Reading Guide

From Theory

Author  Dionne Brand

1. Theory is narrated by an unnamed individual, about whom many things, including gender, sexual orientation, and cultural background, are not immediately apparent. Why do you think Brand presented the narrator this way? Were you surprised when the narrator’s gender was fully revealed?  

2. The narrator is extremely intelligent, with a remarkable ability to synthesize difficult philosophical, critical, and theoretical concepts. And yet they are unable to finish their dissertation, fumbling through life, various jobs, and romantic entanglements. Why might Brand present the narrator as possessing these disparate character traits? Do you think this seeming contradiction is a product of the narrator’s personality, or is it something imposed on the narrator by the world and its institutions? Discuss.

3. For the narrator, there appears to be a profound disconnect between scholarly theory and romantic relationships—but are they really unconnected? Do you think the narrator is capable of having a meaningful romantic attachment? Why or why not?

4. Is the narrator of Theory truly unreliable? Do you think they become more or less reliable as the novel progresses? Discuss.

5. The novel’s structure, which is divided into parts based on the three romantic relationships, suggests that these three romantic relationships are revelatory of the narrator’s true nature. And yet the narrator asks: “Can we say that we know anything of another person’s interior? The whole idea of an interior and an exterior suggests a certain deception, as if the interior is hidden deliberately from us.” (pp 53-53) What do you think the narrator is hiding about their interior life? 

6. “My distractions seem more compelling than the dissertation,” the narrator writes on page 75. “Why is it that the mind can be caught up so heavily in feeling. We have been taught that the mind is more systematic than the emotions, that the mind can be marshalled and feeling sublimated, but this, I swear, is false. Feeling is more compelling and insistent than that we call ‘ideas.’ Understandably, this is my own theory. No citation. Just self-diagnosis.” Given this “self-diagnosis,” do you think the narrator will ever complete their dissertation? Do you believe that distractions and feelings are more compelling than ideas? Are the narrator’s “distractions” more compelling for you as a reader than the narrator’s ideas?  

7. Yara, the narrator’s second lover, puts much of the theory and politics the narrator interacts with into concrete practice with her housing and care for the poor, and for victims of violence both societal and real. And yet the narrator objects to the presence of these people and the work Yara does with them. Why do you think this is? Yara suggests it is because the narrator is “comfortable and middle class and therefore blinders to who these women really were” (pp 87). Do you think this is true? Discuss.

8. The narrator wants to imagine an alternative scenario to marriage, but cannot. “The scenarios of the conventional are so deeply ingrained, so routine and systematic, so normal, that is it’s impossible to imagine counter-scenarios” (pp 126). Were you surprised when the narrator married Odalys? How does the narrator’s seeming acceptance of this cultural norm relate to the completion of their dissertation? 

9. The narrator has a strained relationship with both parents, but particularly their father. In certain circumstances, the narrator refers to their childhood as boring and mundane, but the hurt they endured resonates throughout the novel. How does this hurt insinuate itself in the narrator’s romantic relationships? In what way is the narrator’s behaviour like their father’s?

10. The final section of the novel the narrator writes, “I live a life of the mind—or flatter myself that I do. Even if it only amounts to self involvement, it would seem that I am happy living this way.” (pp 218) Do you believe that the narrator is truly living a life of the mind? And why would it only “seem” that they are happy living that way?


Vintage Canada

Women's Fiction Literary Fiction Fiction