Chapter 148: A Morning with Tony – War, Wardrobes, and Academic Skirmishes
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
After breakfast, West retreats to his third-floor study to work on his music-neuroscience research, while Tony changes into casual clothes and continues marking papers. She hears West’s experimental sounds—a mix of hyena calls, sledgehammer hits, and tropical bird cries—reminding readers of his cross-disciplinary project with neurophysiologists. Tony reflects on her own habits: she buys clothes from the children’s section, collects pressed flowers from battlefields she visits (arranged alphabetically in scrapbooks), and is careful to lock the front door to keep drug addicts from bothering West. She leaves the house, noting the rotting porch and tool circulars on the tiny lawn, and takes the subway to the university. At McClung Hall—a shabby former women’s residence now housing underfunded departments—Tony encounters colleagues Rose Pimlott and Bob Ackroyd in the coffee room. She recalls a past conflict with Rose over her Eurocentric course on Merovingian Siege Strategy, and continues to her office. Inside, she reflects on her position as a female military historian, resists using her authority too heavily, and thinks about a threatening student incident. She marks a set of papers, checks her mail (receiving Jane’s Defence Weekly and Big Guns), and notes graffiti in the women’s washroom that signals departmental turf wars. Finally, she leaves a note about a clogged toilet and heads south.
Key Events
- West works on his music-brain research in the third-floor study, producing chaotic sounds.
- Tony chooses a forest-green polka-dot outfit from the children’s section, rationalizing it as camouflage and thrift.
- She reflects on her practice of collecting pressed flowers from battlefields and storing them in scrapbooks alphabetically by site.
- On the subway, Tony reads ads spelled backwards, revealing her private language of reversed words.
- She arrives at McClung Hall, recalling her student years in the same building when it was a women’s residence.
- She encounters Rose Pimlott and Bob Ackroyd in the coffee room; Tony internally criticizes Rose’s ignorance about war.
- In her office, Tony considers her unique position as a small, female military historian and recalls a student who threatened her with a knife.
- She marks term papers, posts them for pickup, then checks mail including a renewal for Jane’s Defence Weekly.
- In the washroom, she reads feminist and anti-feminist graffiti, including “FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION SUCKS.”
- She reports the clogged toilet via a note to the secretary before leaving the building.
Character Development
Tony (Antonia Fremont) emerges as a deeply private, methodical academic who navigates professional friction with quiet resilience. Her choice of children’s clothes and her battlefield pilgrimages underscore a blend of practicality and sentimentality. The chapter reveals her protective instincts toward West and her wariness of allowing anyone to peer into her brain—literal or metaphorical. Her reverse-language reading on the subway hints at an inner life that she shields from colleagues. Tony’s interactions with Rose Pimlott show her frustration with reductive academic politics, while her office decorations (the “Death of Wolfe” reproduction and the irreverent student cartoon) demonstrate her recognition of war’s vainglory and her willingness to teach with dark humour.
West is glimpsed only through sound and Tony’s thoughts: absorbed in his work, passionate about the brain as a musical instrument, and vulnerable (Tony locks doors to protect him). He is a supportive but somewhat absent presence.
Rose Pimlott appears as a social historian who dismisses war studies and embodies the gender-based scrutiny Tony faces. She represents the institutional pressure for historians to adopt victim-centered or socially relevant approaches.
Bob Ackroyd is a minor figure, possibly conspiring with Rose in departmental politics.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Camouflage and Identity: Tony’s floral-print clothes are described as camouflage; her small stature allows her to be underestimated. She deliberately chooses outfits that blend in, both literally and professionally.
- Reverse Language: Tony’s habit of reading backward ads and her private word “Aiglatson” symbolize her ability to see hidden meanings and her need for a secret seam in her identity.
- Battlefield as Pilgrimage: Her collection of flowers from battlefields, arranged alphabetically without national bias, represents a personal, non-partisan memorializing of war’s universality.
- Architecture as Fortress: Tony’s house is described in military terms (“a fort, a bastion, a keep”), and her third-floor sign “Headwinds” underscores her need for a protected space.
- The Absurdity of War: Tony’s lecture on military couture—fly-front fastenings, shoes, nylon pants—uses humour to expose how mundane details affect soldiers’ survival, challenging grand narratives.
- Academic Turf Wars: The graffiti in the washroom (“FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION SUCKS”) and Tony’s conflict with Rose mirror larger battles over what constitutes valid history.
Why This Chapter Matters
This chapter deepens our understanding of Tony’s character and her professional environment. It grounds her academic work in concrete, quirky details (the fly-fasteners lecture, the battle-flower scrapbooks) while exposing the personal and institutional tensions she manages daily. Atwood uses Tony’s routine to explore how women carve space in male-dominated fields, how private rituals sustain public identity, and how the smallest choices—clothes, locked doors, wordplay—become acts of self-preservation. The chapter also sets up the luncheon meeting with Roz and Charis by establishing Tony’s morning and her cautious, meticulous nature. The theme of war’s absurdity is woven through both Tony’s research and her department’s petty conflicts, hinting that conflict pervades all levels of life.
Study Questions and Answers
Q1: Why does Tony collect flowers from battlefields and keep them in scrapbooks alphabetically by site?
A1: Tony presses a flower or weed from each battlefield she visits and tapes it into scrapbooks in alphabetical order. She does not publicly discuss this practice, partly because she does not fully understand its meaning herself. The collection suggests a private, non-partisan reverence for all soldiers who died, regardless of which side they fought for. It also reflects her need to preserve memory in a tangible, ordered way—a counterbalance to chaos.
Q2: How does Tony’s lecture on military clothing illustrate her approach to history?
A2: In her popular lecture dubbed “Tender Buttons,” Tony argues that writers on war neglect lowly factors like fly-front fastenings, boots, and uniforms, which have real consequences for soldiers’ survival. By focusing on these material details, she humanizes military history and reveals its absurdities—such as zippers that freeze shut or bright red coats that attract enemy fire. Her approach is irreverent yet serious, challenging both traditional military historians and critics who dismiss war studies.
Q3: What does the washroom graffiti reveal about the department’s conflicts?
A3: The graffiti includes “Herstory Not History” alongside “FEMINIST DECONSTRUCTION SUCKS” and “HISTORIC NOT HERSTORIC,” reflecting a simmering battle over whether McClung Hall should become a Women’s Studies center. Tony reads these as omens of a coming tussle she hopes to avoid. The messages show that the building’s history (as a women’s residence) and its current use by “impoverished departments” make it a symbolic and literal site of ideological struggle between traditional and feminist approaches to scholarship.