Taking My Life

by Jane Rule

  At home, I was far sicker than I had been at college. The altitude had always troubled me. Now I fainted if I went upstairs too quickly, I couldn’t go anywhere by myself, not even into a store. I didn’t know from moment to moment what negative trick my body would play on me, against which will seemed helpless. [I was frightened in the car. Not allowed to work, I was desperate.]

  Mother was attentive, patient, reassuring. She was willing to have me home for the year to let my overtaxed nerves mend. The thought of not going back to college horrified me. After several weeks, I begged to go back. Once I agreed to drop at least one course, Mother agreed to let me try it. [I felt as weak as if I’d just had major surgery and anxious.]

  Dr. Pope, worried and inclined to blame herself for the academic pressure I’d been under, [behaved less my tutor and more my affectionate friend,] offered to feed me herself if the dormitory dining room was too much for me.

  I remember the shock of recognition when I read On the Road … I accepted the literary judgment of the book as undisciplined, negative romance [that it was], but I couldn’t dismiss it.

  Sally and Edy both liked using me as a victim [guinea pig] for their course in psychological testing.

  Sally’s attitude toward her work bewildered me as much as her attitude toward useful young men did. [Most other students’ attitude toward their work bewildered me as much as their attitude toward their love affair did.] It was a game played against teachers to do as little work as possible for as much credit.

  We were exposed to other forms both by other students’ work and in our academic courses … Her volume of poems, published when she was in her twenties, was the first of our ventures into print [successes].

  My own moral state can on the surface of it confuse me as I look back on it. I’m sure I was confused at the time. I seemed to hold two mutually exclusive views, that my love [for Ann and for Dr. Pope] represented what was best in me and that it was a sin … As long as I entertained the possibility that my emotional makeup would change, I did not really see that my devotion to either woman could effect the collapse of our worlds as Donald Weeks’s passions had toppled his. [That it was misdirected, as Ann so often claimed, I hold to be specifically loving, though generally right. If I could be as devoted to a man as I was to either of them, I should probably choose to be. But I could not imagine it, any more than I could imagine that my devotion to either of them destined to collapse our worlds as Donald Weeks’s passions had toppled his.]

  The imaginary man, Sandy, still figured in my defences occasionally … I was embarrassed by such deceits. Still they were less painful in my conscience than the deceit of dating that I occasionally indulged in at Sally’s and Edy’s urging once or twice even having my appetite roused by a technically competent young man about whom I didn’t know, about whom I therefore couldn’t care [cared nothing].

  The erotic tension I created sweetened their nights together, and I didn’t resent it. Though I wanted Ann, I felt no claim to her [and honoured Henry’s].

  After I recovered from the drowsiness of my first unnecessary pill against seasickness, I began like any normally adventuresome nineteen-year-old to enjoy myself … The cabin across the hall was crammed with students from Notre Dame, lecherous but Catholic. One of them, tall enough to be as crippled as I was by the restricting short bunks, limped to breakfast with us every morning, challenged me to martini-drinking contests every evening and fortunately passed out before I was seriously threatened. [I could explore the ship, make acquaintances with the passengers at all the mindless amusements provided and retreat into attention if I needed to.

  The day before we sighted France, a young woman from first class, which she assured us was simply an elegant old people’s house, asked us to come up as her guests for a swim. When we tried to cross into first class, our way was barred by a polite but adamant steward. Our friend, distressed to have put us through such an embarrassment, sent us a case of champagne when she got off at Cherbourg, and we spent the final night as we crossed the channel drinking champagne.

  I had ten days by myself in London before I had to be at Stratford. I might meet some of my shipboard friends at the Embassy’s Fourth of July party. Otherwise I had no plans but to discover what I could of London. I was staying at the sedate English-Speaking Union. The dining room there where nothing could be heard but the clinking of silver made a good preparation for public dining rooms all across England. It was like being in a silent movie. But before I had time to have my first meal there, I discovered a theatre in the neighbourhood offering a Christopher Fry play for the price of a movie.

