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BOOKS
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The Wife Tree
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By Dorothy Speak
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The Wife Tree
By Dorothy Speak
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Read an excerpt from this book
Review
In her debut novel, The Wife Tree, Ottawa author Dorothy Speak writes in the tradition of both Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence, illuminating the awakening of a small town, ordinary Canadian woman on the eve of her seventy-fifth birthday.
Morgan Hazzard is as downtrodden a character as you’ll find in Canadian literature. Unloved by her mother, raped at sixteen by her own brother, she has meekly endured a life of often-brutal misery, forty of them married to a cold, hard, Prairie-bred man who considers her stupid and unworthy. When he is felled by a stroke, Morgan finds herself alone in her tiny southwestern Ontario bungalow; betrayed and abandoned by her bullying husband, her seven children, her friends and the Catholic church. Timid and ineffectual, she is barely able to find her way home from the hospital where her husband lies still and mute.
But, this household drudge who is afraid of making long-distance phone calls, flowers in her solitude, ultimately rebelling against all that she is and all that she has known becoming, “a lone explorer in an undiscovered land.” As her story unfolds through letters never sent to her six daughters, recollections and dreams, the near-blind Morgan steadily finds her long-silenced voice and begins to see life in ways never seen. Reaching the end of her long, hard life Morgan finally learns the most liberating lesson of all -- “one doesn’t need love so very much once one learns to value the self.”
Morgan is a heroine worth cheering for, a woman who teaches us that whatever hardships life brings, hope blooms in finding one’s self.
Discussion
1. In an interview about this novel, Dorothy Speak says the major themes of the book are motherhood and selfhood. How does motherhood stifle Morgan’s sense of self? Is self-sacrifice an inevitable price of motherhood?
2. In addressing the suggestion from some critics that this novel is too tough, too much like real life and that Morgan is unlikable, author Speak poses this question: “ Does the novelist have an obligation to manipulate her/his material so that the reader is at first intrigued, then entertained and, finally, satisfied? Or does the writer have an even greater responsibility to present life in such an honest way that the reader may be disturbed? “ What do you think?
3. Failed love and the way in which humans let down those we claim to love most, are recurring themes in Speak’s short stories. Discuss the ways Morgan failed those she loved? How did her loved ones fail her?
4. Did you enjoy this book and would you recommend it to a friend?
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