Psyche

A novel

by Phyllis Brett Young

Introduction by Nathalie Cooke and Suzanne Morton
Foreword by Valerie Young Argue

McGill-Queen's University Press 2008
ISBN
978-0-7735-3490-2

Legal deposit fourth quarter 2,008
Bibliothèque nationale du Québec

Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free
(100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free

McGill-Queen's University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada
Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the
financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program (BPIDP) for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Young, Phyllis Brett

Psyche: a novel/by Phyllis Brett Young; introduction by Nathalie
Cooke and Suzanne Morton; foreword by Valerie Young Argue.

Originally Published: Toronto: Longmans, Green, 1959.
ISBN
978-0-7735-3490-2

I. Title.

PS
8547.O58
P
7 2008                    
C
813'.54                       
C
2008-903929-7

Foreword by Valerie Argue

Introduction by Nathalie Cooke and Suzanne Morton

1 Prologue

2 The Kidnapper

3 The Hoboes,

4 The Miner and His Wife

5 The Artist

6 The Social Worker

7 The Prostitute

8 The Doctor and His Wife

9 The Truck Driver

10 The Newspaperman

11 Epilogue

Studio portrait of Phyllis Brett Young, circa 1959, used for publicity and book jackets. Courtesy Valerie Argue

Phyllis Brett Young was born in Toronto in 1914 to English immigrant parents. Her father, George Sidney Brett, was head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto; her mother, Marion Brett, was an avid reader and a talented woodcarver. Educated in both public and private schools, Phyllis attended the Ontario College of Art before marrying her long-time sweetheart, Douglas Young. The early, depressionera years of their marriage were difficult financially, but after World War II Douglas began a successful career in personnel that led to a five-year stint with a branch of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Their only child, Valerie, attended the International School there, while Phyllis had the freedom and perspective to write her first novel,
Psyche
, and plan her second,
The Torontonians
.

By the fall of 1960, when, after a two-year relocation in Ottawa, the Youngs returned to Toronto, Phyllis Brett Young's writing career had taken flight. Between 1959 and 1969 she published four novels
(Psyche, The Torontonians, Undine
, and
A Question of Judgment)
, a fictionalized childhood memoir
(Anything Could Happen!)
, and a thriller
(The Ravine
, published under the pseudonym Kendal Young). Her novels, positively received by readers and reviewers alike, appeared in numerous editions and languages in Canada, the United States,
and England and other European countries.
The Ravine
was made into a movie under the title
Assault
.

Over the years, the Youngs lived in variety of apartments and houses (both urban and suburban), eventually retiring to their dream home in the country near the town of Orillia, Ontario. Phyllis Brett Young died in 1996, Douglas Young just eighteen months later.

An emotionally gripping story, an intellectually challenging idea, and a contemporary Canadian setting are the three basic elements of my mother's novels. In
Psyche
, her first novel, each plays an essential role. The book was greeted with huge critical acclaim and quickly became a national and international bestseller, published in more than a dozen hardcover, paperback, bookclub, and magazine editions, in many different languages. People seemed to fall in love with Psyche and her compelling story. As the following sample demonstrates, reviewers repeatedly commented on how absorbing and affecting they found the novel: “a powerful, exciting, and thoroughly moving book”
(Globe and Mail
, 31 Oct. 1959), “completely absorbing”
(Ottawa Journal
, 28 Nov. 1959), “a fast-moving intriguing story”
(Penticton Herald
, 5 Dec. 1959), “irresistible”
(Halifax Herald
, 13 May 1960), “read on without interruption until it was finished long after midnight”
(Toronto Daily Star
, 13 Feb.1960), “a book that ruthlessly holds the attention of the reader from first to last” (Mazo de la Roche, on the jacket flap of the 1959 Longmans Canadian, 1960 Putnam American, and 1961 White Lion British hardcover editions), and “Start to read
Psyche
only if you have the time to lose yourself completely!”
(Chicago Tribune
, on the back cover of the 1964 Lancer American paperback).

