The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White

First published: 1973

Type of work: Psychological realism

Time of work: The first seventy years of the twentieth century

Locale: Sydney, Australia, and Brumby Island, near Australia

Principal Characters:

• Elizabeth Hunter, the protagonist, an old, dying woman
• The Princesse de Lascabanes (nee Dorothy Hunter), Elizabeth’s daughter
• Sir Basil Hunter, Elizabeth’s son, a famous actor
• Mary de Santis, Elizabeth’s night nurse
• Flora Manhood, Elizabeth’s day nurse
• Lotte Lippmann, Elizabeth’s cook
• Arnold Wyburd, Elizabeth’s solicitor

The Novel

The formerly beautiful, still wealthy and powerful Elizabeth Hunter lies dying in her Sydney mansion. She receives around-the-clock care from three devoted nurses and is doted upon by her cook and her solicitor. As ruthless as she has been in her life, Elizabeth still commands the admiration and respect of those about her. She even has the grudging esteem of her children, both of whom fly in from abroad to share their mother’s final days and, incidentally, her estate. The novel relates the story of Elizabeth’s life by juxtaposing the present to her own memories of the past. Along the way, the narrative also reveals details about each of the other main characters. How these lives connect makes for an intricately textured fiction.

Elizabeth has always had a voracious appetite for life, one she continues to cultivate even as she lies infirm in bed. Her life, as she recalls it, has been filled to the brim with beautiful clothes and jewelry, fine food, and elegant surroundings, yet she has always been greedy for more. Elizabeth craves sensual gratification of every kind: “I shan’t feel happy till I’ve tasted everything there is to taste and l don’t intend to refuse what is unpleasant-that is experience of another kind.” She also has a formidable will to survive, which is what keeps her alive during the course of the novel, and which she uses throughout her career to dominate others.

Elizabeth’s children accuse her of having been selfish and of having withheld love from them; Elizabeth herself recalls with remorse how she hurt her adoring husband by her numerous affairs. Still, Elizabeth has some redeeming qualities: Intuitive and insightful, she often startles people with her un canny perceptions of them and what they are thinking. Toward the end of her days, she generously bestows jewels and money on those who attend her. She becomes more humane, striving to understand others and to detect a pattern to her own life. Such generosity of spirit arises out of the central episode in Elizabeth’s life: her humbling experience as lonely witness to a tropical storm.

The details about Elizabeth’s life are revealed gradually. Sometimes a remark from one of her children or a nurse will trigger a memory in her; often she becomes confused and wavers between memories, dreams, and reality. Eventually, she touches upon the important moments in her long, eventful life, beginning with her childhood and progressing through her marriage to Alfred Hunter, her becoming a mother to Basil and Dorothy, her separation from her husband, her discovery that she loves him even while attending to his slow, painful death by cancer, and her retirement in Sydney. She recalls the experiences of a lifetime and presents them in retrospect, continually examining them in the light of the present and in terms of her transforming experience in the eye of the storm. All of her memories gradually build to this most significant moment in her life: Left alone on Brumby Island, she emerges unscathed from an encounter with the still center of a hurricane, having learned much about herself and her place in the scheme of things.

The novel also documents the lives of those who care for the grand old dame. Lotte Lippmann, her German-Jewish cook who carries the guilty burden of having escaped the ovens at Auschwitz, is keenly devoted to her demanding employer and sometimes dances cabaret-style in order to entertain her. Mary de Santis, the quiet, introspective night nurse, reveres Elizabeth Hunter for her wit and wisdom. Mary deliberately seeks out Sir Basil Hunter in order to protest his and his sister Dorothy the Princesse de Lascabanes’s plan to have their mother committed to an old-age home. Flora Manhood, the pretty young nurse who specializes in applying Elizabeth’s makeup, both resents and admires her difficult patient. Bored with her boyfriend, Flora seduces Basil in the hope of becoming pregnant with a Hunter grandchild and cashing in on some financial support. Dull, faithful Arnold Wyburd continues to visit his client and former lover Elizabeth as both longtime friend and legal adviser. Despite her declining physical condition, Elizabeth can still embarrass Arnold by occasionally alluding to their one brief indiscretion of years before.

Dorothy and Basil also come in for much attention. Both resent their mother’s lack of love for them and both eagerly await her death, Dorothy because she lives in genteel poverty, having separated from her wealthy French husband, and Basil because he wants to stage some new plays in order to restore his reputation and self-esteem as an actor. Dorothy is childless, frigid, and disdainful of Australian society; Basil is egotistical, impotent, and lacking in self-respect. Brother and sister dislike each other but plot together in order to place their mother in the Thorogood Village and thus hasten her end. As usual, though, the old lady has her own plans: She foils them all by willing her own demise.

