Book Selection Status: READ
Month: October 2011Genre: Fiction Literature
Book of the Month: The Heart Specialist
Author: Claire Holden Rothman
Question source: http://www.bookmovement.com/app/readingguide/view.php?ratings&readingGuideID=18157
Discussion Questions:
White when she discovers it in the McGill museum of pathology. At first she thinks it is reptilian or perhaps amphibian, but eventually she realizes it's human, albeit gravely defective. She publishes an article about it in a scholarly journal, a first step in what will become her celebrated
career in heart medicine. The deformed heart is also the first of a series of clues leading to her missing father, and it figures in her discovery of love at the novel’s end. What does the Howlett Heart evoke for you? What are its functions in the novel?
2. The Heart Specialist tells the story of a young woman trying to enter medicine at a time when
this was nearly impossible. Other characters in the novel are marginalized as well. Agnes’s lab
assistant Jakob Hertzlich is marginalized because of his religion. Her colleague Dugald Rivers is
marginalized due to sexual orientation. These characters are all hurt by a society with overly
rigid definitions of social roles. Which characters in the novel are marginal? Which are
mainstream? What impact does this have on their fates?
3. Vision is a motif in this novel. Agnes White is myopic. George Skerry is constantly removing her
spectacles and rubbing the lenses clean. Honoré Bourret is half‐blind when Agnes finally meets
him at the novel`s end, and shortly after that meeting, Agnes declares, ``I just opened my eyes
for the first time in fifty years. It certainly took me long enough. I had built my life on a dream.``
Discuss vision and its symbolic importance in this book.
4. In section VI of the novel, entitled War, Agnes White laments that she has been forced, due to
her sex, to stay in Montreal, while her male colleagues head off to France to serve in the First
World War. She is deeply jealous of them. After reading letters from Dugald Rivers, however,
her view shifts. ``From that day until I died,`` she declares, ``I would offer up prayers of thanks
for the good fortune of having been born a woman.`` Agnes White has conflicting feelings about
womanhood. Would you characterize her as a feminist?
5. Agnes White pursues a career in medicine in large part as an attempt to enter the world of her
missing father. The father quest is an archetypal story form, found in ancient myth and legend.
In the Greek myths, for instance, Theseus goes in search of his missing father, Aegeus, and in the
process proves himself a hero. Likewise, young Telemachus searches for his missing father
Odysseus, and proves his own courage and worth. Discuss the ways in which The Heart Specialist
is a father quest, with a twist.
6. Love is hard to achieve in this novel filled with hearts. Is there a successful love relationship
here?
7. The Heart Specialist was inspired by one of Canada`s first female physicians, Doctor Maude
Abbott. Does this fact change your approach to the novel? How?
8. The act of story‐telling is important in The Heart Specialist. Twice, Agnes White recounts the
story of her life: the first time to William Howlett in Baltimore, and the second to George Skerry
by the river in Saint Andrew`s East, right at the novel`s end. Why are these two scenes
important in the novel?
9. Compare the two sisters, Laure and Agnes. One picked a more traditional female life, the other
charted new waters. What were their fates? Now add George Skerry into the mix. What kinds of
options for happiness and fulfillment did women have in the society depicted in this novel?
10. This novel opens with death, and death seems to follow Agnes White wherever she goes. In
part, this is because of her profession. But could the death be metaphoric as well as literal?
Must Agnes White die in this novel, to be figuratively reborn?
3 comments:
Thank you for the discussion questions as our book club in NYC is also currently reading this great book.
Janet
1. The Howlett Heart functions as a guide post in the novel - it serves during specific points to lead Agnes closer to her father. Almost every significant interaction regarding the heart gives her another clue. I don't know that it evoked anything for me personally - I always find it a miracle how we are created and how many of us are created without serious defect so inevitably there are some of us that have defects. It is amazing what they are able to fix today versus in the time period of the book.
2. I think Agnes, Jakob, Dugald, Laure, and Miss Skerry are all marginalized. They all fall outside normal mainstream conventions for that time period - which was much more strict and less forgiving of differences. Dr. Howlett, Dr. Clarke, the other doctors at McGill are all more mainstream characters. I think those characters that are marginalized have more difficult lives.
3. Agnes doesn't see clearly until she is given glasses at school and then a whole new world is opened to her - a world of possibilities. She chooses to build a dream world by looking at Howlett and her father unclearly until the end of the book, which is what she means by her statement. Her father can't see at the end of his life when he chooses not to confirm that Agnes is his daughter. He has put blinders on and lived a life while ignoring his past. Different characters in the book choose to see what they want - their vision is an outside reflection of how they are choosing to see the world around them.
