Remarkable parallels detected in two novels

Press, 20 February 1988, Page 23

Remarkable parallels detected in two novels

GARRY ARTHUR

talks with a literary

sleuth, whose discovery of intriguing similarities between the works of Australian and Canadian writers raises some interest-

ing questions.

Maureen Garvie, book reviewer for the “Whig-Standard” magazine in Kingston, Ontario, had a strong feeling of deja vu as she read “The Ladies of Missalonghi,” latest historical romance of the Australian novelist Colleen McCullough. She reads literally hundreds of books a year in the course of her work, but the one which this new novel brought to mind went back a long way. It was “The Blue Castle,” a book for adult readers by the celebrated Canadian writer Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of “Anne of Green Gables.” The strong similarities which Maureen Garvie detected have made her literary sleuth of the year, and have caused a considerable flutter in the world of books. A former teacher at Burnside High School and Hornby High School, Mrs Garvie is now on holiday in Christchurch from her home near Toronto, but the furore has followed her here. She has had international calls from “Maclean’s” magazine, and the American television programme “60 Minutes” wants her to appear. Colleen McCullough was commissioned to write “The Ladies of Missalonghi” for Hutchinson’s novella series. Maureen Garvie ' read it and concluded that although it was a slight book, it was well done. It made the “New York Times” best-seller list, and she learned that it was also on the New Zealand hard-cover best-seller list. "I thought it sort of fun, but it seemed very familiar,” the reviewer recalls. “It’s the story of a young woman in a small Australian town that is very dominated by her family. But she’s the poor relation, in her 30s, unmarried and living in poverty. “She has heart pains, and goes to a new doctor who tells her that the pains are not serious, but she finds an unaddressed letter on his desk telling a patient that she’ll die within a year. She takes it, and decides that she will live as .'-if she has omy a year to live.” > -

Maureen Garvie says this is the theme of both books. Both heroines live as if they will die within a year, and this changes them from mouse-like creatures to vigorous women. It liberates them.

Both Missy in Colleen McCullough’s book, ar f d Valancy in L. M. Montgomery’s book take their

letters to a man on the edge of the community and propose to him, showing him the letter. In both cases the men turn out to be the sons of millionaires, and in both cases the couples live happily ever after. “The Canadian one was written in 1927 and is set a few years earlier,” says Mrs Garvie.

“Valancy goes back to the doctor; and confesses to her husband about the letter, and he is delighted. But in McCullough’s book Missy never tells him. McCullough’s woman is much more manipulative.” Although there are many points on which the two books diverge, Maureen Garvie says there are intriguing points of similarity in character and plot. In “Ladies of Missalonghi,” Missy says she has “fifty pounds Father put in the bank for me when I was born.” Montgomery’s heroine, Valancy, has “the two hundred dollars that her father had put in the bank for her the day she was born.” Both hate oatmeal porridge, which their mothers made them eat. Both have uncles who own a country store and who tease them cruelly. Both are plain spinsters who have enviable, desirable, tall golden-haired cousins who are about to get married. Both authors write that these cousins “keep all their goods in the shop window.” Both spinsters are depressed about having to wear brown — and so the list goes on. The men to whom they propose have similar names, Smith and Snaith, both of which turn out to be aliases. Both authors use the term “oddly smart” to describe articles of the men’s clothing. Once married, both women get their housekeeping money from a jar on the mantlepiece which their husbands keep filled. Maureen Garvie says the plots of the two books vary on only two points. The settings are similar, the characters have similar names and similar hair colour, and some of the phrases irf the books are the same.

“One part describes the women’s rooms,” she says. “Although there is more furniture in McCullough’s, the order of the objects is the same — a stitched sampler, portraits of relatives, brown objects, and on the wall a passe-partouted portrait of a beautiful queen, in one case Louise, in the other Alexandra.” Both heroines have fantasies, one about a blue castle in Spain, the other about the next valley in the bush. “But in the McCullough book, Missy picks up a similar exotic idea of a Moorish castle, and she, too, has ‘caparisoned’ horses.”

In her article on the subject, Maureen Garvie also points out striking similarities in the satiric purpose and tone of the Australian and Canadian novels. She says Montgomery’s satire decries the power of authority to crush real feelings and real people. McCullough’s targets are similar “but her 1980 s perspective is more contemporarily feminist.” She says much of the satire of McCullough’s novel centres on the inequities of dividing up the social spoils along sexual lines. Maureen Garvie read “The Ladies of Missalonghi” last April, and in November she read a magazine article which mentioned “The Blue Castle.” L. M. Montgomery is enjoying a huge renaissance in Canada since the enormous success of the “Anne of Green Gables” television series, which was also very popular in New Zealand.

“I thought: ‘That’s it’,” she says. “I’d read ‘The Blue Castle’ at about 13 or 14. I went tearing over to the library to get a copy, and then I told my editor that there was an awfully close similarity.

"He said to go ahead, but he

was very uneasy that I was the only one that had noticed it.”

Mrs Garvie tried to reach Colleen McCullough at her home on Norfolk Island, but without success. She spoke to Rosemary Cheetham, an editor at Century Hutchinson in London who had worked on Colleen McCullough’s manuscript. “She was quite frosty and said she’d never heard of ‘The Blue Castle.’ She was just devastated, and said she couldn’t see how it could happen — that McCullough was an experienced professional writer, and it was not as if she was lacking ideas. If anything, she had too many She sent Colleen McCullough a telegram, asking her to explain why her book and “The Blue Castle” were so alike. Her personal assistant, Connie TelferSmith, replied on December 15. “Colleen discussed this with me today,” said the telegram, “and while she believes there are similarities between ‘Blue Castle’ and ‘The Ladies of Missalonghi,’ they are purely unconscious. Colleen read L. M. Montgomery at a very early age and has not re-read her since. But it is very possible indeed that some things lie in one’s subconscious. However, most of us who have read ‘Blue ■ Castle’ recently feel that any resemblances between the two are merely pleasant echoes.”

Maureen Garvie thinks that is about the most likely explanation for what has happened. “I think it is impossible for her to refute it,” she says, “but it makes no sense to me. It seems incredibly stupid to me if she was aware of what she was doing, and then to tour around the world — including Canada — to promote the book. She was interviewed on radio in Canada, and I’ve learned that they got lots of letters saying her book was similar to ‘The Blue Castle.’

“If she’d really intended to rip it off, I’m sure she’d have covered her tracks. Using her word processor, she’d have changed her character’s hair colour and things like that.