In Joyce Cary's rite of passage short story, "Growing Up,"
rather than lying, I think Jenny is simply being
evasive. It might seem that the two words are synonymous; but I
think of lying as an intentional desire to mislead—often for some
kind of personal gain—while evasion makes me think of someone
side-stepping an issue that is too uncomfortable or confusing to
face.
Robert is baffled by Jenny's (and Kate's) behavior
and his injury. Perhaps Jenny is a victim of teenage angst: one minute she is
disinterested by everything around her, and the next minute she is chasing the dog
without mercy, only to turn her attention toward her father. First she and her sister
scream:
"Paleface—Paleface, Robbie. Kill him—scalp him.
Torture him."
They tore at the man and suddenly he was
frightened. It seemed to him that both the children, usually so gentle, so affectionate,
had gone completely mad,
vindictive.
Robert is
unprepared for this change in his daughters. When the chair collapses and the dog nips
Robert's head, the injury (perhaps even the sight of blood) calms
the girls, and they see to cleaning and covering the wound. Robert, however, it not so
quick to recover. This side of his children is completely foreign to
him.
There is foreshadowing with regard to the gap
developing between Robert and the girls when Quick's wife returns home with a friend to
see the pandemonium that has occurred:
Mrs. Quick...arrived...with her friend Jane
Martin...Both were much amused by the scene...Their air said plainly to Robert, "All you
children—amusing yourselves while we run the
world."
This shows that
Robert already perceives a separation between women and men; and then Mrs. Quick has
lumped Robert with the children, making him feel further isolated. It is this
sense that makes Robert decide that after tea is over, he will go
to the club—to seek out the company of other men.
Watching
as tea is served, the girls carry themselves with "demure and reserved looks," though
they pass over Robert as if he were a guest. He realizes that perhaps the girls don't
feel the same way about him.
Heavens, but what did I expect? In a year or two
more I shan't count at
all.
As Robert leaves for the
club, Jenny comes up behind him—saying that she wants to check on
the bandage on her dad's head to see whether it's secure; but I think she, too, is
surprised by the change in their relationship. I believe that she is trying to gauge
where she stands with her father, finding herself in an uncertain place—that space
between being a kid and becoming a young woman.
First she
says:
No, I'll
get on the wall. Put me
up.
This sounds
very much like a child's demand, "Pick me
up."
When they look at each other, she has "an expression
he did not recognize." When he thinks she will laugh, she frowns instead, thinking
something over. Then...
She was also struck by something new and
unexpected.
While Robert has
been trying to figure out what has happened, Jenny is doing the same from her
perspective. Some form of enlightenment has come to her; she is no longer "daddy's
little girl," and she cannot share whatever her realization is with her father—a
man.
Jenny has crossed a line where she is no longer
comfortable with her father, though she may well not understand the changes herself. She
is not trying to lie to her father, but to comprehend her own unusual behavior and what
happened between them that day.
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