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Show Life as an Adolescent 45 Each year there were matinee dances, box lunch gatherings, theater parties, dates to birthday celebrations, school plays, Valentine parties, and St. Patrick's Day outings. As an officer of her junior class, she was very popular. Most people called her "Mac," perhaps for Madelyn Cannon, her two given names. She sometimes signed notes, letters, and even diary entries, "Mac," a custom that continued throughout her life. On both the Cannon and the Stewart sides, Madelyn was focused to achieve. In her diary at age seventeen, Madelyn responded to a challenge laid down by her father when he com mented, that the Stewarts were never known to take up any thing and not succeed in it: "That affords food for thought. I think I'd better make myself some tasks and succeed in them. Big tasks, I mean.":' Clearly, Madelyn was yearning for something more than women's traditional role. Growing up as a girl in the heart of Mormondom, she was imbibing the Mormon ethic of domesticity. Conventional wisdom urged that a girl's primary goal should be to find a handsome, righteous man to marry in the temple, have children-as many as possible-and remain at home to love, nur ture, and train them to be fine Latter-day Saints while, at the same time, supporting her husband in his positions as income-earner and Priesthood-bearer. This was her divinely appointed task, and in doing this she would earn exaltation in the life to come. Her Aunt Annie represented a contrast to this traditional role; her sin gle life may have prompted Madelyn to look for personal as well as family fulfillment. Quite different also were the models of women found in the novels of Jane Austen, accomplished young and Louisa Mae Alcott. The heroines were women George Eliot, of spirit who did not fit the conventional sedate housewife mold. Moreover, Madelyn's education and reading had introduced her to an artistic ethic-the need to create. God had given her talents and abilities, she was developing these talents and abilities, and she would receive pleasure from producing works of literature that would exhibit beauty, wit, taste, and elevated values. The literary ethic would inevitably compete in her mind with domesticity, and Madelyn's life would be haunted by the pull of both values, by the necessity of balancing conflicting values. But she did not wish to |
