SOURCE: Schaub, Danielle. “Structural Patterns of Alienation and Disjunction: Mavis Gallant's Firmly-Structured Stories.” Canadian Literature 136 (spring 1993): 45-57.

In the following essay, Schaub discusses the stories “About Geneva,” “Orphans' Progress,” and “My Heart Is Broken” in terms of a textual correlation between structure and theme that betrays disjunction rather than harmony.

Gallant once remarked that “style is inseparable from structure” (“What Is Style?” 6), so that both the expression and presentation of events, feelings, thoughts and conversations convey the message of fictional pieces. The correlation between presentation and message would seem to imply that firm textual strategies accompany accounts of well-structured lives. Yet, in Mavis Gallant's fiction, firm structural patterns frame disjunction. The main characters of her firmly-structured stories turn out to be totally alienated from their human environment where they lead marginal lives. Their marginality confirms O'Connor's observation that “in the short story, there is this sense of outlawed...