Of course I couldn’t escape the pressures of the day entirely. I was criticized by my sisters for wearing nothing but jeans or shorts, when not in my uniform, and for never being comfortable wearing makeup. I remember — and I was in university by then — Ruth trying to insist I wear a girdle. I was thin and so was she but the point was that the natural shape of one’s bottom was unpleasant, actually shameful, and a girdle disguised and smoothed the whole area into a unit, a solid block. The little dip in the middle of a slim girl’s bottom was disguised as was the fact that buttocks come in twos. It was the same misogynist thinking as that of the Havergal headmistress who told the whole school, at the end of prayers one day, that the reason our tunics must be worn long was to hide the ugliness of the female thigh, any female thigh. I refused to pay any attention to such notions.
But being an adolescent girl in the late 1940s and early 50s was perplexing, however much I tried to ignore the matter. At the same time it was in many ways simpler than it is for girls now: the sex roles were hard and fast. Stepping aside from them as I did was a clear statement. And the specifics of sex itself I allowed only hazily into my imagination. I knew the fierce and exciting power of it from novels. The haziness of my fantasies did not mean I didn’t anticipate it as something amazing and life-altering but I was prepared to wait.
Today a young girl cannot willfully postpone direct knowledge when images of flesh, if not flesh itself (and often that too), are constantly thrust in her face. In the early 50s information was scanty and mostly wrong. I remember a conversation in the Havergal day-girls’ lunchroom. While eating we discussed whether a woman, when the time came, obviously after marriage, would enjoy sexual intercourse or would just have to put up with it. I was the only one who said I thought it would be enjoyable, fun even, rather than disgusting. My imagination somehow knew that, however unspecifically. We were all fifteen at the time.
Later, in my first year at McGill, I and several of my new friends were appalled at what someone had heard about oral sex. How could one possibly do something so revolting? Penny, the only one of us who dared ask her mother over the Christmas holidays, reported back that of course no one did that. Her mother had been very sure. The rest of us, as well as enormously relieved, were amazed that Penny had felt able to ask her mother. None of us had discussed sex with our mothers and definitely could not have brought up as rude a detail as that.
Ignorance had its positive side in an age when we could wait until we were ready for sex’s overwhelming power to consume us. We could focus on our studies, on music, on art, on our friendships. The downside, for me at least, was that when direct experience finally came my way I had no way to put it into a saving context. I assumed that the powerful sensations stirred by one man could be stirred only by him. Therefore I must love him. So I did.
My placement in our family affected the trajectory I followed. As the third girl I saw my sisters carve out particular territories: Ruth, the eldest, was studious and an artist. I think her high school years were miserable socially, and then, seemingly overnight, in her first year away from home at university, she suddenly became slim, extremely pretty and very much sought after. She was caught up in clothes and makeup, regularly over-spending her allowance and pleading for more — “Please, Daddy! I’ve seen a dress at Ogilvy’s I would so love to have, and really do need.” At the same time she studied hard and still saw herself as a budding artist. The kind of true independence I already was saving my babysitting money for held no interest for her. I think she took her future for granted, without even being conscious of any other way her life could unfold, that another choice was possible for a girl. She would marry and be taken care of. And she was right. That was the way it was meant to be for girls like us.
Carol, the second sister, was in the difficult middle position. She was also the prettiest sister, who, from when she was fourteen, caught the attention of boys in a way that terrified our mother. As sex was never openly discussed, mother-daughter upsets were handled so obliquely that Mother’s mind could never be at rest. Carol’s ignorance and defensiveness fuelled fights they both hated. Carol didn’t actually fully understand what Mother was suspicious of and then downright accusatory about. She was innocent but had no words to explain, and wasn’t even entirely sure if she really was. Perhaps the evil deed had somehow happened and she couldn’t remember properly or hadn’t noticed properly? How could that be? But how else was she seen as so very bad? Why else was Mother so furious? The shame about the whole topic trapped and distressed them both.
Mother loved Carol, I’m sure of that, but wounds were inflicted and the scars lasted. Long after Mother died Carol could have moments of overwhelming uncertainty of her love. I could see — not as a child, but as an adult — the significance of something that Carol never could: that our mother was beautiful even at ninety and darling in pictures of her as a young girl. She may have identified with Carol, the one of us who looked most like her. Her background absolutely ruled out frank speech, probably even the clear forming of sexual thoughts. I feel so sorry for both of them! Mother may have had vague memories of early temptation, early unspeakable, even unthinkable, feelings. Perhaps it was as simple as that. There was also the off-stage, lurking figure of our father’s younger sister, the family black sheep or black ewe, whom we almost never saw. I met her only twice over my whole girlhood. Might her “bad seed” character crop up in one of us? How could such a thing be headed off?
So then there was the third daughter, me. I had to carve out some position that was unique. I had the same talents: we all were artistic; we all were clever and literary, musical too, though only Ruth and I continued piano lessons for long; we all were, or became, very attractive. I can say that frankly at my age, I hope. But I was by far the most independent. I didn’t want to do things just because others were doing them, in the way my sisters both took up smoking and wearing makeup and, in Ruth’s case especially, cared tremendously about clothes. I was a tomboy and kept up my outdoor pursuits even as I got into my teens. I was exceptional at math and had an ambition to be an architect — something that I didn’t realize until far too late was impossible for me: no one had advised me not to drop science after grade six and architecture required a science background. But I did have a career, if not in that, and one I loved. As our lives turned out I was the only one of the three of the daughters in our family to become self-supporting.
That I was the third girl and not the boy my parents must have wanted by then affected who I became. In fact my parents loved children and I am quite sure, now, that when they saw me they would have loved me at once, despite my being a girl. Even so, when my brother did finally arrive, almost five years later, everyone was wildly overjoyed. It seemed there was no question but that this tiny boy was a superior being. A couple of factors exacerbated both my jealousy and my guilt for feeling it. First, our mother had no understanding of jealousy; if a child showed it, she thought it was evidence of a “bad streak.” The child faced crossness rather than reassurance. That response was usual then and not really my mother’s fault. The psychology of children was an unexplored area for most people, and any child psychology that did exist was mostly very wide of the mark. The way parents now pore over childcare books and articles was unknown then. And second, luck swept Helen, our nanny whose darling little one I had been from babyhood — I often used to sleep cosily in her bed — into her own marriage within a week of my baby brother’s arrival. I don’t think anyone considered the blow this must have been for me. It did not even occur to me until recently when I read in someone else’s memoir about her pain when her nanny left. But when something is accepted by everyone else as normal, it seems so to oneself. The special category and preciousness of a boy was too obvious for me to seriously object to it for long.
Nevertheless a tangle of roles and jealousies in our family played out in various complicated ways all our lives. Carol and I were mostly very close friends and confidantes but her uncomfortable middle position made it untenable for her that Ruth and I could be friends. Only when there was a falling-out between Carol and Ruth could Ruth and I be close — and that didn’t happen until we were adults; the six-year difference in our ages precluded closeness between the two of us while I was a child. Mostly I sensed disapproval from her. But I’m not really sure whom Ruth was jealous of, if she was of any of us. As a child I took for granted her