Swiss Sonata

Swiss Sonata is a 1938 novel by the Canadian author Gwethalyn Graham. Set in 1936, on the eve of World War II, the novel follows Vicky Morrison through her last days at a Swiss finishing school with fellow students from all over Europe and North America. Swiss Sonata won the Governor-General’s Award, as did Graham’s follow-up, 1944’s Earth and High Heaven. Out of print for many years, Swiss Sonata was reissued in 2004 amid renewed interest in Graham’s contribution to Canadian literature. As well as a celebrated novelist, Graham was also an activist, outspoken in her opposition to anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice.

Set over three days in 1936, its three sections are entitled “Thursday,” “Friday,” and “Saturday.” The first section begins by introducing the Pensionnat les Ormes, the finishing school on the Swiss Riviera where the whole novel takes place: “Pensionnat les Ormes stands on the hill which rises above Lausanne so that it seems to overlook the world. Beyond the town is the Lake of Geneva; beyond the lake, the mountains of France. Somewhere across that stretch of water which separates Switzerland from France, somewhere behind those high hills are the Atlantic, America, and England [...]” The Pensionnat is almost a character in the novel and is made to stand allegorically for the world order, which, in 1936, is in the process of breaking down.

The school’s student body—all women, ranging in age from their early teens to their early twenties—is similarly international. The headmistress, Mlle Amélie Tourain, believes that her school’s purpose is to foster a League-of-Nations internationalism. However, tensions are currently running high, as all Europe waits to learn the extent of Hitler’s ambitions. Within the school, the German pupils are at loggerheads—some believe in Hitler’s vision, others are already suffering under it—while the pupils of other nationalities fear the outbreak of another cataclysmic war.



However, most of the time, the girls’ attention is preoccupied with another set of tensions: the tensions of adolescence and young womanhood. An unidentified thief is stealing money from the girls, while French-Canadian convent girl, Rosalie Garcenot has taken to her bed, refusing to rise or to eat. Vicky Morrison—wise beyond her years—tries to soothe tensions and restore Rosalie’s lust for life, and in so doing, she earns the animosity of Mlle Tourain, who resents that Vicky seems to understand and manage the girls better than she does herself. Vicky has an almost uncanny ability to “efface herself,” so that people trust her and reveal themselves to her. The friction between Vicky and the headmistresses increases when Mlle Tourain asks Vicky to reveal some of the girls’ secrets and Vicky refuses.

While these conflicts rumble in the background, much of the book’s foreground is taken up with philosophical dialogues between the girls on nationality, prejudice, war, coming-of-age, and femininity. The novel’s most trenchant philosophizing is on the oppression of women:

“‘I wonder why it is that women are not supposed to be capable of friendship and loyalty to such an extent as men? They’re always pictured like Kipling’s cat, walking alone, when it comes right down to it, and when they change their environment…I mean after they get married, or fall in love with an unusual man or something, then their friendships alter.’



“‘Shakespeare knew better,’ said Vicky.

“‘I know, but he lived four hundred years ago and since then people have forgotten. I guess it’s because no one ever takes the trouble to find out about us. It’s so much easier to talk about men as people, and women as women…lumping us altogether, and referring to the female sex as though it were an enigmatic and too, too baffling object. We’re supposed to be all alike underneath…men aren’t, they’re permitted individuality, when we’re not.  We differ in degree, but not in kind, apparently.’”

The conflicts come to a head when Vicky supplies cigarettes to the Anderson sisters from England. The sisters are caught smoking and they finger Vicky. Mlle Tourain is delighted to find her chance to humiliate Vicky.



However, Mlle Tourain’s satisfaction is short-lived. Vicky is too preoccupied to be humiliated, as she desperately tries to save the life of Rosalie Garcenot, who is wasting away in bed. Finally, while Vicky is away answering the headmistress’s summons, Rosalie hauls herself from her bed and crawls onto the landing, crying out for Vicky. She tumbles down the stairs and dies—perhaps by accident, although we learn that her final thought was of a beloved nun who committed suicide by jumping from a high stair.

In the book’s final section, as Vicky grieves her countrywoman, the girls begin to look to their lives after school. Some girls confront a deep sense of abandonment as they contemplate a return to their families:

“Do you send your kids to boarding-school for nine months of the year and to camp for the other three if you want to have them around? No, you don’t.”



Other girls have graver futures to confront. German Anna von Landenburg learns that her father has been arrested and is likely to be executed.

The novel’s final mystery is resolved when Vicky learns that the thief is her roommate Ina Barron. Ina confesses that she took the money only because she wanted to buy Vicky a present. Vicky goes to Mlle Tourain to plead Ina’s case for her.

Finally, Mlle Tourain is able to recognize Vicky’s virtue, and they are reconciled. Mlle Tourain’s pride is so far overcome that she asks Vicky whether she can offer the headmistress any wisdom to console her for the death of Rosalie. Vicky replies:



“Rosalie [...] saw her mother in the man’s arms. It was, of course, the most horrible kind of shock. She came gradually to a point afterwards where she believed that all life was rooted in evil and ugliness…it was the scarlet touch, which was unendurable to her. She did not want to live. I think perhaps it was as well she died, for she had nothing to go on…no sense of the beauty of ordinary human things.”

The novel ends on a cautiously optimistic note as Vicky and her rich American friend Theodora leave for Singapore together.