By Larissa Page
Marthe grew up in Newfoundland, and like many young people, she moved to Montréal to pursue a different type of life. After terminating a pregnancy, followed by a year of living with and loving her boyfriend, she finds herself alone when he leaves. Lost and figuratively wandering, she decides to investigate how she may be able to support other women seeking abortion. She attends an info class for prospective doulas, where she meets a woman who, to her, becomes “Jane.”
Jane tells Marthe of a woman back in their shared homeland of Newfoundland who performs abortions privately in her own home, reflective of the 1960s Chicago Jane Collective, in which women were supporting women, providing access to abortions, and the skill with which to perform them. Marthe and Jane travel back to Newfoundland together with the aim to help restart the movement. But sometimes just because one is motivated to move something forward, not everyone else is as well.
I really enjoyed We, Jane, but it was not at all what I was expecting it to be. I was expecting, and hoping for, a little bit more information or background on the Jane movement. Or perhaps I was hoping for a bit more of that “rah rah feminism” momentum as they restarted the movement. That’s not how the plot of this novel happens though, and that’s okay! I found We, Jane to be more about a reflective change within Marthe herself. The Jane movement acts as a backdrop or a focal point for Marthe to do some of her own internal work.
I found the relationship between Marthe and the woman she refers to as Jane interesting. Marthe recognizes that it is unusual, as she describes herself being almost obsessive about her, and about the idealistic vision of restarting the Jane movement. Marthe describes it as the want to be obligated by something. I believe she latched onto it as a purpose and became infatuated with the idea of it all. Somewhere within the story she starts to realize that others have their own unique timelines, purposes, and reasons for being in the same position as she was, and that forces her to grow and recognize where she and this movement may fit in the world in a more realistic sense.
Something else that struck me about this novel was the writing style. While the content, events, and subject matter are much different, I found the writing style to be very similar to Megan Gail Coles’s Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club. This is interesting because the landscapes and setting of both novels are very close geographically. This type of storytelling, with its third-person omniscient narration, is descriptive but only to a limit, jumping back and forth quickly and easily between memories or events, then back to the present. No words are unnecessary and every one is chosen carefully.
While I had to adjust my expectations of We, Jane as I realized the large forceful revolution that I expected was not going to happen, I appreciated both Marthe’s and the movement’s quiet revolution. This was an introspective novel that made me think about the essential nature of abortion, the essential nature of women being crucial supports for other women, and about how we as humans can latch onto an idea so strongly that we lose sight of ourselves. We, Jane is a study in how an idea can impact our lives, and how our lives fit into an idea.