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a hall in Vancouver and presented an exhibition of the paintings, almost two hundred of them. She even gave a public lecture in an attempt to explain her project.
    The response to the exhibition was similar to that which greeted her French pictures. Again she met with ridicule, ignorance, and hostility that, because of the subject matter, was sometimes thinly disguised racism. Certainly, a painting like The Welcome Man (1913) would have disconcerted an audience. The sky and sea are lemon yellow, the distant mountains are purple, and the dark silhouette of a carved figure in the foreground looms over the viewer. The picture has the same power as the Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch’s brooding Nordic landscapes. No doubt it would have disturbed and terrified visitors looking for some nice views of the picturesque coast. What they got instead was the raw, emotive power of art.
    The tremendous change in Emily’s style is apparent in a comparison of two paintings of the same scene, one done in 1908 and the other in 1912. The earlier work, showing two war canoes on the shore of Alert Bay, is mostly painted in washed-out browns. The only bit of colour is on the hulls of the canoes. The later picture, a double-sized version of the same scene, has emerald streaks in the hills and the water; a flash of bright red shows in a tree trunk next to deep violet; the sky vibrates with yellow and light turquoise brush strokes. Viewers of her new paintings might not have liked them, but there was no denying their originality and power.
    But mostly there was silence. All artists at some point ask themselves what use their work is to the world. If Emily thought she had found a use for herself and her talent, she was disappointed. An artist can fight against resistance; some even thrive on it. But to be ignored is the worst response of all.
    This time Emily bowed her head in defeat. She gave up her Vancouver studio, returned to Victoria, ceased her sketching trips up the coast, and abandoned her grand project. In Growing Pains, she titled the chapter detailing this period with one word: “Rejected.”
    During the next decade she would make very few paintings, and those she did create are notable for the complete absence of Native motifs.

CHAPTER NINE
How to Be a Woman
    Emily Carr was once offered a job. The job description was straightforward and unambiguous.
    She was required to do the grocery shopping; to prepare, cook, and serve the food; and then to wash the dishes after meals. She would also have to host occasional dinner parties. She would do the sweeping, scrubbing, and polishing to keep up the house. Laundry would have to be washed, dried, ironed, and folded. She would also be responsible for the household accounts and would have to balance the books. In the garden, she would see to the flowers and grow vegetables. In addition, she would have to bear, raise, feed, and care for children. At all times she would be required to be kind, capable, amusing, loving, and attractive.
    The job offer came in the form of a marriage proposal when she was twenty-eight. Emily declined the offer, and all others. By choosing art over marriage, she made a momentous decision. In her journals she said of the man who had proposed: “He demanded more than I could havegiven him. He demanded worship. He thought I made a great mistake in not marrying him. He ought to be glad I did not: he’d have found me a bitter mouthful and very indigestible, and he would have bored me till my spirit died.”
    In one of those terrible ironies that fate sometimes deals, Emily later had to undertake many of those same household tasks when she ran a boarding house and served as house-keeper and mother to a disparate and changing group of tenants.
    Because she was a woman, and an unconventional one, Emily always struggled against the expectations and prejudice of men, as well as other women, both as an artist and an individual. More than anything, she