Bear – Marian Engel (1976) 167 pages

Back when I was an undergrad in English literature, my tutor accused me of being squeamish on the subject of incest in Jacobean drama and skirting round it. My argument (and he did like it when I argued with him, he was a very sweet man) was that it was more interesting to consider incest as metaphor for Jacobean political corruption and the decay of society rather than just a play about a brother and sister with a warped relationship. The reason I mention this now is that in Bear by Marian Engel, a woman has sex with a bear.

Now maybe my tutor would think I’m being squeamish about bestiality here, but I really don’t think that it is what Engel is writing about or interested in. For me, Bear is a novel about a woman learning self-acceptance, and how to live her life on her own terms.

Lou is a librarian and archivist working for the Historical Institute, where she stays buried in her basement office:

“For although she loved old shabby things, things that had already been loved and suffered, objects with a past, when she saw that her arms were slug-pale and her fingerprints grained with old, old ink, that the detritus with which she bedizened her bulletin boards was curled and valueless, when she found that her eyes would no longer focus in the light, she was always ashamed, for the image of the Good Life long ago stamped on her soul was quite different from this, and she suffered in contrast.”

She is lonely and her life is unsatisfying, particularly romantically. When the Institute is bequeathed an estate in a remote part of Canada, Lou is asked to travel there in order to take an inventory. What she isn’t told until she gets there is that the inventory includes a bear.

The house of Colonel Jocelyn Cary is isolated and strange, octagonal and filled with ephemera. Lou works steadily and there are some lovely descriptions of the library. Gradually she and the bear grow used to one another. Throughout the story the bear remains unknowable, quite a sad creature. He isn’t anthropomorphised and in this way Lou has to take responsibility for all her actions. She can’t claim to be responding to the bear.

“In case the bear was disappointed (for she had discovered she could paint any face on him that she wanted, while his actual range of expression was a mystery), she went out, plastered with mosquito lotion, and took him down to the shallowest part of the channel, where the water was warm.”

The main healing that occurs for Lou is through having to leave her basement office and interact with the natural world to survive. She has to run a boat, cook from scratch, fish, and share her environment with various creatures for company.

“She settled into a routine. She worked all morning, then in the afternoon disappeared into the bush to walk on carpets of trilliums and little yellow lilies; hepatica and bunchberries. The basswoods had put out huge leaves. Often, scarved and gloved against the black flies, she lingered by the beaver pond. The goshawks stared at her from their barkless elm with impenetrable eyes.”

Bear is the story of Lou reconsidering her choices and learning to listen to her own voice when she experiences the world away from other people (particularly men), surrounded by wildness. Her vulnerability is moving and emotionally engaging. What psychological change occurs for her is believable and unsentimental, while remaining hopeful.

From looking online, it seems a shame in a way that Bear features bear sex, because although it’s actually a tiny part of the story, of course it’s that for which the novel is known. It is a fable – in real life Lou would have likely been killed by the bear fairly quickly. Engel’s writing is much more subtle and the themes so much more complex than some summaries would suggest. Probably I have obfuscated a bit, but I’m certain my tutor won’t read this post 😉

“Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?”

Those of you who follow Dorian Stuber on social media will know he’s a great advocate for this novel. You can read an essay he wrote on it here.