Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence

270 Pages·1990·65.949 MB·English

by  Colin Nicholson (eds.)

CRITICAL APPROACHES TO THE FICTION OF
MARGARET LAURENCE
Also edited by Colin Nicholson
TROPIC CRUCIBLE: Self and Theory in Language
and Literature (co-editor)
ALEXANDER POPE: Essays for the Tercentenary
Margaret Laurence (1926-87)
(Courtesy of Trent University, Ontario)
Critical Approaches
to the Fiction of
Margaret Laurence
Edited by
COLIN NICHOLSON
Senior Lecturer, Department of English Literature
University of Edinburgh
M
MACMILLAN
Editorial matter and selection, chapter 12 ©Colin Nicholson 1990; Chapter 1
©Clara Thomas 1990; Chapter 2 ©David Richards 1990; Chapter 3 ©Shirley
Chew 1990; Chapter 4 ©Simone Vauthier 1990; Chapter 5 ©Michael A. Peterman
1990; Chapter 6 ©Elizabeth Waterston 1990; Chapter 7 ©Coral Ann Howells 1990;
Chapter 8 ©Nancy Bailey 1990; Chapter 9 ©Peter Easingwood 1990; Chapter 10 ©
Lynette Hunter 1990; Chapter 11 ©John Thieme 1990; Chapter 13 ©Gayle Greene
1990; Chapter 14 ©Barbara Godard 1990; Chapter 15 ©Greta M. K. Coger 1990.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 978-0-333-46069-6
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First published 1990.
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British Ubrary Cataloguing in Publication Data
Critical Approaches to the fiction of Margaret Laurence
1. Fiction in English. Canadian writers.
Laurence, Margaret, 1926-1987
I. Nicholson, C. E. (Colin Edward), 1944-
813'.54
ISBN 978-1-349-10094-1 ISBN 978-1-349-10092-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10092-7
Contents
Margaret Laurence frontispiece
Preface vii
Acknowledgements XV
Notes on the Contributors xvi
1 'Planted firmly in some soil': Margaret Laurence and
the Canadian Tradition in Fiction
Clara Thomas 1
2 'Leave the Dead some room to dance!': Margaret
Laurence and Africa
David Richards 16
3 'Some truer image': A Reading of The Stone Angel
Shirley Chew 35
4 Images in Stones, Images in Words: Margaret
Laurence's The Stone Angel
Simone Vauth.ier 46
5 'All that happens, one must try to understand': The
Kindredness of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me a Riddle and
Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel
Michael A. Peterman 71
6 Double is Trouble: Twins in A Jest of God
Elizabeth Waterston 83
7 Weaving Fabrications: Women's Narratives in A Jest of
God and The Fire-Dwellers
Coral Ann Howells 93
v
vi Contents
8 Identity in The Fire-Dwellers
Nancy Bailey 107
9 The Realism of Laurence's Semi-Autobiographical
Fiction
Peter Easingwood 119
10 Consolation and Articulation in Margaret Laurence's
The Diviners
Lynette Hunter 133
11 Acknowledging Myths: The Image of Europe in
Margaret Laurence's The Diviners and Jack Hodgins's
The Invention of the World
John Thieme 152
12 'There and not there': Aspects of Scotland in
Laurence's Writing
Colin Nicholson 162
13 Margaret Laurence's The Diviners: The Uses of the Past
Gayle Greene 177
14 Calib an's Revolt: The Discourse of the (M)Other
Barbara Godard 208
15 Margaret Laurence's Manawaka: A Canadian
Yoknapatawpha
Greta M. K. Coger 228
Index 247
Preface
When I first began asking people whether they would like to
contribute to a collection of essays exploring some of the issues
raised in her fiction, Margaret Laurence was alive. On the one
occasion that I was able to meet her, in 1983, it was through the
good offices of Malcolm Ross, then Visiting Professor in Literature
at Edinburgh University's Centre of Canadian Studies, and Adele
Wiseman in Toronto. Canada Council footed the bill, while their
counterparts in London, Canada House's Academic Relations
department, came up with the label 'Faculty Enrichment Award
Scheme'. At a large dinner-party in her house Adele Wiseman
enabled me to put together an unusual three-week long seminar
on current writing in Toronto talking to several of its producers.
Adele also suggested that I should visit Laurence at Lakefield, and
gave me telephone contact.
I spent an afternoon and evening at Lakefield and for supper
we were joined by the Scottish writers Andrew Greig and Kathleen
Jamie. Andrew had brought his guitar, and I seem to remember
that by the end of the evening we were all singing Scottish songs
with more enthusiasm than ability. But earlier in the day Margaret
Laurence had asked how could I most usefully spend my time
with her. At that time I had read only one of her novels and told
her so. Well then, after a moment's pause, would I like to see her
collection of photographs. And so for more than an hour she talked
me through a photographic record of moments in her life. It
remains a vivid memory and something for which I have had
considerable cause to be grateful when subsequently reading her
work. A distinctive interweaving of her life and her life of writing
is after all one of the attributes of Laurence's fiction. But it is
impossible to read that fiction without being impressed by the
scale of the achievement. By giving imaginative shape to contours
and definitions of Canadian sensibility, Laurence has added to the
ways in which we can understand ourselves and each other. So
this collection was first conceived as a token in celebration of the
many different kinds of recognition which her writing inspires. It
would have been pleasant to give her a copy. Time was against us
in that. But the impetus of compassionate human personality
which informs her work makes it difficult for us not to think of
vii
viii Preface
her as still being present, and of these essays as a continuation of
relationships in other ways. At any rate, it is in that spirit of
constructive engagement that this collection is offered.
In order to set an appropriate context of Canadian practice and
precedent, Clara Thomas, one of Laurence's most widely read
critics, considers ways in which the novelist developed and exten
ded elements recognisable as a Canadian tradition in fiction.
The illustrative topoi which Thomas selects include the climatic
geography of the Canadian West, Scots-Canadian themes, the
small town, the recognition of home, the registration of domestic
speech, and the clear voice of women writing. And in this last
respect, Thomas suggests for it a cross-gender representativeness.
The historical coincidence of a maturing Canadian sense of purpose
and place with a more widely articulate feminist awareness lends
strength and credibility to Laurence's representative aspect. Then,
much of the novelist's own status as paradigm stems, in Thomas's
words, 'from our myth of the golden west and its demolition'. In
similar vein, Thomas brings into focus the ethnic lineage in fiction
to which Laurence is an adherent, and which she inventively
restructures. Scotch myths and small-town ambience are here
contextualised and connected with the ways in which Laurence
exploited them for narrative purposes. But what then seems to be
immediately called for is fuller consideration of the impact of
expatriation upon her work. Laurence was uniquely placed to
respond in distinctive ways to her experiences in Africa, and those
experiences have in tum been seen as formative in the emergence
of her own novelistic skills. Her encounter with colonialism was,
itself, contextualised by her developing sense of Canada's historical
situation and record. She could bring into play a different perspec
tive. These are the areas of her work which David Richards
explores, placing some of Laurence's sentimental attachments in
other analytical frameworks, opening up some of their ambiguities
and looking, too, at the positive interaction between Laurence
and Africa. Chinua Achebe publicly acknowledges a sense of
indebtedness, and Richards offers a comparative scheme which
sets Achebe' s and Laurence's work in ways which suggest that for
their literary relationships the river flowed both ways.
Shirley Chew's essay on the first novel in the Manawaka cycle,
The Stone Angel (1964), concerns itself with the archaeology of