Love and Salt Water by Ethel Wilson #SpinsterSeptember

I haven’t actually read very much of the book I had decided to read for Spinster September – a brilliant brainchild of Nora aka pear.jelly – but one of the other books I was reading also qualifies. Ethel Wilson was one of the Canadian authors I was keen to find on my recent holiday, and while I was there I bought and read her final novel, Love and Salt Water (1956).

The novel follows Ellen Guppy through large sections of her life, starting in childhood. Of course, nobody would call a young girl a ‘spinster’, so not all of this novel qualifies – but it’s clear from the opening paragraph that Ellen doesn’t have the stereotypical views of marriage that other girls of her generation are expected to:

When Ellen Cuppy was eleven years old and sat on the foot of the bed, getting in the way of her big sister Nora who was packing her suitcases with great care, she thought how sad it was for Nora, who was so fair and pretty, to marry that old Mr. Morgan Peake who was all of forty; yet Nora did not seem to mind, but shook out the crêpe de Chine nightdresses and laid them on the bed and slowly folded them again with tissue paper in between, and Ellen thought that Nora was like a lamb getting ready for the sacrifice; and thinking of lambs and sacrifices she thought of garlands and timbrels and damsels and maidens and vestal virgins, such things as she read about and liked the sound of but did not understand.

Not long into the novel, Ellen’s mother dies – in fact, Ellen discovers her. Wilson is such a good writer that the scene of this discovery is haunting, and she shows us a reaction that is unusual and yet entirely right. In many ways, the Bildungsroman plot of Love and Sea Water treads some expected paths – but Wilson’s observant eye means that, within this, nothing is ever quite as you’d expect. I thought young Ellen’s response to her mother’s dead body was brilliant:

She stretched out her hand toward her mother’s telephone and drew it back, to defend her mother and herself – and her father too – just for a few more moments, against her mother having died. Yet she was sure her mother had died. This must be what that is.

When she had cried awhile, standing there in her nightdress in the stillness of the room, very frightened with this quiet stranger her dear mother, she managed to pick up the telephone because she must at some time pick it up, and all the while she never took her eyes off her mother whom she was now giving over to other people’s talk and arrangements (it was strange how strongly Ellen felt this as the minutes advanced).

The first hints of the ‘salt water’ of the title come to prominence when Ellen is whisked away by her grieving father on a cruise. She is disorientated and confused, and trying to behave well and keep her father happy. Wilson shows us this in the background, but swirling around is the life of the ship – including the tragedy of a bo’sun swept overboard. She balances Ellen’s internal narrative with reality: her grief is not as significant to the other passengers as the day-to-day gossip and drama that they are experiencing themselves.

As the years pass, Ellen’s sister Nora follows conventions – marrying an older man, having a child, relishing the trajectory that is held up as the ideal. Ellen, meanwhile, is not self-consciously maverick. Her character is fairly quiet and unassuming, and she doesn’t make ripples for the sake of it. But this conventional path doesn’t work for her. She meets some suitable men, but is not interested in them – or at least not sufficiently – despite the urging of her relatives. I think this passage, coming after a proposal from a man she is merely fond of, could be a mantra for a certain group of the fictional women being remembered during Spinster September:

[…] at once her freedom became essential to her again. This free life-without-an-object, which had become so boring, was suddenly necessary to her security. She knew this life well, and would not exchange it for some other life which might be only a new conformity, and then perhaps a prison far away with a stranger.

Will Ellen end the novel a spinster? Well, I shan’t spoil it for you – but I will say that it was a very satisfying ending, true to her character. My edition has an afterword by Anne Marriott and she mentions an alternative ending that Wilson wrote – and I’m very glad she didn’t use it. The one that was published is excellent.

I really enjoyed Love and Salt Water – a short novel, and where some scenes and stages of Ellen’s life are truncated and could perhaps have been explored in more depth. But also one which comes with the wisdom and clarity of a full life and a long writing career. And I particularly enjoyed recognising the settings, as parts of the novel take place in both of the cities I visited – Vancouver and Toronto.

An accidental addition to Spinster September, but glad I could contribute!