  “You should have been with me,” I was to write to Dr. Pope again and again that summer, whether I’d been to the theatre or to Oxford, shopped for books or gone to a gallery. To Ann I wrote the love letters I always had, but resignedly.]

  Though moving again with all my luggage was a daunting thought, I was glad to be leaving the solitude of London for a place where I could surely make friends. I studied the faces of other passengers on the small train which took us from Leamington Spa to Stratford. One in particular attracted me, a woman in her early thirties, my height, with a face given to laughter, the warmth of it in her eyes, in the dimples in her cheeks, in the tilt of her nose; yet it was a strong face, too, the brows dark and heavy, [she held herself proudly,] rather dwarfing her small, pretty companion. I wondered if they were lovers.

  As we settled to our academic schedule, the conversation at meals shifted into discussions of lectures, plans for papers and, most interesting of all, analyses of the productions of the plays we were seeing. John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft were the leads that summer, playing in Lear, Measure for Measure, Much Ado about Nothing [and two others which have blurred in my memory now with other summers. I did not know it then, but I was to be at Stratford each of the next three summers as well].

  For all the bright worlds I had come to know did not exist, no one had ever told me about this one. Not having anticipated it, not having imagined it in any way [my joy in it was absolute]. I felt for the first time in my life at home, sure of work and welcome.

  I caught a heavy cold shortly after I arrived, ignored it until I finally had to give in and spend a day in bed. When I didn’t turn up for breakfast, Roussel presented herself with a cup of tea which I was too touched by to refuse, though a Coke would have been much more welcome [however filthy I thought tea in the morning].

  There was no one else in the lounge … He got up angrily and went to bed. I sat up, smoking[, shaking with tiredness and need and confusion].

  Her early return made me think not simply of my grandfather’s death but of my grandmother who would meet the ship in New York. [A strong, independent woman, suspicious always of my relationship with my grandfather,] She’d probably find me a chore rather than a help; yet I’d always felt closer to her, more really known though not so flatteringly, than by my fantasy-inventing grandfather.

  There was a letter from Roussel waiting for me on board the ship … I was in a cabin for ten days on the Georgia …

  Ann brought the children to pick me up. Granny reached out for baby Susan[, were absolutely suited to each other]. It was very rare that a baby wasn’t at home on her ample lap, entertained by that strong string of beads she wore round her neck.

  I was newly restless with Ann’s questioning … From Ann I had learned how to love without being possessive, how to accept and rejoice in her love for husband and children. [And she influenced my moral view without ever seriously shifting my sexuality. From Ann I had learned how to love without being possessive, how to extend love to a husband and children.] From Ann I had also learned that sexual fidelity did not necessarily mean what it did to my parents.

  I had given up making any sexual demands of Ann … The summer had given me a new sense of my own attractiveness, and I had discovered a world in which I felt at home. [A world to live in which I had been welcomed, challenged and loved.]

  I had been out with him half a doz
en times before I realized I really didn’t like him … He lectured on subjects that interested him, at least one of which was my improvement[, at least one of which was the fulfillment of women]. A woman should be intelligent, healthy, tall in order to breed sons who would be princes.

  I refused the next date. He waited two weeks and then called again … it seemed somehow too unkind to be that blunt: so I reluctantly accepted [so I went]. This time, for the first time at the end of the evening, we parked.

  Now that Donald Weeks was gone, writers were invited to teach … Surrounded with the attitudes academics had for writers who published in popular magazines, [who made money,] we were suspicious of Jessamyn’s ability to instruct us in our rather higher calling.

  “No big problem. Cabs aren’t that expensive[. You pay the cab fare],” I suggested.

  Usually I enjoyed spending Easter vacation at college … I suggested to my mother that she join me for a week in Carmel, where we could celebrate our birthdays together. [Libby must have had a sitter or gone to stay with a friend.]

  She talked more frankly about our father than she had before … She hoped Libby[, when they finally moved back to California,] could stay as healthy as she had become in the high, dry desert air of Nevada … My mother was very glad to be back in the Bay Area[, looked forward to coming back]. She had never liked Reno.

