The Environment as Antagonist in Atwood and Ross

In both Margaret Atwood’s “Death by Landscape” and Sinclair Ross’ “A Field of Wheat,” characters are thrown into conflict with the natural environment around them. The environment acts as a foil of sorts for Lois and Martha, managing to highlight their limitations and their frustration upon being faced with their consequent lack of control. The vastness and implacability of nature is evident in both the volatile hail storm that Martha endures and in the veil of mystery that the wilderness casts on Lois. One can see even a physical comparison being drawn between these women and their oppressive environment; the size of the landscape versus an individual. The environment however not only represents an obstacle, a permanent boundary between the protagonist and her goal, but also a manifestation of several aspects of the women’s lives over which they have no control. In exploring this relationship between woman and her environment, it is helpful to explore the manner in which the implacability of the protagonists’ environment impacts her and helps to provide insight into her very human frustration with forces beyond her control. Further, attention should be drawn to the parallels that exist between nature and the acknowledged boundaries in the lives of the protagonists, particularly Martha’s struggle with the limitations that her gender place on her and the impossibility of Lois ever coming to learn the truth of Lucy’s fate. Finally, it is important to note just how the behaviors of these women can be understood as in reaction to the immovable force that is their environment.

The environment of both stories can be understood as the manifestation of each respective protagonist’s greatest struggles. Nature, as an insurmountable force that the characters are powerless to alter or persuade, largely represents the aspects of the women’s own lives that they must come to accept. In Death by Landscape, the environment acts not only as an obstacle, but also for Lois a physical representation of the fact that she will never come to know the truth of what happened to Lucy. It is her frustration with this knowledge that so negatively impacts Lois‘ life and her subsequent fixation on this ominous landscape which brings about an inversion in background and foreground, not in her paintings but in her life. This is evident in the description of Lois’ art that Atwood offers. It is specified that the art was not meant to be mistaken for furniture and that while Rob only appreciated the pictures as far as they fulfilled the “necessity of having something on the walls,” (Atwood, 269) Lois had a deep appreciation for these pictures and longed for something she felt was contained within them, as asserted, “despite the fact that there are no people in them... its as if there is something, or someone, looking back out (Atwood, 270). Already, Atwood suggests that what others might consider a mere part of the scenery was actually a focal point for Lois, something that looked back out at her and engaged her. This is evidenced further in describing the paintings, “there are no backgrounds in any of these paintings...only a great deal of foreground that goes back and back, endlessly, involving you in its twists and turns of tree and branch and rock” (Atwood, 284). Alternatively, when considering her past, Lois has difficulty remembering important events in her own life, such as nursing her sons, admitting “even at the time she never felt like she was paying full attention” (Atwood, 283). These paintings, these representations of Lucy’s absence and of an unknowable truth have so enthralled Lois that she allowed the day to day happenings of her life to become mere background noise. Here it becomes clear not only how the merciless environment of that camping trip so deeply impacted Lois, but also how a deeper consideration of Lois’ relationship with that environment provides insight into the life and character of the story’s protagonist.

In Field of Wheat, Martha’s environment can similarly be seen as a representation of some daunting aspects of her life which she is incapable of changing. Unlike Lois, Martha feels a degree of oneness with her environment, particularly with the wheat that she and her husband John harvest. In the vulnerability of the wheat, Martha feels a sort of kinship as she feels that her own situation is precarious by virtue of the fact that she is a woman and that she occupies the role of “wife”. To take this comparison further, the fact that the wheat is uninsured can be attributed to Martha’s lack of power in her relationship as John refuses to listen to her when she demands that it he insure it, as Martha reflects, “It made no difference that she had wanted to take out hail insurance...She was just his wife; it wasn’t for her to open her mouth” (Ross, 104). This lack of insurance can be understood to represent a lack of security that is inherent in the role of women and wives in Martha’s society, the precarious situation that develops from being of little consequence. The hail, on the other hand, is the destructive force that Martha is at a loss to prevent or to mollify, and highlights just how Martha is at the mercy of her society’s construct of woman. Like the wheat, she can only stand by and endure as the storm wreaks havoc, exploiting the very vulnerability that they share. Beyond bringing to the surface Martha’s lack of power, socially in her role as well as her literal powerlessness in the face of this natural disaster, this storm also manages to provide a new perspective of her life with John. As both John and Martha are destroyed with the wheat she begins to consider just how similar they are and whether he is just as bound by his gender role as she is by hers, particularly in the pressure that he feels to provide for his family and in his need to conceal the full of extent of his grief from even his wife. Once more, it is clear not just how nature and the environment become symbolic representations for the protagonists of their struggles, but also how this impacts the women and manages to provide a deeper understanding of their characters.

The important role that the environment plays, particularly as antagonist, is strengthened throughout the texts as obvious parallels can be drawn between nature and various acknowledged trials of the protagonists. The environment described in Death by Landscape is one that is wild and untamed; often, descriptions such as “interlaced branches” (Atwood, 269) and “intertwisted trees” (Atwood, 283) suggest not only wilderness but also a sense of concealment. This is probably best embodied in describing the land as “a tangle, a receding maze, in which you become lost almost as soon as you step off the path” (Atwood, 284). This idea of nature as a tangled maze implies an obscured direction or truth, one that might be directly compared to the manner in which this landscape has managed to conceal the truth of Lucy’s whereabouts from Lois. Furthermore, Lois describes the futility of searching for Lucy best near the end of the story explaining, “if you walked into the picture and found the tree, it would be the wrong one, because the right one would be farther on” (Atwood, 284). The undefined nature of this environment as Lois describes it, one that is constantly changing and that does not necessarily abide by any laws of reasoning, is significant as it is relatable to Lois’ feelings of hopelessness and the endless number of possibilities that exist regarding the location of her friends’ remains, which are both exampled in Lois’ statement, “[Lucy] is nowhere definite, she could be anywhere” (Atwood, 284). Finally, brief consideration should be paid to the fact that Lois has a fear of heights, one that even prevented her from sleeping on the top bunk of a bed [Atwood, 272]. It is hard to imagine therefore, that it is a coincidence that Lois loses Lucy on a high cliff. Though it is not explicitly stated that Lucy in fact fell off the cliff, there is still another similarity to be drawn here between the shape and texture of the landscape and Lois’ struggles throughout the story.

