The Fire-Dwellers by Margaret Laurence

First published: 1969

Type of work: Domestic realism

Time of work: The 1960’s

Locale: Vancouver and the fictional prairie town of Manawaka

Principal Characters:

• Stacey Cameron MacAindra, the protagonist, a middle-aged wife and mother
• Clifford (Mac) MacAindra, her husband, a salesman
• Katie MacAindra, her fourteen-year-old daughter
• Buckle Fennick, Mac s best friend, who dies in a traffic accident
• Luke Venturi, a young science-fiction writer who has an affair with Stacey
• Matthew MacAindra, Stacey s father-in-law, a clergyman

The Novel

The “doom everywhere” message that Stacey Cameron Macaindra, the protagonist of The Fire-Dwellers, allows to permeate her outlook on life is a projection of the inner turmoil she is experiencing. The real inferno of the novel burns in Stacey’s agitated consciousness. Stacey struggles to get a grip on herself, to accept her inadequacies, to accept that her family is never going to be like a Norman Rockwell painting, and to accept that she must aspire to represent sanity in what she sees as an insane world. The omniscient narrator gives credence to Stacey’s assessment of life yet maintains a distance needed for the reader to be objective about Stacey’s character, as the primary mode of narration is Stacey’s interior monologues, used for acute self-evaluation and expressing her indomitable wrath. Without Stacey’s sardonic burbles, this would be simply another novel about an oppressed woman ready to have a nervous breakdown. Stacey is too much of a survivor to crack up, but she is caught in a self-defeating groove in which she is communicating her own awfulness to herself without communicating anything constructive to anyone else.

The events of the novel transpire over several months before Stacey’s fortieth birthday. Reaching forty is enough of a crisis, but Stacey, housewife and mother of four, is not certain about anything anymore. She goes through the motions of being alive; she looks after her husband and children and tries to cope with world events, but it all seems a bit much for one person to shoulder. Stacey wants to communicate with her family, but she cannot make the right connections. Her family takes her for granted; her husband, Mac, is only interested in his job; her teenage daughter, Katie, seems to hate her mother; her two sons, Duncan and Ian, fight like Cain and Abel; and her two-year-old, Jen, will not speak a word. God, with whom she carries on one-sided conversations, even though she is not sure He exists, provides no illumination from on high.

One day, Stacey gets a strange feeling that God may have forgiven her, because Mac arrives home and proclaims that he has a new car, a new haircut, and a new job. She is elated until he describes this new job: He is not simply selling Richalife vitamins; he is selling a way of life. To Stacey, the promises of Richalife are absurdly phony; she is not the kind of wife who says that the sun is the moon if her husband says it is, and she is disappointed that he is so tainted by modern society that he would even consider selling such a product.

Mac locks himself away in his study and becomes even more of a stranger at a time when Stacey needs him the most. To comfort herself, she drinks gin and tonic and fancies having an affair with Mac’s best friend, Buckle Fennick, whom she dislikes. The gods, however, turn on Stacey. Buckle can have sex only with himself in front of a witness, and as if being that witness is not punishment enough, Stacey suffers further humiliation when Buckle tells Mac that she forced him to have sex with her. Mac believes Buckle, and Stacey’s marriage becomes a fire burning out of control.

Stacey goes to the Sound, where she finds some relief in a young science-fiction writer, Luke Venturi, who treats her as a human being and as a desirable woman. Stacey knows that having sex with a man other than her husband, though healthy for the ego, does not solve her problems. Buckle’s pointless death—he is killed while playing chicken—does not bring Mac and Stacey permanently closer together; even Mac’s getting a promotion, her father-in-law’s moving into her house, and her mother and sister’s moving into her city do not change Stacey. Finally, she accepts that she is not going to undergo the transformation for which she has yearned; as she says to herself,

I used to think there would be a blinding flash of light someday, and then I would be wise and calm and would know how to cope with everything and my kids would rise up and call me blessed. Now I see that whatever I’m like, I’m pretty well stuck with it for life. Hell of a revelation that turned out to be.

The Characters

Stacey MacAindra thoroughly dominates the novel. Margaret Laurence uses her to examine the role of wife/mother in a modern family in which the mother feels both nourished and devoured by her children. Although Stacey performs all the routine duties associated with being a mother and knows that bringing up four children is a worthwhile occupation, she fears that she is spending her life in one unbroken series of trivialities. She wants something of her own. She wants to stand as herself and communicate with her husband, her children, and the world. It is not simply the crisis of turning forty that causes her to exclaim to God,

I stand in relation to my life both as child and as parent, never quite finished with old battles, never able to arbitrate properly the new, able to look both ways, but whichever way I look, God, it looks pretty confusing to me.

