God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam

First published: 1978

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The 1930’s and after World War II

Locale: Northeast England

Principal Characters:

• Margaret Marsh, the eight-year-old protagonist
• Elinor Marsh, her mother
• Kenneth Marsh, Margaret s pious father
• Terence Marsh, her baby brother
• Charles Frayling, a bachelor who once hoped to marry Elinor
• Binkie Frayling, his spinster sister
• Rosalie Frayling, the invalid mother of Charles and Binkie

The Novel

The action of God on the Rocks involves a small number of characters, who at the beginning of the story are leading quiet lives, seemingly no longer emotionally involved with one another. Elinor Marsh, who was once engaged to Charles Frayling, lives the restricted life of the Primal Saints, devoted to her strict husband Kenneth Marsh, who disapproves of her previous association with the wealthy Frayling family. Charles and Binkie Frayling live their separate lives in Dene Close; Charles is a retiring, sexless English teacher, Binkie a housekeeping spinster who pays occasional duty calls to the mother whom they both hate. Rosalie Frayling, too, is isolated at the beginning of the story, confined to her bed at the old Frayling home, which she has turned over to mental patients as a gesture of spite toward her disappointing children.

Directly or indirectly, it is Margaret Marsh, the eight-year-old protagonist, who brings together the lives of these characters. Because Margaret feels neglected after the birth of her brother, Terence Marsh, she is taken to Eastkirk, where she wanders off to the old Frayling estate and eventually meets Rosalie. On another expedition made for Margaret’s sake, Elinor resumes her relationship with Charles and Binkie and therefore breaks out of the narrow world of the Primal Saints. At the end of the book, it is Margaret’s disappearance which sends her father out in a storm to rescue her, a mission which costs him his life.

While the adults around her are roused to action by their encounters with one another, Margaret herself is discovering the world, observing the approaching death of Rosalie, watching the casual mating of the maid and a stranger, catching the suppressed feeling between her mother and Charles, analyzing such different characters as the mad artist, Edwin Drinkwater, and Binkie, who is far less sure of herself than she appears.

As the novel progresses, Margaret sees the old patterns break up. Elinor gravitates toward Charles, and Kenneth is overcome by lust for the blowsy maid. At the climax of the novel, after catching Kenneth and the maid together, Elinor runs to Charles and sweeps him into bed, Margaret disappears, and Kenneth is drowned. In an epilogue, placed when Margaret is twenty, the reader learns that Charles has moved to Australia, Elinor has married the Anglo-Catholic priest, and Binkie remains alone, still concealing some of the secrets to which she is party. Only Margaret, though taller, and the maid, though older, remain essentially unchanged.

The Characters

Jane Gardam’s perceptive young girl protagonists are generally the brightest and the strongest characters in her novels. To this rule, Margaret is no exception. In a world where the adult characters drift on the currents of circumstance and passion, Margaret observes, pursues her own interests, and preserves her own independence. Whether she is climbing a tall tree, exploring a private estate, or crawling up a cliff to save herself from drowning, Margaret has control over her emotions and her destiny.

Although Margaret’s mother must define her own life by adopting her husband’s causes, she admires her daughter’s strength. Recognizing the fact that the adults in the book all attempt to enlist Margaret’s loyalty and to blur her judgment, Elinor notes, “She has a better brain than all of them.... She sees straight and clear. She’s strong as a lion.... She’s the child his mother should have had, poor feeble Charles.”

Although she loves Charles, Elinor realizes that he is weak. Despite his own love for Elinor, Charles could not resist his mother’s threats and broke off the engagement, hoping for an inheritance which his mother later refused. As Margaret sees, Binkie, too, is weak, fearful of illness, consumed by hatred for her mother, wasting her Cambridge education. Charles himself views Elinor as shy and self-conscious, a hometown girlfriend who was easy to forget when he was at Cambridge, now a dowdy matron. Only when Elinor makes her hysterical descent upon Charles does he see her as a different person, one with force and confidence, one who is something of a threat to the sexless schoolmaster.

Realizing that she has driven away her own children, Rosalie blames her bossiness on the permissiveness of her own mother, who allowed young Rosalie to marry a man whom she did not love. If Rosalie had been as strong as Margaret, however, she would not later have let the mysterious wounded captain depart from her life. When her emotional survival was at stake, she did not climb the cliff to safety.

The weakness of the adults around Margaret is typified by Kenneth. Despite his pious pronouncements and his assumption of the role as family priest and lawgiver, the little bank manager not only attempts to seduce the maid whom he has been converting but also goes so far as to justify himself while he does so. His heroic death cannot make up for his consistent hypocrisy, but at least it leaves his children an inheritance of pride.

Critical Context

Although Gardam’s books are often cataloged as publications for children or young adults, they have attracted many adult readers, who see in their wit, their psychological perception, their subtle symbolism, and their frenzied comic explosions the proof of a considerable writing talent. In many of Gardam’s works, such as Crusoe’s Daughter (1985) and The Summer After the Funeral (1973), the heroines compare themselves to fictional characters, with the result that the sophisticated reader has an even richer field of associations and parallels suggested by the novels. In God on the Rocks, Gardam has substituted for the literary allusions a complex system of religious symbols, from the garden and the serpent to the rocks of the title and the ineffectual lifeboat of Kenneth Marsh. While young adults are attracted to Gardam’s heroines, who are so much brighter than the dim-witted adults with whom they must live, the increasing popularity of her books among adult readers is clearly a result of the depth of meaning below the seemingly simple surface.

Bibliography

Duffy, Sister Gregory. Review in Best Sellers. XXXIX (November, 1979), p. 277.

Kirkus Reviews. Review. XLVII (August 1, 1979), p. 873.

Listener. Review. C (October 19, 1978), p. 518.

New Statesman. Review. XCVI (October 13, 1978), p. 479.

Observer. Review. October 8, 1978, p. 30.

The Times Literary Supplement. Review. October 13, 1978, p. 1141.