Penguin no. 963: Trio by Dorothy Baker

     'Now that I think about it,' he said, 'I'm tired of having people tell me that I haven't read anything because I read translations. I know as much about The Magic Mountain as anyone whoever read it in German.
     'I've got a private theory,' he said direct to Mrs Girard, letting her in on something, 'that the cult for originals is a form of National Socialism - nothing impure, nothing adulterated, nothing translated.'
     He nodded his head emphatically. 'It's a kind of evil intellectual snobbery, and I'm glad I thought of it. Now I don't ever have to read The Magic Mountain in German.'

Trio is the story of three people, two of them rivals for the affection of the third, and it is told in only three chapters, all of them fairly dramatic. This unusual structure signals it as another novel which must have been initially conceived of as a play. We are witness to the events of two distinct days: the first is the afternoon on which Janet Logan meets Ray MacKenzie, the young man who will change her life. The second is the evening when she tries to end her friendship with Pauline Maury, with whom she has been living for the past four years, in order to take up with MacKenzie. Janet must choose between the two, and from MacKenzie's point of view the solution to Janet's problem is simple: he and Janet love each other and they should therefore marry, but things are far more complicated for Janet. Her story is revealed through the dialogue, which seems mostly a mixture of conflict and confession.

This is the 1940s and Janet is a Ph.D. candidate at an unnamed Californian university, although a reference to eucalyptus trees perhaps suggests the setting as the University of California, Berkeley. She is studying French under the supervision of Maury, the first female to be awarded a chair at the University. Their relationship is an unusually close one, and it is perhaps understandable that Janet was her enthusiastic protégée at first. Maury is from Paris, and stylish, well-dressed and confidant, and knowledgeable about art and literature, all attributes which Janet lacks. She has allowed the older woman to take control, and to instruct and fashion her according to her whims, and through this process she has become almost entirely dependent. She is unhappy, though, and longs to escape the influence, but lacks the willpower to act.

But breaking the connection with Maury will not be easily done, for Maury has made plans for the pair of them, and refuses to consider revising them. She clings to Janet, fighting her every attempt to leave, and displaying an intense jealously in response to the developing relationship with MacKenzie. Because of the student/teacher relationship she has many weapons at her disposal: with a word she can end Janet's academic career and prevent her from ever finding employment. At other times she uses emotional blackmail, feeding Janet's sense of guilt by reminding her of everything she has been given, or plays upon her pity. This overt manipulation has been going on for years, until Janet lacks the ability to assert herself and retake control of her life. This is a professor as the enemy but in the guise of a benefactor, feeding upon her student's vitality and destroying her in the process, and demonstrating again that what manifests as benevolence may actually be a desire for power and control.

The story seems more than a study of an abusive relationship, for it questions the whole nature of academic life. It can seem as if Maury's real transgression has been luring Janet into the insular dead end that is academia, with Ray MacKenzie representing an alternative. He has travelled the world and learnt from his experiences. He knows how to think independently, and has confidence in his ideas, feeling no need to conform with any academic viewpoint. He would seem to represent not only an escape from Maury, but also an escape from what is presented as a limiting academic world.

The complication is that there are suggestions that Pauline Maury and Janet Logan's relationship may have been a sexual one, but this seems almost incidental, more a symbol of Maury's enticement and degradation of Janet, than any exploration of female homosexuality within academic life. It is perhaps being used as an example of the ultimate corruption, and to show that there was no part of the student's life which was left uninvaded.

Perhaps the story was a little melodramatic, but this was probably inevitable given its unusual structure. I particularly enjoyed her portrayal of Ray MacKenzie, who seemed a wonderfully forthright and free-thinking character, though perhaps he is a little disappointing in the end, but then his viewpoint is inevitably derived from the 1940s world in which he lives.  There was a simplicity and a clarity in the writing which I really enjoyed. It was interesting to read that Dorothy Baker, together with her husband, rewrote Trio as a play, which received mixed reviews. It was eventually withdrawn when the theatre's license was threatened after complaints from 16 Protestant clergyman and a former Justice of the Domestic Relations Court, for clearly in the 1940s there was little sympathy with homosexual themes, no matter how incidental.