This woman facing forty is a frightened little girl who senses that her inability to communicate with others cannot be all her fault. She is a prairie girl from Manawaka who left home at nineteen for the big city of Vancouver, certain that life there would be better than it was in the tomb-like silence in which she dwelled with her parents. Her life is indeed better than her parents’ lives, but better is not good enough. Stacey wants to express her true self to the people she loves. She is a responsible person and has no real intention of walking away from her obligations. She will survive if all survival means is to cope from day to day.

It is difficult for Stacey to accept that a man and a woman can live together for almost twenty years and not communicate. Her marriage to Mac, however, is a perfect example of such a marriage. Mac is seen through his actions, conversations with other characters, and Stacey’s interior monologues. The reader never knows what hides behind his icy exterior. He is a provider who does not want to admit that any problems exist. He deals with Jen’s inability to talk or Duncan’s insufficient masculinity by refusing to discuss these concerns. Stacey tries to reach out to Mac, but he is not reachable. He is able to handle his problems without discussing them; he, therefore, sees no reason for anyone else to discuss theirs. Stacey comes to accept that Mac will never communicate the way she wishes he would in “full technicolor and intense detail.”

Katie’s relationship with her mother is complicated by Stacey’s seeing herself in her daughter: Katie is attractive and rebellious, just as Stacey was when she was Katie’s age. Stacey seems to say and do everything deliberately to annoy Katie, who sees Stacey as very “square” and unable to get along with Mac. She wants Stacey to be a mother and is incapable of relating to Stacey as a person. Yet Stacey sees the future in her. Katie is on her own because Stacey does not have all the answers and can only hope that life turns out better for her.

Critical Context

The Fire-Dwellers is the third in a loosely connected sequence of five books (four novels and a collection of stories) involving the fictional prairie town of Manawaka. A Jest of God (1966) is the novel in this series most closely related to The Fire-Dwellers. Stacey’s story can be seen as a sequel to A Jest of God, which is narrated by her younger sister, Rachel Cameron. Stacey is first introduced to readers in Rachel’s narrative. A Jest of God ends with Rachel and her mother planning to move from Manawaka to Vancouver, where Rachel believes that Stacey lives an idyllic life. Rachel, a withdrawn spinster, has always been envious of Stacey, who always seemed so sure of herself. Rachel seems to believe that, by leaving Manawaka, Stacey has set herself free of the place. Manawaka is a state of mind, however, and the root of Stacey’s turmoil lies in her inability to break away from the conditioning that she received in Manawaka.

The Fire-Dwellers is well regarded by feminist critics. Stacey exists in a male-oriented, chauvinistic society, but she is not aware that she is oppressed because she is a female. Stacey never considers getting a job and letting someone else care for her children or her house. She is conditioned to believe that every woman wants to be married and to have a family and that all it takes for a woman to be happy is to be a member of a family that loves and communicates with one another. Mac shares Stacey’s conditioning about what a woman needs to be fulfilled. Mac remarks while viewing a very nervous girl speaking at a rally that all the girl needs is the love of a good man, and Stacey agrees. Laurence in no way, however, presents Stacey’s narrative in the shrill manner of some feminist writing of the time.

Bibliography

Cameron, Donald. Conversatons with Canadian Novelists. Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1973. A close friend of Laurence talks with her about family, religious influences, travels, and sources for her novels. A revealing personal view of the writer.

Gunnars, Kristjana, ed. Crossing the River: Essays in Honour of Margaret Laurence. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Turnstone Press, 1988. A variety of essays examine Laurence’s feminism and humanism, the use of autobiography in her work, and her use of metaphor. Bibliographies and footnotes with each essay are useful for stimulating further research.

Laurence, Margaret. Dance on the Earth. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1989. This book constitutes Laurence’s memoirs (completed by her daughter), which praise the women who influenced her development. Includes some valuable letters to Canadian poet Adele Wiseman, photographs, and previously unpublished work.

Morley, Patricia. Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home. Rev. ed. Kingston, Ontario: McGill-Queens University Press, 1991. A clear and helpful analysis of Laurence’s life and work, the chapter on the Manawaka cycle examines The Fire-Dwellers in detail. Studies how Laurence makes her small-town experience universal and moving.

Thomas, Clara. The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976. A critical assessment of Laurence’s Manawaka novels. An excellent and very close study of The Fire-Dwellers; includes some of Laurence’s own comments on its writing, as well as analysis.