Morag Gunn's story is a good look into a condition that is commonly referred to now as intersectionality. By outlining through the plot Gunn's different relationships to certain parts of her community, she highlights the frustrations that come from being an independent, intellectual woman in Canada during the 70's and even before.
By showing Gunn's husband, Brooke, as a controlling, un-empathetic person, Laurence highlights the inter-gender problem that exists in the west, where women are regarded as second class citizens. By way of analogy, Gunn's affair with Tonnerre can be viewed as an attempt to link that disenfranchisement to a historical disenfranchisement, the brutal colonization of the land. This leaves her with new myths to help her understand her plight.
But the most heartbreaking relationship is the strained relationship between Laurence and Pique. This relationship highlights the most frustrating part of the plight of women—the loneliness that it causes between women who should be able to support one another.
Gunn is shown to be thoroughly human—not a saint, but not a villain either. Nevertheless, she still ends up suffering, and the reason the novel was so well received might have something to do with the fact that Laurence manages to tell the frustrations of social mistreatment, but without appealing to victimhood in the process. Laurence describes these unfairnesses as unfair, without relying on a sense of bitterness to say those things and mean them.
