Women Between: Construction of Self in the Work of Sharon Butala, Aganetha Dyck, Mary Meigs and Mary Pratt
by Verna Reid
Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2008, ISBN 978-55238-242-4, 359 pp., $39.95 paper.

Verna Reid's book Women Between is a fascinating work crammed with quotations and gems of understanding, a book you can refer to time and time again. The author concentrates on four Canadian artists: Mary Meigs, Sharon Butala, Mary Pratt and Aganetha Dyck. With her interest in these particular women, Reid observed they were all born between 1917 and 1940. This discovery guided her to what can be best described as "liminality."

She defines liminality by quoting feminist Carolyn Heilbrun. Women are "on the threshold: part way still in her mother's world, the private world, the private domestic world, and venturing part way into the world she seeks for herself, a public arena where agency and self-determination are feasible" (71). Reid goes on to say that often women do not reach prominence until well into their mature years.

To better understand liminality, Reid enters the worlds of these women, worlds of their own making. And here we encounter domains filled with different rules and experiences. In a basically patriarchal society, women are seen in the expected roles of motherhood and housekeeping. That is not to say that these roles are not important; they are.

But women also possess a desire to contribute of the "self," and here is where they excel. Reid knows her subjects and depicts each of the artists in depth. Relying on Heilbrun again, the author quotes that "the essence of liminality is revealed in women's experience once they are willing to move from convention to another form of self-expression" (19).

Mary Pratt, a renowned Canadian artist, draws on the familiar scenes of motherhood and domesticity and thus unveils womankind to the art world. Her paintings have lifted housework and motherhood to a new level. She honours women by depicting their experiences; jars of jelly on a table, a woman bathing a baby, a chocolate birthday cake. All these paintings are warm and exciting and solidify the world women live and breathe in.

Reid speaks of Mary Meigs, who struggled most of her life with her body, her sexuality. The author states: "The worldwide showing of the film, The Company of Strangers, enhanced her celebrity both outside and within lesbian circles and she came to consolidate her view of herself not only as a writer but also as a lesbian writer" (100-101). The film was to become a turning point in Meigs's life, which until then had been filled with shame and rigid social customs.

Aganetha Dyck's melding of art in nature, collaborating with honeybees, makes a mighty contribution. By placing art pieces into beehives, Dyck depicts the power of bees. As Reid says: "Dyck displays a passionate reverence for animals, especially apis mellifera. She understands this species of bees to be an expression of a basic life force" (253).

Like the other artists, Sharon Butala reflects on the domestic, bodily, and natural, but it appears this artist shines with spiritual awakening. Through her fiction and nonfiction, Butala leans on her spiritual, almost mystical experiences to make "a valuable contribution to a new female Canadian autobiographical tradition" (281). And by growing spiritually with her works, Butala was able, along with her late husband, Peter, to establish Old Man on His Back, a conservation area to protect the grasslands of the prairies.

Reid writes with pleasure. She is articulate in her thesis and confident in her research. She reveals the inventiveness of the artists and gives each the accolades she deserves. She goes beyond the patriarchal rules, writing about these women's experiences with domesticity, sexuality, nature and the spirit; as subjects of potential rather than as objects of pleasure. It takes grit to move into a new direction, and Reid does so with her argument. The book is bold, intimate and enlightening, and readers have a wonderful treat in store.

The vision the artists, including the author, offer the world community is empowering to all women as they move into the future. Mary Pratt says it best: "As you become physically weaker, the flame at the end becomes brighter and you go for it, more than you did and with more concentration" (235).

Mary Barnes is a writer living in Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.


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