I wrote in my post on Kathleen Sully’s Canaille that she was an unstudied novelist — sometimes clumsy in her prose and style but also free of many of the conventions of more mainstream writers. In Shade of Eden, she amply demonstrates that one set of conventions she felt free to ignore was that of sexuality. Without using any of the terms, she introduces homosexuality, lesbianism, even polyamory into her story — and shows no concern with any of it. If any moral principle applies for Sully, it is simply that love is better expressed than frustrated.
To demonstrate, she plays out a set of variations on this theme. There are Bette and Eddie, married some years and with a young son, Sandy, who have reached the stage where each realizes the other is not the perfect match. There are the Patchetts, married longer and irrevocably entrenched in mutual contempt. There is Cliff, brought into the situation by Eddie in hopes of putting Bette’s fidelity to the test. There is Patsy, an old friend of Jean Patchett’s who proves to be carrying a torch for her. And there is Miss Hinks, one of Patsy’s co-workers at the local department store, for whom any opportunities for love have passed by.
These characters she weaves in and out as if performing a series of chemical experiments: how will she react with him (or her)? Some reactions are almost lethal. Others fizzle without effect. And some produce surprising results. Bette, Eddie, Cliff, and Sandy prove a better combination than any other set of twos or threes:
They existed in unity. Their blood — each felt its pulsing — seemed to flow round their circle, into and out of each, one stream through four hearts; their thoughts were all the same colour and texture; their spirit was one. Four souls had found a rent in the fabric around Eden and had crept in past the bearer of the flaming sword.
“Or had the bearer looked the other way?” This is the real world, after all, and specifically England in the 1950s. This delicate construction must collapse, of course, and not all the pieces will get picked up. Finding and expressing love does not guarantee lasting results. It’s just as likely to turn out like that stuff you squirt into a flat tire to get to the nearest gas station.
Shade of Eden proves once again that if Kathleen Sully has been forgotten by English literary history, it may well have been because she was something that English literature hadn’t seen for centuries: a naïf. Wikipedia states that “naïve art does not necessarily evince a distinct cultural context or tradition. Naïve art is recognized, and often imitated, for its childlike simplicity and frankness.” Although this was written about visual art, it may offer the best way of understanding Kathleen Sully’s remarkable oeuvre.