  Granny and I met Dr. Pope and her father for dinner … Lunch with Ellen’s mother didn’t bridge the generation gap [wasn’t such a success]. She was worried about our lack of definite plans after summer school and Dr. Pope’s departure.

  It took me [us] a moment to realize they were referring not to a member of their family but to the Duchess of Windsor.

  At the theatre, Dr. Pope more often watched my face than the stage … I would have enjoyed such concentration from Roussel, who went to the theatre to see the play [never gave any indication that I existed when we went to a play].

  “A row house is a row house, whether it’s built in a curve or in a straight line,” I said. [She stamped down on her braced leg and said, “What have I done to see Bath with a barbarian?”]

  “I passed out for you once,” I reminded her. [I went out to the airport with Dr. Pope and got permission to take her right onto the plane.

  “You’d get into Buckingham Palace to sit on the throne if you put your mind to it,” she said, picking up my own bantering tone whenever I did anything to help her physically.]

  I was trying to write for a part of each day. [So was Ellen, but without a typewriter …] Without a typewriter, I was missing the central prop of my ritual. I began stories I couldn’t stay interested in. I wrote myself meaningless notes. [My stomach couldn’t tolerate the food. I took nothing but tea and toast for days.]

  At nineteen, not really knowing where I wanted to be, going home was the only uncommitting option. I’d had a letter from Mother saying that Dad hadn’t been well. So I booked myself out of New York immediately when I arrived, not even stopping to check in with Ann and Henry.

  Ann’s third child was expected at any time, and she and Henry wondered if I could stay for three weeks until Ann’s sister would be free to come look after the children. [If Ann had to go to the hospital, I’d be there to take care of Carol and Susan.]

  I wrote to Roussel about Marilyn, a music major, with whom I listened to music and read Gertrude Stein, who had transferred from Reed, whose distractions [whose lonely voice and playful spirit was the first real distraction I’d ever had from work …] from required work I’d never allowed myself before. When we first made love in her room, I knew it was dangerous, but I was already so tempted to quit that I needed the defiance of it. [I knew we were courting disaster, but I was already so tempted to quit that I didn’t care.]

  Did he feel victory in marrying Edy? Did he resent my academic honours? I didn’t know. He never explained himself beyond very occasional cryptic slogans. [His resentment, always there just below the surface, only erupted in moments of great tension, in such cryptic slogans.]

  So, apparently, did Ellen … Her enthusiasm infected two other senior English majors in Mills Hall to make plans of their own. [I made it as clear as I could that I was not making friendly promises to any of them. Earnestly, Ellen agreed.]

  “Open your present. [“I’ll lend you mine.”]

  For once, Mother Packer was struck speechless, and the rest of the family was kind enough not to comment … Then I realized that there were no presents. [Was this the moment then when I was to be confronted with the fact of my selfishness, the impracticality of my dreams?]

  With such good fortune secured, it seemed graceless to be so negative about the weeks that remained … Ann, more intensely working than any of us, also was best at breaking the tension by starting sudden, impossible conversations, usually with me. [Ann McKirsty was helping me deal with Chaucer, a course I had managed to avoid, and I was lecturing to her on the seventeenth century. We sat with other English majors every night now and talked work. Ann, more intensely working than any of us, also was best at breaking the mood by starting sudden, impossible conversations, usually with me.]

  “Did you let the elephant out?” or “Was that the duke who phoned?” They mostly developed into intense quarrels of faked jealousy, invented failures of responsibility for the benefit of a suitably amused audience. The game we played when we were alone was quarrelling over our shared servants, Gertrude and Bertrum, who finally became too expensive and jealous of each other to keep. It then fell to singular Bertrude to deal with our clothes and cleaning[, mending, washing, shoe polishing].

  With Ann and with Roussel, it was I who lightened the day with nonsense. In Marilyn, I had a real playmate who didn’t worry at any future between us, who took the pleasure we had in each other simply. [Roussel, meanwhile, had a suicidal Willy on her hands.]