The most obvious connections one can make between Martha’s struggle with her role as woman and the hail storm are that both are completely out of her control and, much like the storm, the gender roles which her family recognizes must seem to them ‘entrenched in nature’. However, the volatility of the weather also seems to be a significant aspect relating to Martha’s role in her family. The hail storm starts suddenly, without warning, and just as quickly it is gone, leaving the family to “go on” again. The instability of weather in this story seems to be paralleled in the fluid, unstable nature of gender roles, which is evidenced in both John’s crying in the stable and the “wrinkle of jealousy” (Ross, 99) which Martha feels of John’s concern for her children. Second, the poppies which Annabelle treats with such care but which are carried away with the slightest wind are not only analogous to the beautiful wheat that should have been harvested but which was destroyed, it is also symbolic of Martha’s struggle within her role as a woman. Martha asks herself in considering Annabelle’s poppy, “Why [does] the beauty flash and the bony stalks remain?” (Ross, 100).This struggle has not to do with the limitations of being a woman, but rather Martha’s plight in trying to maintain a socially-accepted ideal of femininity. Martha expresses a subtle concern for her appearance and figure throughout the story, particularly her resentment in being allowed to “grow flat-footed and shapeless” (Ross, 98) and her desire for the “creams and things that other women had” in order to help her to remain youthful. While these cannot be called unusual concerns for any individual, given the context of the story it is not unreasonable to postulate that this concern was based on Martha’s idea of what the ‘ideal woman’ is, namely attractive and youthful. This argument is strengthened by the lack of concern for personal appearance on the part of John and Joe, as well as Martha’s expressed anxiety that Annabelle grow up to be ‘proper’ lady, through lessons and exposure to town people. The poppy, therefore, represents to Martha her trials in growing older while trying to maintain qualities she feels deems her feminine enough for her role.

Finally, in studying the way that these characters interact with their environment it is important to consider just how their behaviour can be understood as in reaction to uncontrollable nature of the environment. These women are similar in that they allow their failure to manipulate their environment to greatly impact their actions, either knowingly or inadvertently. In Death by Landscape, the use of Aboriginal culture is evoked in order to suggest a sense of dominance of the land and an ability to not only conquer but to make use of the landscape. This attitude is one that is obviously not expressed after the disappearance of Lucy. Instead, Lois develops a respect for the power of the landscape, an almost fearful reverence which prevents her from finding peace in any wilderness. Beyond just keeping her from “any place with wild lakes and wild trees and the call of loons” (Atwood, 283), this unease causes Lois to try to contain and control nature by isolating it to her picture frames and to pottery. The structure of the first two paragraphs illustrate this point beautifully. The first paragraph ends, “the building has a security system, and the only plant life is in the pots in the solarium” (Atwood, 269) already suggesting the security that Lois finds in limiting the plant life in her home to a single pot. Perfectly positioned at the start of the next paragraph is, “Lois is glad she’s been able to find an apartment big enough for her pictures” (Atwood, 269). In putting these two ideas of the potted plants and the pictures together, Atwood is commenting on the similarity of these two objects, as they are both mechanisms which Lois employs in order to regain a feeling of control and security which seems to have been taken from her.

In Field of Wheat, we see another example of an attempt to manipulate the earth and environment to one’s own benefit in Martha and John’s production of wheat. Upon the wheat’s destruction, Martha initially resigns herself as Lois does. Unlike Lois, however, there is a tinge of rebellion in her response. It is important to note here that, as suggested previously, there is a strong connection between the gender roles by which Martha feels constrained and the hail storm. This relationship is further evidenced in the fact that in her reaction to the hail storm, it is largely gender-related grievances on which she ruminates and which act as a catalyst for her feelings of rebellion. These grievances which include her anxiety for her children, her lack of sway in her relationship and her role as “wife” [Ross, 104], occur to her as she holds a broom in her hand, prepared to clean up the wreckage of the storm. Unable to take her anger out on the weather (“How rebel against a summer storm, how find the throat of a cloud?” (Ross, 104)) Martha instead intends to lash out at the individual whom she understand to be the nearest representation of this storm in her life, John. By virtue of their relationship, John, typecasts Martha to the role of “wife”, consequently, inadvertently, imposing on her limitations and expectations which she has come to not only internalize but resent. Once more, the behaviors of these women must be understood in context of their struggle with an unfeeling, unmoving force that surrounds them.

It is clear that the environment not only greatly impacts the protagonists in both “Death by Landscape” and “Field of Wheat” but also helps to reveal significant insight into these characters and their lives. It is the incontrollable force of these environments that both parallels and highlights the very human struggles that these women face. Both stories are masterfully written so that one can almost imagine the landscape as an antagonistic character within the story, drawing attention to the important influence and symbolic significance of one’s surroundings.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. “Death by Landscape” Canadian Short Stories. Ed. Bennett Donna and Russell Brown. Toronto: Pearson Longman/ Penguin Academics, 2005. 269-284. Print.

Ross, Sinclair. “Field of Wheat” Canadian Short Stories. Ed. Bennet, Donna and Russell Brown. Toronto: Pearson Longman/ Penguin Academics, 2005. 97-105. Print.

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