Beyond Settler Consciousness: New Geographies of Nation in Two Novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman

<p>This thesis considers the role of geography in novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman both as a structuring principle and as a key to their mapping of private and social consciousness. The spatiality of the novels is related to the tracing of a revised awareness of colonial history in the two settler countries in which they are set. The novels reflect not only the contemporary world in which they were written but also have continued bearing upon problematic pasts and the larger histories that shaped the cultures and societies of Canada and New Zealand.</p>

Beyond Settler Consciousness: New Geographies of Nation in Two Novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman

<p>This thesis considers the role of geography in novels by Margaret Laurence and Fiona Kidman both as a structuring principle and as a key to their mapping of private and social consciousness. The spatiality of the novels is related to the tracing of a revised awareness of colonial history in the two settler countries in which they are set. The novels reflect not only the contemporary world in which they were written but also have continued bearing upon problematic pasts and the larger histories that shaped the cultures and societies of Canada and New Zealand.</p>

Women’s Simmering Discontent, and Emancipatory Attempts in Margaret Laurence’s The Fire-Dwellers

The Fire-Dwellers (1969) is one of the Manawaka series novels of Margaret Laurence. The novel was written at the time when women’s emancipation movements were gaining momentum, primarily in the United States, but in other parts of the world as well. So, clearly, the narrative is largely affected by women’s simmering discontent with their stagnant lives in Canada too. The novel reflects Canadian women’s desire to free themselves from the common drudgery at home and to be part of a more active populace working outside the home, themselves writing the rules of their lives. The woman protagonist in the novel, Stacey MacAindra, is a common housewife taking care of her husband and their four children. She feels she is happy keeping the societal values intact but suddenly feels frustrated realizing one day that she is the only one in her family whose existence in the family is only for others, while to everyone else in the family their lives are important for themselves, not for others. However, my reading of The Fire-Dwellers is that Margaret Laurence was not in total disregard of family values, or for complete independence of women from the patriarchal system as we see it in women's emancipation movements today.

A STORY OF HER OWN: MEMORY AND NARRATIVE IN SHORT FICTION BY MARGARET LAURENCE, ALICE MUNRO AND MARGARET ATWOOD

The objective of this paper is to analyze the interplay of narrative, memory, and identity in short stories by Canadian authors Margaret Laurence, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. The three works explored in the article are narratives told from the perspective of characters who delve into their own past to make sense of their present, thereby revealing the strong bond between the act of remembering and the construction of one’s self.