is disorderly and chaotic—immoral—by Connor standards.”[27] As Vanessa internalizes all of these stories about Harvey and Ada Shinwell, her negative opinion of them cannot be swayed, even when she understands that the stories she has been told about them are not fully representative of them. When Vanessa later sees Ada Shinwell on the street, and Ada Shinwell “said hello to [Vanessa],” Vanessa chooses to “not reply, even though [she] knew that this was probably not fair.”[28] The power of these repeated narratives told by Vanessa and her family are such that they can go so far as to entirely define a person, regardless of subsequent interactions with them. In A Bird in the House, stories are not only crucial to Vanessa and her family for forming their identities, but they also serve to inform how Vanessa perceives other people.
The narratives that are told within A Bird in the House can also serve to recontextualize memories of past events. While this recontextualization is present throughout the collection, with an older, adult Vanessa looking back on the experiences of her younger self, it is also evident within Vanessa’s reaction to Grandfather Connor’s funeral. She describes her reaction and how “suddenly, the minister’s recounting of these familiar facts [about Grandfather Connor’s life] stuck me as though I had never heard any of it before.”[29] Confronted with his death, she is forced to reckon with how she remembers Grandfather Connor. Now that he is dead, he no longer seems “as large and admirable as God” like he once did.[30] Now, Vanessa is left only with “the memory of a memory” of his being that indomitable.[31] His death has irrevocably altered the context of those memories as she is reminded that he is simply mortal. Lopes writes that in A Bird in the House, “memory [is] connected to the narrative act, destabilizing any idea of recollections as faithful reproductions of past events.”[32] The way in which one remembers is effectively a story which is no more inherently truthful or objective than any other story.
Stories hold the essence of how people define themselves, but the stories can change as time passes and as new information comes to light, even changing the identities of the authors and those who experience those stories. Lopes is interested in the necessity of narratives in the definition of one’s life, identity, and memory. She writes:
[M]emory is malleable and unstable, rather than a fixed record of the past. The construction of memories, closely associated with storytelling, is a way to give cohesion and establish logical relations between the number of random, disorganized facts which make up one’s life.[33]
Lopes argues that not only are stories undeniably useful in one’s conception of themselves, but they are also a necessary tool to contextualize and understand the vast array of experiences that come with simply living as a human. Stories serve not just to learn more about what one values in themself or what they think of the world. Stories go far further and serve as the essence of human life which forms from a patchwork quilt of stories. Likewise, Stovel suggests “that Vanessa’s narrative is [Grandfather Connor’s] real memorial.”[34] More than anything else, memories and stories are what Grandfather Connor’s legacy is, far more than his hardware store or the Brick House. Memories are stories, and though they can be changed and morphed with time and new information, these stories still constitute what it means to be human.
In A Bird in the House, stories create a sense of identity for the characters. Whether through legends about themselves or their families, everyone in A Bird in the House defines themselves using stories. Even if these simplified versions of reality are not true, they are useful in revealing information about the characters to themselves or as a tool to reflect on their situation. Moreover, even seemingly objective memories within A Bird in the House are coalitions of stories and are just as likely to evolve as time passes. While A Bird in the House is ostensibly just a collection of Vanessa’s stories, it is built out of the collective mythos of her family and finds identity in the stories they tell themselves and each other and reveals the prominence of narratives in the conceptualization of the self.
Endnotes
[1] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 166.
[2] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 166.
[3] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 167.
[4] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 167.
[5] Stovel, “Love and Death,” 97.
[6] Stovel, “Love and Death,” 93.
[7] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 62.
[8] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 62.
[9] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 72.
[10] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 410.
[11] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 122-123.
[12] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 412.
[13] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 69.
[14] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 57.
[15] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 57.
[16] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 40.
[17] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 40.
[18] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 52.
[19] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 52.
[20] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 412.
[21] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 412.
[22] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 75.
[23] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 75.
[24] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 76.
[25] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 78-80.
[26] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 159.
[27] Chamberlain, “Community and Class,” 217.
[28] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 161.
[29] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 191.
[30] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 193.
[31] Laurence, A Bird in the House, 193.
[32] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 410.
[33] Lopes, “A Story of Her Own,” 410.
[34] Stovel, “Love and Death,” 98.
Bibliography
Chamberlain, Pam. “Community and Class in Margaret Laurence’s a Bird in the House,” Narratives of Community: Women’s Short Story Sequences 157 (2007): 213-222.
Laurence, Margaret. A Bird in the House. Toronto: Penguin Modern Canadian Classics, 2017.
Lopes, Carolina de Pinho Santoro. “A Story of Her Own: Memory and Narrative in Short Fiction by Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood,” Cadernos de Letras da UFF 31, no. 61 (December 2020): 408-428.
Stovel, Nora Foster. “‘Love and Death’: Romance and Reality in Margaret Laurence’s a Bird in the House,” Dominant Impressions: Essays on the Canadian Short Story 220 (1999): 92-99.