  That would be how the dean and Miss Wright had tried to comfort her. I didn’t like how much I’d withdrawn from her, how little I’d minded punishing her with my silence in class. [Such an explanation seemed to me idiotic, but I did have enough sense to leave her with it if she could draw some comfort from it. I didn’t like how much I’d withdrawn from her, how little I’d minded punishing her with my silence.]

  Acknowledgments

  Linda M. Morra

  It is to David Anderson, first and foremost, to whom I owe much gratitude for inspiring me with the idea to peruse the Jane Rule Fonds, where I later found her unpublished autobiography; yet, I could not simply walk into the University of British Columbia Archives and work on Rule’s papers without permission to explore what she had deposited there in 1988. When I began this research, Rule was still alive and, as I was trying to determine how to get in touch with her, I spoke to both a colleague and a warm and caring friend, Janice Stewart. She suggested that it would also be wise to interview Rule and that, if I so desired it, she could arrange to put me into contact with her. I was struck by Janice’s generosity. She offers a remarkable array of qualities that serve as a model for academics and for their exchanges: she is considerate, kind, willing to share what she knows. I am deeply thankful to her for getting me through a crucial stage of the project.

  When I received Rule’s contact information from Janice, I directly thereafter sent a letter to Rule, to which she kindly responded. I and my research assistant, Andrea Szilagyi, thus found ourselves travelling to Galiano Island, where Rule allowed us to interview her. In spite of her deteriorating health, she made us lunch and was at all moments gracious and accommodating with our questions. When Andrea and I returned from Galiano Island, we proceeded to bury ourselves in the boxes upon boxes of Rule’s archival material at the University of British Columbia. I appreciated Andrea for her impeccable work habits, her passionate interest in the papers and her initiative in the process.

  I was able to hire such an assistant because of the support of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Standard Research Grant: these grants are invaluable for the kind of research that would
otherwise not get done. Archival work is both time consuming and costly, and so a grant becomes indispensable to being effective in such work. I was also awarded a Bishop’s University Research Grant that paid for one of my research trips to the University of British Columbia, at which time I compared the typescript to the handwritten version of Taking My Life. Later, I received a grant from the Fonds de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC) for the purposes of continuing this work. I am deeply grateful for having had consistent support, such that I was able to complete the work on this book.

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Christopher Hives (the university archivist responsible for establishing the Jane Rule Fonds and safeguarding her papers), Candice Bjur and Leslie Field—all professional, generous and helpful archivists and library assistants at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre. Indeed, at every stage of development on this manuscript, both Candice and Leslie were giving with their time—from providing me with a temporary copy of the handwritten manuscript, to retrieving box upon box for me to rummage through, to scanning those images that appear in the book, to offering suggestions that had not even occurred to me, to looking up queries in the copy-edited manuscript. I was initially permitted to work with a copy of the handwritten manuscript for a brief period, after which time I was obliged to return the copy to the archives. Thereafter, I called upon Candice, who was completely accommodating: she looked up all queries on my behalf. (Candice, I am herewith referring to you as the archival saint of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.) She was especially important to the whole process.

  After having done all this work, Rule’s autobiography would still not have seen the light of day if the executors of the Jane Rule Estate had not agreed to its production. They were flexible with deadlines and permissions, and, at all points of exchange, courteous with me. They read over Rule’s manuscript and my afterword, and provided corrections to the spelling of names and to other details about which I had been inaccurate. They made other suggestions about the shaping of the manuscript and gave Talonbooks the permission to use the images included in the publication and on its cover. The selection of the images eventually included in the autobiography was no small feat: there are easily thousands of photos that have become part of the Jane Rule Fonds, but the persons represented therein are not clearly identified. It took some guesswork on my part to determine who these figures were; when I had narrowed down the images to about twenty, Candice and Leslie scanned them and sent them to the executors for their proper identification. The executors—and Candice and Leslie—generally made the process so uncomplicated that it was a delight to work with them.