The Carpathians - University of British Columbia

Pennington and Duncan display in their
works a strong sense of admiration for the
women whom they are profiling. Indeed,
one could argue that this sense of admiration
often precludes a more critical stance
on the way in which the source materials
reflect the characteristics and behaviour of
the subjects.
This bias is most apparent, in both books,
in the discussion of the sexuality of these
women. Both authors cling steadfastly to
the image of the women they champion as
eminently desirable and frequently
admired yet chaste throughout their lives.
Rice cohabited for years with her partner,
Dick Woosey—a married man whose wife
had deserted him—and many of their contemporaries
speculated about the nature of
the relationship. Yet Sarah Duncan goes out
of her way to "clarify" that the friendship
was a platonic one: "It was more than a
pure business deal; his prescience where she
was concerned warned her of his closeness
but what it actually was, she didn't yet
know." Nevertheless, with typical, if not
skillful, insertion of romanticized and
highly speculative passages about Rice's
state of mind, Duncan does include one
moment of "sensuality" in Rice's relationship
with Woosey. The beautiful Kate was,
of course, courted by many suitors, both
worthy and unworthy, and refused them
all. In the only scene of physical intimacy
on which Duncan speculates, Kate lies
beside Dick Woosey and "holds" him during
his serious illness; later, she mourns his
death with as much grief as a wife, Duncan
tells us. Throughout the work, Duncan
seems to want to legitimize Rice's connection
to Woosey.
Doris Pennington also chronicles a life
that was ostensibly virtuous and virginal.
Agnes Macphail herself was anxious,
according to her own records, to make it
clear to posterity that her unmarried state
was not the result of a lack of interest by or
offers from various men in her life.
Macphail did regret that she could not be a
complete role model for women because
she was not managing both a career and a
family. Like Rice, Macphail admired her
father: in fact, a strong father figure who
somehow has failed to live up to his potential
lurks in both women's backgrounds.
Regrettably—and not only because of
their tendency to lionize their "heroines"—
these two biographies also fail to achieve
their potential. In Duncan's book, the
desire to produce a narrative that will
inspire sympathy and admiration for the
subject results in an excess of material and
language that is scarcely relevant to serious
biography: such features as the "romantically-drooping"
figure of Rice's father, the
woman's strong attachment to her
"Duckling" (the canoe), and the cheerful
cries of her pet canary (until its melodramatic
death scene) are all too pervasive.
Although the work, on the whole, is surprisingly
engaging, I would like to have
been less surprised and more engaged.
In Pennington's work, the organization
of material according to chronology rather
than theme results in chapters that—
although they faithfully recount everything
important within a given time frame—
jump from subject to subject, without
transitional markers, in a rather annoying
fashion. Indeed, some of the chapter headings,
such as "The Birth of the CCF," indicate
only one (not necessarily the main
one) of the issues addressed therein. Nonetheless,
the overall impression created by
Pennington's biography of Macphail is of a
conscientious compilation of source materials—transcripts
of speeches, letters, and
other documents—which are, themselves,
fairly well-crafted and entertaining to read.
The political issues with which Macphail
grappled several decades ago are vividly
portrayed, and they seem strangely familiar.
In short, both works merit a look—even
if at times they tell us as much about the
biographers as they do about the subjects.