More than just a good read,
Psyche
revolves around a thought-provoking and still topical question: which factor has the greatest influence on character development, heredity or
environment? In the early 50s, when it was still the norm for families to dine together and in my home it was felt that conversation should focus on topics of “general interest,” the nature/nurture debate came up frequently. No doubt my mother had already followed such dinner-table discussions when she was young. Clearly my grandfather, who as head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto, introduced a new course in 1931-32 that included in its description “the influence of heredity and environment,” had given the matter a great deal of thought. A firm believer in science as philosophy's companion in the quest for knowledge and author of the three-volume
History of Psychology
, George Sidney Brett would have kept abreast of every new finding and point of view.

For Phyllis Brett Young, the subject ultimately led to a novelist's “What if ...?” What if a young child - perhaps two or three years old - was stolen from her parents and grew up not knowing anything about her roots? Would her genes or the events of her childhood and adolescence shape her character and her future? The major clue to the answer lies in Young's choice of title. Like her beautiful namesake from Greek mythology, who wandered the world looking for her lost love, the novel's heroine, Psyche, whose name has come to personify the soul, journeys in search of her physical and psychological identity. Assisting her in this search is the genetic legacy she carries. “In modern parlance,” the author tells us (p. 8), “the ‘psyche' is the most complex and most important component of any given human being. It is the sum of the infinitely varied intangibles which make every living man and woman unique in his or her own right.”

Most readers have seen heredity as the hands-down favourite in the novel. My mother, intelligent and strong-willed, would certainly have found it difficult to imagine herself (or her daughter) as anything but a survivor. Nonetheless, having read and considered everything she could find about the subject, like Psyche's mother she does not discount environment as at least a partial determinant. “I can know - perhaps,” Sharon says of her daughter, “that her chances are better than
even. No more than that” (
p. 99
). Psyche finds kindness and help along the way: from her unofficial foster-parents, Mag and Butch, from the young school inspector with his precious gift, from Bel, the madam with the heart of gold, and last but not least, from the newspaperman, Steve Ryerson; even the egotistical artist, Nick, plays a positive role, opening a door to the outside world and her long-lost beginnings. She also has the early-childhood influence of her biological parents, with “chords of memory, touched from time to time by vaguely familiar harmonies of sound and colour”(
p. 43
).

Psyche's odyssey is played out against a contemporary Canadian setting, deliberately chosen by the author because of two strongly held beliefs: one, that the development of a distinctly Canadian literature was necessary for Canada to become known in other countries, and two, that the novel was paramount to the preservation of our social history. As she says in two of numerous interviews, “We must become interested in ourselves and then we'll interest other people”
(Montreal Gazette
, 13 Jan. 1960) and “What our writers should be doing is reflecting ourselves as we are now”
(Star Weekly Magazine
, 24 Feb. 1962).

Unlike my mother's second novel,
The Torontonians
, first published in 1960 by Longmans Green and reissued in 2007 by McGill-Queen's University Press,
Psyche
contains no dates or place names. Although the central themes in
The Torontonians
(the perils and pitfalls of a materialistic, suburban life, especially for middle-class women in the pre-Betty Friedan 1950s) were, and still are, relevant to any large North American city, the novel is firmly grounded in time and place, with real names used for every location except one neighbourhood and a couple of streets. In
Psyche
, not specifically identifying any of the locations allows the author to take creative liberties with her closely described settings - though readers from outside the country will at the very least recognize them as being in Canada, while most Canadians will recognize Toronto as the inspiration for the noisy, never-sleeping metropolis and Sudbury for the northern mining town. Some may also be able to identify such
areas as Muskoka (site of the kidnapper's rented cottage) and Caledon (the artist's studio). Having lived most of her life in Toronto and vacationed either at her family's cottage on Lake Muskoka or, with her husband and daughter, in Algonquin Park, all of these locations were well known to my mother.