The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street by Mavis Gallant
"The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street" by Mavis Gallant explores the lives of Peter and Sheilah Frazier, a couple reflecting on their past decade spent abroad, particularly in postwar Europe. Now returned to Toronto and living with Peter's pragmatic sister, Lucille, they find themselves disillusioned and without clear future plans. Peter, who once enjoyed a carefree lifestyle funded by family inheritance, struggles with self-worth after taking a lowly job as a filing clerk in Geneva. His encounters with Agnes Brusen, a straightforward Canadian woman who becomes his boss, force him to confront his own pretensions and insecurities. The narrative juxtaposes Peter's self-image and secretive nature against Agnes's candidness and humble background. As the couple clings to memories of their more glamorous past, the story conveys themes of nostalgia, identity, and the complexities of social status. Ultimately, the poignant moment Peter shares with Agnes acts as a catalyst for introspection, yet leaves him unchanged in his relationships, indicating a cycle of unfulfilled aspirations and emotional stagnation.
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The Ice Wagon Going Down the Street by Mavis Gallant
First published: 1963
Type of plot: Psychological
Time of work: 1950-1960
Locale: Toronto, with extensive flashbacks to Paris and Geneva
Principal Characters:
Peter Frazier , a middle-aged Canadian, home after ten unsuccessful years abroadSheilah , his wifeAgnes Brusen , a former colleague in Geneva
The Story
Peter and Sheilah Frazier console themselves on Sunday mornings by remembering the people they met during the decade they spent trying to live a charmed life abroad. Now they are "back where they started," in Toronto, living with Lucille, Peter's down-to-earth sister. They do not have plans for the future, and they have become soured by "the international thing"; unlike other expatriates, Peter was neither "crooked" nor "smart" enough to find shady business opportunities in postwar Europe. Now as in the past, they try to believe that "hazy and marvellous" experiences lie ahead of them. In order to believe in this wonderful future, they must avoid the dreary present, so they spend their Sunday morning recalling the years that they spent in Europe, carrying the reader back with them to the Paris and Geneva of their past.
In their decade of genteel drifting, only four months in Paris are charmed. Peter does not need to work, for his comfortably endowed childhood has been extended by an inheritance, and Sheilah loves him. They live "in the future" until the money runs out, and then they are "never as happy again." When Lucille finds Peter a lowly job as a filing clerk in Geneva, Peter keeps his self-esteem by convincing himself that a position befitting his social status and family connections will come his way. He rationalizes his situation by deciding that there is a conspiracy among Canadian diplomats and businesspeople to punish him, and he becomes secretive about his job. He tries to cultivate connections so that he and Sheilah can move in the proper social circles. Peter behaves as if he "had been sent by a universal inspector to see how things in Geneva were being run," and as if "his real life [were] a secret so splendid he could share it with no one but himself."
His image and his secretiveness are put to the test when a young Canadian woman, Agnes Brusen, becomes his boss. His first assumption, that she is there to spy on him, soon evaporates when he sees her transparent character and is able to recognize her origins. He categorizes her as a provincial person, the product of simple immigrant ambitions; she is devout, purposeful, hardworking, unsophisticated, and direct. She does not seem to have anything that she wants to conceal or of which she is ashamed, and this makes Peter even more defensive and secretive. At a fancy dress party, where Sheilah is in her element and seems to find a lover, Peter recognizes that this social scene has unnerved Agnes and left her "gasping for life." When he helps her home, she tells him of her childhood in Saskatchewan: "I'm not from any other place." Now and two days later, she emphasizes a memory of early morning in her childhood home when she got up alone before her large family crowded the house. Unlike the freezing winter scene in Geneva, this is a picture of summertime, when she looked through the window and saw the ice wagon going down the street: "It's you, you, once in your life alone in the universe. You think you know everything that can happen. . . . Nothing is ever like that again." Agnes's disillusionment with the world of educated people strikes a chord in Peter; he feels that if it were not for Sheilah, he would be like Agnes.
The story ends rather suddenly when Peter shifts back from his memory of Agnes to the present in Toronto. It is implied that not much has changed in the years after Geneva. Nothing has been as important for Peter as that moment of self-disclosure with Agnes, the one secret he has kept from Sheilah. However, whatever the private importance, it is clear that nothing has changed in Peter's attitude toward himself, toward Sheilah, or toward other people.
Bibliography
Canadian Fiction Magazine 28 (1978). Special issue on Mavis Gallant.
Essays in Canadian Writing 42 (Winter, 1990). Special issue on Mavis Gallant.
Gadpaille, Michelle. "Mavis Gallant." In The Canadian Short Story. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Grant, Judith Skleton. "Mavis Gallant." In Canadian Writers and Their Works, edited by Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley. Toronto: ECW Press, 1989.
Keith, William John. "Mavis Gallant." In A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada. Toronto: ECW Press, 1988.
Kulyk Keefer, Janice. Reading Mavis Gallant. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Schaub, Danielle. Mavis Gallant. New York: Twayne, 1998.
Simmons, Diane. "Remittance Men: Exile and Identity in the Short Stories of Mavis Gallant." In Canadian Women Writing Fiction, edited by Mickey Pearlman. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.
Smythe, Karen. Gallant, Munro, and the Poetics of Elegy. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.