Numerous references to spatial constituents charge the atmosphere of the Linnet Muir stories in Mavis Gallant's Home Truths. Linnet perceives the space in which other characters move as shrunken, a concomitant of local cultural, social, and religious oppressiveness; Gallant uses spatially-loaded language to throw an ironic light on these restrictions. Linnet's childhood experiences contribute to the pervading spatial imagery of her stories; because of the difference between an adult's perception of space and a child's "deformed" memories, Linnet's visual rendering of emotions colours the narration of her past anxieties. Linnet's narration involves three layers of memory and historical time: these layers contribute to the detachment with which she can extract numerous components of Canadian culture whose spatial reflection plays an important role in delineating local limitations, particularly for women and children. In Home Truths, the spatial/achromatic isolation and displacement at the heart of Gallant's Canadian experience appears in all its oppressive and alienating reality.
