The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus

Alice is Pen’s best friend and one of the novel’s viewpoint characters. She is a “striking” and beautiful “young woman with the coloring and survival instinct of a lioness” (12). People often remark on Alice’s beauty and pay more attention to her appearance than to her intellect or personality. Ever since she was young, her parents allowed her to work as a model and an actress, and Alice’s ambition is to become a famous stage actor. However, her experience in the industry has been frequently marked by harassment and objectification. One of her early acting teachers tries to kiss her, and she remembers commercial work as a series of harassments, reflecting that “a hoard of strangers had groped and prodded at her, all the while talking about her as if she couldn’t hear them” (28-29). Alice takes this issue in stride and insists that she doesn’t care about these experiences.

However, as the novel unfolds, the narrative reveals that Alice’s main struggle is to be taken seriously as a person rather than being objectified. She “want[s] to be judged by her talent, not by whether a group of strangers [deem] her face and body sufficiently desirable” (29). Notably, her role as Thomasina in Arcadia validates her talent. The director tells her that the character of Thomasina has “no sense of [her]self as an object of desire […] [She is] conscious only of the power of [her] mind” (337). Alice is moved to tears by this idea because it is so foreign to her own experience.

The other defining experience for Alice is her illicit affair with her tutor, Julian Sachs. While Alice initially believes that she is mature enough to embark on this relationship, she soon realizes that Julian is dangerous and manipulative and is exploiting the teacher-student power dynamic. After ending the affair and being sexually assaulted by Julian, she starts to imagine having a more kind and loving relationship, and she eventually begins to date a fellow student named Charlie. Her relationship with Pen also remains important throughout the text, since Pen defends and supports her during her times of doubt and vulnerability.

Christina Lennox is Elliot Lennox’s wife and one of the novel’s viewpoint characters. Pen describes her as having “the kind of unassuming, watercolor beauty that called birch trees to mind” (41). Christina has a relaxed, personal style and is pragmatic even though her husband is a lord. Together, they have inherited the estate of Talmòrach. Pen finds Christina fascinating and inspiring because of her manners, which are designed to put people at ease. Christina is very kind to Pen, even when the protagonist visits at inconvenient moments.

Christina’s present is shaped by her upbringing. Her father, an ambassador, nicknamed her “Teensy,” a name that emphasizes smallness and suggests that her father never took her seriously. As he once told her, “It is impossible to be a good ambassador without a good wife, Teensy” (121). The narrative makes it clear that he only ever saw Christina as a potential wife for someone. As a young woman, Christina worked for the diplomatic service, but her father was never supportive of her ambitions in this area, and when she left her job to care for the estate and her dying mother-in-law, he believed that she was pursuing the natural role of a woman.

Her father’s scorn has prepared Christina for the similar dismissal that she receives from Margot and from the local gentry, all of whom see Christina as someone with no real career or ambition. Christina, however, knows that the work she puts into Talmòrach has a cumulative effect on the lives of the people in the village. While their lack of respect stings, she doesn’t let these attitudes deter her from living her life as she pleases.

Christina’s ideas about The Sacrifices of Motherhood are contrasted with Margot’s. Whereas Margot resents the burden of motherhood and believes that it demands total sacrifice, Christina enjoys nurturing her family and sees motherhood as a role that can be balanced with a wholehearted embrace of selfhood and agency. While Christina enjoys her life as it is, she tells Pen, “Not everyone would be suited to the life I chose. But I chose it freely; it’s mine. Getting to choose for oneself is a gift so vanishingly rare that one must never squander it” (362). She emphasizes that choice is the most important ingredient, whether one chooses to be a mother, pursue a professional career, or both.

Ted is Pen and George’s father and Anna’s ex-husband. He is a complicated character, and although he and Pen are close, she struggles to understand him and his motivations. Ted was raised by his father, Edward Sr., and his mother, Tilda, who were upper-class members of Toronto society. From a young age, he was expected to run the family business and follow in his father’s footsteps. Of utmost importance was the family reputation. As the narrative states, “The Winters name, and the business that had borne it since before the First World War, must never be besmirched” (255). While a much younger Ted once had a passionate love affair with Margot, he married Anna out of a sense of duty and never confessed to her that he had a child by Margot (George) or had loved someone else. Instead, he believed that satisfying his duty was enough. Pen is angry when she discovers this and thinks that he believes himself to be “a family man, doing his duty,” which “would make him look good” (343). She is critical of her father’s choices, and although Ted himself seems regretful of his past, he never fully acknowledges his mistakes.

Ted loves Pen and wants the best for her, but he is reluctant to tell her about his own failings. He believes that by keeping the truth from her, he can protect her. In turn, Pen is aware from a very young age that something is amiss in her family, and this causes her to worry. As Pen reflects, “That her father had a secret going bad inside of him had become known to [her] in grade four” (19). As an adult, Pen confronts Ted about his secrets and tells him, “I’m not a child. I don’t know what kind of relationship we can have if you don’t respect me enough to tell me the truth” (345). He reluctantly admits that she is right, though the novel does not explore whether he is able to improve his relationship with Pen.