The Invisible Companion: A Critical Study of Joan Lavis MacDonald

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to establish Joan Lavis MacDonald (1871–1962) as the intellectual and philosophical companion of her spouse, Canadian painter J.E.H. MacDonald. Her journals and articles are central resources in this reconstruction of the life and circumstances of a woman living in southern Ontario, Canada at the end of the Victorian-era. By the dawn of the twentieth century, urbanization, industrialization, opportunities for women to pursue post-secondary education, and social reformations found Joan Lavis at a point of conflict between the newly-available educational opportunities and traditions of homemaking, and the thesis is divided accordingly. Although the points of conflict are examined separately, the thesis nonetheless affirms Joan Lavis MacDonald's ability to combine the two by drawing on cultural and art movements like transcendentalism and the arts and crafts movement. The thesis moves beyond the male-dominated sphere in which the Group of Seven operated to examine Joan Lavis MacDonald as a contributor, and in turn influenced by, the distinctly Canadian domestic environment that permeates J.E.H. MacDonald and the Group of Seven’s insistence that nature is synonymous with Canaian-ness. This creates additional space for women in a national history intertwined with ideals of masculinity that are in turn fabricated by men, and studies an important art movement from outside the mythologized individuals and locations that have become indivisible from it. Thus, the thesis also creates a new avenue by which J.E.H. MacDonald may be studied and understood.