Catching the Wind in a Net: The Religious Vision of Robertson Davies

Lawrence Mathews is an associate professor of English at Memorial
University of Newfoundland and the author of Norman Levine and His
Works.

This is a careful and thorough study of Robertson Davies’s ideas about
religion as they manifest themselves in his fiction, other writings, and
interviews. The book’s five main chapters deal with the “central
principles” of his vision: God, evil, the relation of good to evil,
the role of feminine spirituality, and the notion of individual
salvation. In each case there is a scrupulous examination of the way in
which these issues manifest themselves in the novels. Attention is paid
to the evolution of Davies’s thinking on each topic, and Little
provides insightful discussions of the extent to which the views of
individual characters reflect those of Davies himself.

The picture that emerges is one of a syncretic faith drawing on
traditional Judaism and Christianity, Gnosticism, Roman Catholic
interest in the Virgin Mary, and “contemporary psychological
belief.” (Though Jung is given his due, his presence does not,
fortunately, upstage everything else in Little’s discussion.) The book
achieves its goal of presenting Davies as a religious thinker who was
ultimately able to satisfy his own need for a credible substitute for
the various orthodoxies on offer during his lifetime.

As for the quality of that thinking, Little himself is clearly happy
with the result; he concludes by celebrating Davies’s “vibrant new
vision that will carry us forward into the next millennium.” This
enthusiasm points to the book’s one significant weakness: its failure
to present a balanced, independent assessment of the positions Davies
finally arrived at. (One wonders what Davies would have made of
Little’s Davies-centric religiosity.) That quibble aside, Catching the
Wind in a Net is a sound and useful contribution to its field. A 40-page
appendix listing biblical allusions in Davies’s fiction is included.