You Went Away

 By Timothy Findley, 1996

We would now call this a book about toxic masculinity, although I don’t think that term was in vogue when Findley wrote it in 1996. Nevertheless, it explores one small story about the expectations placed on men, how some men respond and the impacts of those responses on the people around them.

The men at the centre of the story are children. Mi’s husband Graeme acts like he is still in school, afraid of his emotions, afraid of women. Ivan, a pilot trainer, plays with his toy Spitfire when Mi gives it to him and goes “Zoom” just like the boy in the story. Graeme is trying to live up to the impossible ideal of his dead hero brother, but he cannot in his office job, and he leaps at the chance to join the air force when World War II breaks out. When that doesn’t work, he falls back on alcohol. He directs his guilt at his wife, has affairs and shuts her out of his life, refusing even to talk to her. He is almost as cold to his son. The book’s title, You Went Away, describes Graeme’s emotional withdrawal from his family. While there are a few mature and caring men, they are background figures only.

The women in the story, by contrast, are empathetic and supportive. They talk to each other and look after each other when things go bad, lend each other clothes so that they can make the best impression on the men. They try to hold the family together, to make enough compromises that they, or at least their kids, can survive. At one point, Mi says to her husband, I’ve given up trying to make our marriage work, but I won’t give up on our son and I’ll make you stay for him. Reading this, I had to wonder if an angry, resentful father would be better than an absent one. But in the 1940s, divorce was not an acceptable option. Of course, the marriage does not work and the drama has a tragic end.

Matthew, the son, may be set to replicate his father’s pattern. He goes to his father’s boarding school, where he is miserable and has to see his family’s school achievements every day. He has no real friends and can’t talk to his mother. His closest male relationships are with the pilot who takes him for motorcycle rides, and a wealthy schoolmate who leaves for holidays and writes occasionally. His future is very uncertain at the end of the story as he retreats into himself. The story closes on a painting he receives of birds floating in the sky, with the label Heroes. He will have to fight to overcome the toxicity that destroyed his father, but he’s not much of a fighter.

This is a story of a family falling apart. Findley writes it with great sympathy, contrasting the outward expressions of the characters with the inner voices showing what they really want to say. This lets him look inside the minds and feelings of the characters. He conveys emotions that feel very apt – resentful, angry, jealous, and loving as well. His central characters are complex, pulled in different directions and trying to make sense of domestic circumstances that are not simple. The setting on the edge of World War II perhaps suggests that the domestic wars have their reflection in the big events of the world. Does toxic masculinity lead to military conflict, or are they both an expression of a pathological society?

Findley calls this a novella, perhaps because, with a straightforward plot in 218 pages, it doesn’t have the heft of his longer novels. Nevertheless, it’s emotional weight and substantial themes give it enough depth for a serious read.