Swamp Angel by Ethel Wilson #1954Club

When I was in Toronto in 2017, I was keen to buy books that wouldn’t be so easily available back home – and it made sense to pick up Canadian authors, where possible. It was also during another Project 24, so I couldn’t go wild with the number of books I bought – I restricted myself largely to Stephen Leacock, Margaret Laurence, and Ethel Wilson.

The only Ethel Wilson I’d read was Hetty Dorval, in the Persephone edition, and I remember liking it but none of the details. Now I’ve read this beautiful edition of the unprepossessingly-titled Swamp Angel, and I can see why she is so beloved by many Canadians.

We open in Vancouver. Maggie Vardoe is living with her second husband, having been widowed in her first marriage. And, on page one, we get this sentence:

Mrs Vardoe had become attached to, even absorbed into the sight from the front-room window of inlet and forest and mountains. She had come to love it, to dislike it, to hate it, and at seven-fifteen this evening she proposed to leave and not to return. Everything was, she thought, in order.

As well as a vital plot point, it’s a great indication of Wilson’s writing in this novel. She blends the beautiful with the plain. Throughout the book, we are always aware of the surroundings – views and environments and nature are as crucial as anything happening in the foreground. But Wilson is not sentimental about the natural world; she is in awe of it, and she values the vantages people have of it.

Maggie leaves the house, having cooked enough meat for her husband to eat cold for a few days. We don’t learn a lot about Mr Vardoe, except that he is irascible, unkind, demanding and unsatisfactory. It’s no mystery why Maggie wants to leave. What is less clear is where she might go, and why.

Swamp Angel follows Maggie as she becomes independent. At various places in those forests and mountains she could see from her window, Maggie learns how to live in a way that gives her autonomy, and respects the people and places around her. She is pretty good at it from the outset, so this isn’t a case of seeing a suburban housewife gradually learn to adapt to a new way of life. It is as though this way of life has always been waiting for her, and she only has to dive into it.

Maggie isn’t alone in this experience, nor is it idyllic. A large part of the novel sees her working at some remote cabins, and the difficulties this causes with the married couple who own it. She also invites a young Chinese boy to work with her, based on a brief meeting. There is little maternal in the relationship she has with him, or his brother. What I found interesting about Wilson’s writing is how often it resists comfortable emotional conclusions. People remain self-contained, or have outbursts that they regret. There is a beauty in the restraint that the characters are permitted.

In between the character interactions, Wilson allows herself leisurely envelopments in the natural world that are the novel’s most beautiful moments. I particularly loved this description of the northern lights, and how Maggie is swept into it:

One night she saw, north of the lake, a pale glow invade the sky. Maggie got up and pulled a blanket round her. The pale glow was greenish, no, a hot colour rose up and quickly took possession. The colour changed. The vast sky moved as with banners. The sky was an intimation of something still vaster, and spiritual. For two hours Maggie watched enraptured the great folding, playing, flapping of these draperies of light in heaven, transient, unrepeated, sliding up and down the sky. After declaiming lavishly, the great Northern Lights faded with indifference as one who is bored and – deploring display – says I may come back but only if I choose; I do as I wish; I am powerful; I am gone but I am here. The orthodox stars, which had been washed away, returned palely. Night was resumed, and Maggie slept.

I’ve missed quite substantial parts of Swamp Angel that take place back in Vancouver, with Maggie’s friends and husband, and haven’t even mentioned that the Swamp Angel is in fact a gun. But hopefully I’ve said enough to tempt you to the quiet tumult of this novel.