An Ordinary Woman Leads an Extraordinary Life
In a novel where Little House on the Prairie meets The Fugitive, Gil Adamson presents an early-20th-century battle of the sexes.
By Kate Edwards
Posted October 23rd, 2007Women often slip through the historical cracks, and never make it onto the pages of textbooks. There are a few prominent female figures who are covered in history classes, but to learn about the lives of average women, you need to dig a little deeper to uncover the details1. For those unwilling to spend the time in the archives, historical fiction offers a way to gain insight on other times and places, with the bonus being that someone else has done the research for you. Though the characters are fictional, the circumstances they find themselves in are authentic, and the overarching social structures of the time period govern the plotline. In her debut novel, The Outlander, Gil Adamson creates an average character that ends up doing extraordinary things, and sheds light on the lives of women living on the largely male populated western frontier.
Set in 1903, The Outlander follows Mary Boulton, a nineteen-year-old "widowed by her own hand," across the barren wilderness and over the mountain ranges of the Canadian west. She is fleeing her murdered husband's twin brothers who have been instructed by their father to find her, so that she can be punished for her crime. Referred to throughout the book simply as "the widow," Mary travels across the sparsely populated west, begging and stealing in order to survive. She meets an interesting cast of characters along the way, and thanks to a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude held by those she encounters, her past is kept under wraps as she learns to fend for herself.
The novel is character-driven, and Adamson beautifully weaves stories of Mary's past with those of her present to reveal the complexities of her character. As Mary journeys farther away from the life she once knew, details of her past are slowly revealed to readers. A distant father and overbearing grandmother; a reluctant marriage and unfaithful husband — these are the details that shape Mary's character, along with the realities of historical circumstance. Readers learn that Mary's life is governed by the men in her life: first by her father, and then by John, her husband. Even after her husband's death his male family members continue to influence Mary's life, with her father-in-law directing his sons' pursuit of her from Toronto.
At the novel's beginning Mary is a conventional woman of the time. She lives with her father until her marriage. She believes that the marriage she enters should make her happy, but quickly learns that her life with John is not what was promised to her: "She'd been properly happy on her wedding day, gaily waving goodbye on the train, embracing her husband when he finally came to her in bed. Happy as expected. Then: the happy duped wife, the happy inept housekeeper left constantly alone, with the winter roaring outside the cabin and the voices roaring inside her." The death of her infant son, combined with John's infidelity, drives her to kill her husband, and so begins her extraordinary journey.
Still wearing her black dress as a sign of widowhood, Mary leaves the familiarity of her home and enters the male world of the frontier. Encountering hunters, miners, and entrepreneurs looking to strike it rich, Mary gradually sheds the visible symbols of her previous life, wearing deerskin clothing and trapping her own food. Though she continues to rely on men she meets along the way, the novel's driving force is Mary's transformation from dependent wife to independent woman. Under pressure, an inner strength emerges, and Mary becomes a character who, for better or for worse, will not conform to the standards set out for women in her society.
The action in The Outlander is slow to start, and it is only after a hundred pages that enough background information is revealed that the plot becomes engaging. The desire to know the details of John's murder will motivate patient readers to continue reading Mary's tale, with an action-packed second half of the novel being their reward. The scenarios that Adamson creates for Mary are simultaneously plausible and unbelievable: physically possible, but seemingly impossible due to the restrictions placed on women at the time. With the strength of Mary's character, however, the situations she finds herself in seem entirely possible. This is the beauty of historical fiction — ordinary lives can become extraordinary. The story of a regular woman who finds herself in an exceptional situation, The Outlander challenges the view of Victorian-era women, and presents readers with a character who would qualify as a Canadian femme fatale.
Gil Adamson appears with Jakob Arjouni and Michael Winter at the International Festival of Authors on Wednesday, October 24th at 8:00 p.m. Tickets $8; free for students. Visit www.readings.org for more information.