Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

STUDIES - Anna Jakabfi: Regionalism and the Surgeon Figure in Hugh MacLennan's Fiction

by sheer mental and financial superiority, let alone education, he has every right to get hold of the half-orphan small boy and take over the responsibility for Alan's future. The surgeon does not like to have any authority limiting his action. This fact probably comes from the ability to operate, the medical knowledge which distinguishes him from other average human beings, who cannot do what he can. Just as Daniel Ainslie does not respect the motherly feelings of Molly in wanting to have Alan as his son, the same way but in magnified proportions does Jerome Martell not accept any judgement and authority regarding his own deeds be it of a medical or political nature. Catherine had a rheumatic heart contition and was not supposed to give birth to a child unless she was ready to shorten her life. Jerome Martell challenges that medical evidence by marrying Catherine and getting her pregnant and giving her a daughter. The daughter makes Catherine a happy mother, but it is a medical challenge in the first place for Jerome Martell, the doctor. "You know, he said, the purpose of medicine is supposed to be the preservation of life. But that's not my idea of the purpose of medicine. My idea is to help people get the most out of what life they have."

1

1 Jerome Martell also challenges the medical authority within the hospital, when he takes part in the radical political movement of the Depressions years in Montreal, and gets involved in a love-affair with a Communist nurse in the hospital. The all enduring surgeon thinks he can decide for himself what to do irrespective of the codes of society his profession binds him to. ".Jerome

—I really came to belive this

—could never belong to any particular group of human beings; he belonged to humanity itself. This he never seemed to know. He had less ordinary social sense than anyone I ever knew, and if he met the King of England he would have been interested in him solely as a human being, and if the King bored him he would have been quite capanble of changing the subject of walking away to talk to somebody else. He was utterly without a sense of class distinction, and the subtle 1

5 Cf. op. cit pp. 2, 193—4 52