Psyche

by Phyllis Brett Young, Nathalie Cooke (Introduction), Suzanne Morton (Introduction)

A child who is the centre of her parents' life, is torn away in the darkness from her comfortable urban home and left to grow up in the barren hills of northern mining country. Over time, recognizing that she has outgrown the kindly but uneducated couple who raise her, she begins a relationship with an artist who initiates her into the wider world and adulthood. Psyche is the gripping story of a mother's undying faith in her child's survival and the child's remarkable resilience as she embarks on a dramatic journey of self-discovery through art, education, and interaction with a varied cast of colourful characters. This 1959 international bestseller focuses on issues of character and environment in an unconventional coming-of-age story that draws the reader into an exploration of still decidedly modern themes: the search for biological roots and identity, and the question of what most influences that identity - nature or nurture?

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Also published under pseudonym Kendal Young

Phyllis Brett Young was an internationally bestselling Canadian novelist.

Born in Toronto, Young was the daughter of Marion and George Sidney Brett, the latter a noted philosopher who wrote the first English-language history of psychology. After some time studying interior decorating at the Ontario College of Art, she married her longtime sweetheart, Douglas Young, and became a wife and mother.

As her daughter Valerie would later explain, her mother was a “product of a culture in which married women only went to work under extreme circumstances.” It was not until Valerie was a teen, and her husband secured work for a branch of the UN in Geneva, that Young found the time to evolve beyond short stories and write her first novel. Dinner-table discussions of nature versus nurture became Psyche, the story of a girl who struggles to find herself after being kidnapped from her wealthy parents and abandoned in a poor mining town. When Douglas urged her to submit the manuscript to publishers — something Phyllis was reluctant to do — her hobby become a career.

In just ten years (1959-1969), Phyllis Brett Young wrote four novels (Psyche, The Torontonians, Undine, and A Question of Judgment), a memoir about her summers in Muskoka (Anything Can Happen!), and a thriller experiment under the never-secret pseudonym Kendal Young (The Ravine). It was estimated that her first three books reached ten million readers throughout the world, making her one of the rare mid-century Canadian scribes to earn world recognition.

Young excelled at capturing the life of women between and beyond two World Wars, and her work spoke to mid-century womanhood before the rise of feminism. She was also a proud Canadian who strove to capture the cosmopolitan evolution of “Toronto the Good.” The Torontonians explored womanhood within a city caught between decorum, nationalism, and change, and Young fought against publishers who insisted that the novel lose its explicit Toronto-ness, dubbing it Gift of Time, The Gift of Time, and The Commuters. As she told the Ottawa Citizen, “I write because I love Canada and I wish more and more people would write about Canada as it is today.”

Ill health and familial obligations ended Young’s successful career. Never one for the spotlight, her work faded into obscurity. Phyllis Brett Young passed away in 1996, at the age of 82.

Eleven years later, the spotlight returned when McGill University posthumously republished two of her works, Psyche and The Torontonians.

Reviews

[Martha☀ · Rating 3 out of 5]

What book made an impact on you as a young reader? That was the topic of discussion with some friends recently and, as a result, the reason I read Psyche again. In my mid-teens I read this novel and it was my first foray into non-assigned reading. I loved it, but I couldn't quite recall why.
When i read it this time, I enjoyed it, but not very much. It is a busy plot, with many twists but the characters are very false and flat. It is kind of like reading a version of Cinderella. Psyche floats through her life, waiting to be rescued and eventually rescue comes. Her beauty and her 'strength of inherent character' make her far superior to the hard-working losers who take her in without question and care for her throughout her life. The author seems to look down on anyone who is overweight or who holds a job requiring any type of labour, regardless of the depth of their kindness.
As a teenager, I apparently liked stories with defined black and white characters and fairytale-ish plot lines. Now I appreciate more realistic characterisation with more believable stories, in all regards.

[Myra Breckinridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Psyche is a Cinderella story told by a woman raised by a mid-century philosopher father interested in that era's nature/nurture psychology. A girl, Psyche, is kidnapped from a wealthy home, lost in the woods, and left to form her identity from her inner resolve and/or the people who help her along the way. Though dated, and obviously a first novel, it still works because it's a story of resilience that doesn't rely on saviours and princes, but one woman's continual resolve.

The irony of Brett Young's literary psychology is that it speaks much more to the psychology of class than nature/nurture. It's fascinating to watch a writer speak with such thoughtfulness about one element of life while being completely blinded to her thoroughly mid-century views of class. It becomes both a weakness and strength of the novel, undercutting her intent while offering a really interesting look at a battle of that era's introspection and ignorance.

[Grasshopper Bot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe I was intrigued by the storyline. Would nature win over nurture? Dated literature in the sense the lady needed rescuing. However the protagonist did stand her ground and play the soiled deck of cards meted out to her with aplomb. Some sensuous scenes dealt with finesse.