The Characters

Elizabeth Hunter is a complex, vividly portrayed character. Patrick White presents her from various perspectives-her own and those of her employees and children. She woos everyone with her wit and beauty, yet she also frequently hurts others. Callous and cruel but also capable of being generous and brutally honest about herself-she readily admits to all of her foibles-Elizabeth embodies the whole range of virtues and flaws to which humankind is subject. Furthermore, she possesses understanding and great powers of perception; whether turned toward herself or others, these attributes can be either helpful or discomfiting. Although she has experienced more than one person’s usual allotment in life, Elizabeth has not done so frivolously; she drains people and events to their dregs. Despite her many failings, Elizabeth remains a sympathetic character, while those whom she has perhaps most wronged-Dorothy and Basil-never inspire much sympathy. Both are shallow as well as flawed; their mother attains greatness because she risks so much in life, while they remain content with the superficial.

Elizabeth is a successful character probably because she is so well-rounded, so physically present. White focuses principally on the unpleasant details of her illness and impending death. Her once flawless body now tends to betray her: She wets the bed during Dorothy’s first visit to see her, Arnold overhears his sleeping client expel gas, the nurses are required to assist their feeble patient to the commode, and the old woman has to have her meals spoon-fed to her. The contrast seems all the greater when Elizabeth’s memories reveal her former glamour. As an aging creature, she is pitied and bossed around, the victim of what she herself once practiced on others. Old age and death are the great equalizers, suggests White: Youth of the body is impermanent and unreliable, only on loan to those who possess it.

White also explores characters by focusing on particular aspects of them and associating specific objects with them. For example, he contrasts the brilliant blue of Elizabeth’s eyes with certain of her gems: The metaphor recurs when she is alone in the storm and likens herself to a flaw at the center of some bright jewel. Similarly, Mary de Santis is associated with roses, Basil with a gristly meat pie, and the Wyburds with soft, bland food. White also plays with the literal and figurative implications of Elizabeth’s extraordinary vision: Although almost blind, she is still credited with being able to see-or discern-clearly. The figure extends even to the title: The Eye of the Storm implies that Elizabeth’s own eye is but part of the greater eye-that of the hurricane. Further, “eye” can be heard as “I” or even “aye”-that is, the eye of the storm represents a life-affirming experience for the individual. Vision, light, jewels, and food are connected patterns of imagery which comment indirectly upon characters.

Critical Context

The Eye of the Storm was White’s ninth novel; in the same year in which it was published, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. It shares the length and complexity of its precursor, The Vivisector (1970), and, like the earlier novel, concentrates on the considerable talents of one main character. A Fringe of Leaves (1976), which followed The Eye of the Storm, also focuses on a central female character who loses and then finds herself as the result of a storm and a sojourn on an island off the coast of Australia. Unlike Theodora Goodman of The Aunt’s Story (1948) and Mary Hare of Riders in the Chariot (1961), Ellen Roxburgh of A Fringe of Leaves and Elizabeth Hunter of The Eye of the Storm are women of strong heterosexual appetite who relish every kind of experience. Elizabeth, however, remains unique as the selfish, domineering mother figure, although echoes of her are also found in Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray of Memoirs of Many in One (1986).

The Eye of the Storm remains an outstanding example of White’s virtuosity as a writer. The novel is intricately composed, ranging freely among the various characters’ consciousnesses, through different locations, and from past to present time. Style changes with point of view, and White introduces a variety of literary techniques: He is particularly deft at creating dream sequences for Elizabeth and for Basil. The book’s triumph, though, is that its central character remains sympathetic despite her obviously unpleasant traits. With The Vivisector and The Eye of the Storm, White firmly established his position as an epic novelist. Critics were almost unanimous in their praise for the two novels, which, they believed, signaled the coming of age of Australian literature.

Bibliography

Beatson, P. R. “The Skiapod and the Eye: Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm,” in Southerly. XXXIV (March, 1974), pp. 219-232.

Brady, Veronica. Review in Westerly. No. 4 (December, 1973), pp. 60-70.

Hamilton, K. G., ed. Studies in the Recent Australian Novel, 1978.

Hazzard, Shirley. Review in The New York Times Book Review. LXX (January 6, 1974), p. 1.

Shepherd, R., and K. Singh, eds. Patrick White: A Critical Symposium, 1978.

Steiner, George. Review in The New Yorker. L (March 4, 1974), p. 109.

Whaley, Susan. “Food for Thought in Patrick White’s Fiction,” in World Literature Written in English. XXII (Autumn, 1983), pp. 197-212.