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'Undecipherable Signs': Margaret Laurence's 'To Set Our House in Order'
Authors: Darling, Michael. Source: Essays on Canadian Writing; Summer84, Issue 29, p192, 12p
DOES GOD LOVE ORDER? This is the question considered by Vanessa, the narrator of Margaret Laurence's "To Set Our House in Order." And her answer is an unqualified no: "I felt that whatever God might love in this world, it wascertainly not order."( n1) The opposing position has been held by Vanessa's grandmother, who has told her that "God loves Order--he wants each one of us to set our house in order." (p.46). The dichotomy of order/disorder is represented in the story through events and images that may be interpreted as signs of either the stability or chaos of the world. It is the narrator who mediates between the eventand its meaning for the reader, encouraging or rejecting potential interpretations; however, because the narration reflects two points of view simultaneously( n2) -- that of Vanessa as child-participant and as adult-commentator -- two conflicting interpretations may be advanced. What Vanessa thinks of a particular event as she experiences it is not necessarily how she sees it as a mature adult.Similarly, characters who may appear odious in her ten-year-old eyes are not so reprehensible when viewed from an adult perspective. In giving order to her own life by retelling the events of her childhood, Vanessa learns that seemingly obvious differences conceal deeper affinities, and that an apparently rigid order may be only a flimsy structure hiding a chaotic turmoil.
The opposition of orderand disorder within the MacLeod family is expressed in the opening scene, which links Vanessa to her father Ewen in their indecisiveness in a time of crisis. As she stands transfixed in the doorway of her room, "wanting to go...but afraid to go" (p.39) her father speaks haltingly, uncertainly, of the complications of his wife's pregnancy:
"Hello -- Paul?" my father said, and I knew he was talkingto Dr. Cates. "It's Beth. The waters have broken, and the fetal position doesn't seem quite--well, I'm only thinking of what happened the last time, and another like that would be--I wish she were a little huskier, damn it--she's so -- no, don't worry, I'm quite all right. Yes, I think that would be the best thing. Okay, make it as soon as you can, will you?" (p. 39)
Three times he breaks offbefore he can utter an adjective that would be determining (the words "normal," "fatal," and "frail" suggest themselves). In each case, the lacuna is more devastating in its implications than the actual word would be. Vanessa is not likely to have missed such implications. Nor should the reader, in assessing the influences on Vanessa's character, ignore this expression of incoherent apprehension onthe part of a man who, as a doctor, should react to such situations in an orderly, self-disciplined manner. It is just at this moment as we, through Vanessa's eyes, ponder the image of Ewen "looking bony and dishevelled in his pyjamas" (p.39), that the polarities of the family are made clear:
At the top of the stairs, he came face to face with Grandmother MacLeod, who was standing there in herquilted black satin dressing gown, her slight figure held straight and poised, as though she were unaware that her hair was bound grotesquely like white-feathered wings in the snare of her coarse night-time hairnet. (pp. 39-40)
There are two interpretations of the grandmother's character that are offered in this initial depiction of her -- one relatively straightforward and immediately confirmed byher speech, the other much more problematical and complex, which must be held in suspension as the story unfolds. The first image is one of rigidity swathed in darkness, the image that supports her conception of an orderly world in which emotions are always below the surface, disguised by the "clear voice, never loud, but distinct and ringing like the tap of a sterling teaspoon on a crystal...