4. I think that for her time, Agnes could be considered a feminist. She wanted women to have the right to go to medical school and be doctors. She told Huntley that she wasn't "taking" her sister, but she was going of her own free will - insinuating that women had a right to choose where they were going.
5. Agnes is searching for her father - it is a quest of decades and she is always searching for clues and hoping that he will reach out to her. In the meantime she becomes successful and builds her own career. It has a twist because Agnes is female and her father won't claim her as his daughter when she shows up at his door.
6. Yes - I think in the end Agnes and Jakob will have a successful love relationship.
7. No, it doesn't change my approach to the novel, but I do find it intriguing.
8. By telling her story to Howlett she gains a benefactor which allows her to become a success in her own right. By telling her story to Skerry she gains closure and acceptance...and I think she realizes the opportunity with Jakob.
9. Laure was traditional and chose to be with a man who loved her, but it was too much for her and lived the end of her life with help. Agnes had goals and dream and broke through convention to do what she wanted to do - even though the path was difficult and had a lot of curves. There were only so many options for women at that point as given in the novel - wife, governess, nurse, (doctor - although this was next to impossible) teacher...as a woman you really weren't allowed to many acceptable roles in society.
10. Yes, Agnes has to give up the dream of her father in order to find a life for herself.
1. I felt as if Agnes needed to unlock its mysteries to contextualize and make peace with her life. I also saw the heart as a guidepost, a point around which the major incidents of the novel orbit.
2. Mainstream: Dr. Clarke, Dr. Howlett, and Huntley Stewart; Marginalized: Laure, Agnes, Kitty Howlett, and George. Marginalizes characters have it just as rough as the main, although Agnes & Jakob and George make out all right in the end.
3. Agnes’ narrow vision prevents her from seeing Howlett’s manipulation and Jakob’s love, but it also allows her to create new female roles. Like many extraordinary gifts, it has positive and negative implications.
4. If by “feminist,” we mean a woman who believes in a woman’s right to fully actualize without being held back by men and their interference, then Agnes is a flaming feminist, and her audacity is inspirational. Conflicting feelings about womanhood stem from the fact that we wear so many costumes in a lifetime that we feel almost schizophrenic. Against the backdrop of her life theretofore, Agnes’ above statement encapsulates the dualities of feminism – women want to be all we can be without forfeiting the privileges of our gender.
5. Agnes lives with an underlying belief that her father’s erasure is a wrong that needs righting, and her life’s choices reflect that. Although she thinks of her father incessantly, not until he repudiates her in France did I realize how much of a father quest this book was. My heart ached from then on because I felt as if her entire life up until that point had been a waste. And she articulates this perfectly when she says to Jakob, “The things I used to be certain of have suddenly ceased to be.” Yes, I was quite moved by the novel’s dénouement.
6. George and Agnes love each other deeply. If not for George’s encouragement and instruction, Agnes may have died a slow, painful death in a traditional female role. Grandmother, Laure and Agnes form a circle of love that sustains them all until the former two pass away, and George finds a hearth and a home with the three women.
7. I knew that from the novel jacket, but it doesn’t change how I read the novel.
8. Howlett’s one-word response to Agnes’ story binds her to him because she receives his “praise” as though it were coming by proxy from her father; I doubt this is what Howlett intends yet he uses her need for him to advance both their careers. In contrast, when she tells her story to George, she has had the time and experiences to see her life in a different light. She doesn’t seek approval or understanding but in receiving it freely from George, she releases her past and finds the courage to face a future she has yet to create.
9. Women had few options then. Laure does what is expected of a beautiful girl, but in the end, she dies without her husband at her side and at the hand of mental, emotional, and physical illness. Agnes carves out a path for herself, or so she believes, and has to begin anew when it disintegrates in her hands. George seems to have gained much from the novel’s start to end even though her situation has changed the least. In finding a home with the White Ladies, she finds a place where she can be herself.
10. Agnes must indeed die in this novel and her death is beautiful. Her father’s rejection is the best thing that happens to her in the story, and without it, she would always be searching, never settled or satisfied. Now that the question of gaining her father’s acceptance has been answered with a resounding “no,” she can expel his ghost and figure out who she is, apart from his daughter and lone loyal cheerleader, and create a life that matters to her.
Post a Comment