A Bird in the House

Vanessa’s narrative is a relatable and honest exploration of growing up. Rather than a single traumatic experience, a series of small and significant events mark her transition from childhood innocence to adult awareness.

From a young age, Vanessa begins to perceive the complexities of life around her. Her growth into awareness is sparked by observing her mother’s uncharacteristic tears during a Sunday dinner, a moment that strikes Vanessa with the weight of an unfamiliar sorrow. Vanessa describes this moment, thinking: “Their sadness was such a new thing, not to my actual sight but to my attention, that I felt it as bodily hurt, like skinning a knee” (22). This episode is emblematic of her gradual exposure to the adult world’s realities—where sadness and loss are not just observable phenomena but felt experiences. As she matures, Vanessa experiences the deaths of close family members, which further erodes her childhood innocence and shapes her understanding of life's fragility and the inevitability of change.

Parallel to these losses, Vanessa’s role as a storyteller evolves from a means of escape to a method for processing her growing understanding of the world. This is illustrated in her writing; her story of tragic love in Egypt mirrors Edna’s tragic love life, and the disillusionment of Marie in Quebec: “I lay on the seat of the McLaughlin-Buick feeling disenchantment set in. Marie would not get out of the grey stone inn” (178). Marie mirrors her state of mind (before her family sends her to school) that she will be trapped in Manawaka forever.

The contrasting outcomes for Vanessa and Chris depict the theme of lost innocence and the burden of awareness. While Vanessa’s journey through grief and change leads to a matured acceptance of life’s complexities, Chris, her cousin, is devastated by his experiences in war. The atrocities he witnesses break his spirit, leading to his institutionalization. Vanessa imagines “the animation gone from his face” (151). This shows the different trajectories that coming to terms with reality can take, depending on individual resilience and circumstances. Vanessa’s ability to maintain some form of hope and continuity despite her losses is juxtaposed with Chris’s descent into despair, highlighting the precarious balance between awareness and the loss of innocence.

As Vanessa matures, her journey shifts from one of angst and resistance to acceptance. Her narrative arc is a testament to the power of growing awareness and its dual capacity to challenge and enrich her understanding of life. Through Vanessa, Laurence explores how personal growth is often accompanied by painful realizations yet also opens up a path to deeper self-understanding and reconciliation with the complexities of the adult world. This theme drives the narrative forward while simultaneously presenting the opportunity for readers to reflect on their own paths.

The theme is embodied in Vanessa’s evolving understanding of her family’s complex dynamics. Through revisiting her childhood memories with the insight of adulthood, Vanessa learns to see her family members in a more compassionate and realistic light, overcoming her early misconceptions and biases.

As she ages, Vanessa, once critical of Grandfather Connor, begins to understand and learn that her grandfather was a resilient pioneer who managed to survive great adversities. She grows to appreciate her heritage and the struggles her ancestors endured as she reconsiders her grandfather’s infidelity and her father’s possible affair through a more mature lens. Uncle Terence reveals Grandfather Connor’s infidelity, an event that, as a child, reaffirmed Vanessa’s harsh judgment of him. However, her perspective begins to shift dramatically after her father’s death; her discovery of a photograph of a French woman leads her to consider her father’s actions as seeking “some momentary and unexpected freedom” (112). This contemplation is part of a larger process in which Vanessa re-evaluates her father and her grandfather, realizing that their actions, while flawed, were human and understandable within their complex lives.

This reevaluation deepens when Vanessa views the Haida Bear mask in a museum. In reflecting on the mask’s significance—“I remembered then that in the days before it became a museum piece, the mask had concealed a man" (88)—Vanessa demonstrates her newfound ability to see the man behind the mask, and thus the human emotions and vulnerabilities of Grandfather Connor. She moves from seeing the mask as just an item out of context to appreciating the personal and historical stories it represents.

Through this theme, Laurence illustrates how memory and maturity can transform perceptions, recognizing her grandfather’s severity as a façade masking deeper vulnerabilities: “Sometimes a thing only hits you a long time afterward” (51). Vanessa’s journey shows how reconciling with the past can free one from the negative impacts of misunderstood memories, leading to a more nuanced and empathetic view of one’s family and oneself.