Fair’s Fair “For Book Lovers”

Georgina Pope

Timothy Findley’s excessive use of naming: Dora

Given Findley’s excessive amount of naming and his many references and examples concerning naming, the associations for a nurse named Dora from Kirshenbaum (“Cherry Flowers” in English) are numerous. In Pilgrim, Findley includes the name in several forms—Dora Henkel, Dora, Sister Dora, and sometimes Schwester Dora. If one places the last letter of the name first and adds the “e” that the French are fond of adding to the end of names (as Lady Quartermaine might do) the word becomes “adore.” (Recall that Lady Quartermaine mentions the addition of “e” to various French words early on in the text.) The name also recalls the Spanish prefix “dora,” which means “one who serves.” One might also note that Dora is a shortened form of Dorothea, from the Greek meaning “gift of God.”

Lest the reader fail to see “Dora” as having any significance other than as a name, chapter 14 of book 1 is dominated by this character: “Dora was leading the Countess […].” “Dora Henkel enjoyed Tatiana Blavinskeya’s company […].” “Dora was forced to admit […].” “Dora’ s parents had […]” “The moon had always fascinated Dora” “In Dora’s case” “Dora stood back […]” “Dora proceeded” “Dora’s hand” (84-88).

When readers become attentive to the repetition of the name Dora, the plethora of meanings it displays, and the parts of the word, they enter into the schizophrenic thought process. Louis Sass in Madness and Modernism notes, “The schizophrenic often seems aware of the vast number of possibilities, but instead of focusing on only one […] takes all the possibilities into simultaneous consideration” (129).

Dora, in later chapters, becomes Sister Dora. She is like a sister to Tatiana Blavinskeya, and there is, as well, the association with the “nursing sisters” of the past and present. At another point, Findley writes, “Sister Dora drifts by” (220). Indeed, she is like a ghost who floats in from another century. In later chapters, Findley portrays Dora as carrying medications now outdated and seldom used, but quite acceptable in the nineteenth century. “Sister Dora always kept a sedative standing by—a vial of ether, another of laudanum” (285). She turns from being the loving person, who is “other,” is lesbian (loves T.B.) and who is caring and kind at the beginning of the novel, into a rigid authoritarian nurse who carries medicine that was long ago replaced by newer and more effective medications.

In the final part of Pilgrim, Dora becomes “Schwester Dora”; the reader’s image of her shifts again. Findley uses the phrase “Schwester Dora” many times in the last section of Pilgrim. “Shwester” is also the name for a nursing sister, and the term recalls one of the nurses in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. (Findley mentions and quotes Mann’s work a number of times throughout Pilgrim.) There are many unnamed nurses in Magic Mountain, including the “corridor nurse” (107), “a private nurse” (312), and a guest dressed like a nurse (326), but Mann also mentions Sister Berta, Alfreda Schildknecht (291). Mann used her name sparingly, and she appears “bored” (303) and does not have the love and devotion that Dora, a much more active nurse, displays.

Unlike the very present Dora, Mann’s nurses appear as shadows in the background. Linked to the movement from the doctor-centered to the patient-centered text is a foregrounding of the role of the nurse. Findley’s nurse, Dora, is thus more active than the Mann’s nurses. (What I am indicating here is that most medical novels up until the 1980’s focused on the Doctor, whereas texts such as Findley’s Pilgrim and Ondaatje’s The English Patient place the patient at the center.) In doing so, the nurse-character then takes a more prominent position in novels that focus upon illness and medical issues.

Findley mentions Dora’s name so many times, and he adds so many extensions to it, that readers might think every mention of Dora refers to some previous Dora forgotten in the annals of history. Although there is no sure way to know how many Doras or Dora-like characters Findley is alluding to, it is possible to discern at least one of them. When Findley used the phrase “in Dora’s case,” he makes an intentional allusion to Ida Bauer, one of Freud’s students and earliest subjects. Freud wrote a case study about Ida, in which he used “Dora” as a pseudonym for his patient. The study was published under the title “Fragment of an Analysis of a case of Hysteria (Dora)” (Davis). (Note too that the character “Wolf” in Pilgrim recalls Freud’s celebrated case study of the “Wolfman.”) The play on the name contributes partly to the game of naming—the leitmotif of naming. It also serves as a further example of schizophrenic thinking, where endless associations of words and a plethora of meanings often occur, and where past and present become fused.

Works cited:

• Findley, Timothy. Pilgrim. Toronto: Harper, 1999.
• Sass, Louis. Madness and Modernism: Insanity in the Light of Modern Art, Literature and Thought. New York: Basic, 1992.

Copyright © Yvonne Trainer, Ph.D. To use this material, please contact Yvonne Trainer at moc.riaFsriaF@reniarty.