Marian Engel
Marian Engel was a Canadian author born in 1933 in Toronto, Ontario. She pursued higher education, earning a BA from McMaster University and an MA from McGill University. Engel's literary career included teaching at various institutions and serving as a writer-in-residence at notable universities. She is best known for her novel "Bear," which explores themes of rebirth and connection to nature through the story of an aging archivist in Ontario. Engel's works often feature complex female protagonists facing personal challenges, as seen in her other notable novels such as "The Glassy Sea" and "Lunatic Villas." Throughout her career, she received several accolades, including the Governor General's Award for "Bear" and the honor of being named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. Engel's literary legacy continues to resonate, reflecting the intricacies of women's lives and experiences. She passed away in 1985, leaving behind a significant body of work that includes both fiction and nonfiction.
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Subject Terms
Marian Engel
Canadian novelist and teacher.
- Born: May 24, 1933
- Birthplace: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Died: February 16, 1985
- Place of death: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Biography
Marian Engel was born Marian Ruth Passmore in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1933. Her parents were Frederick Searle, a teacher, and Mary Fletcher Passmore. Marian received a BA from McMaster University in 1955 and an MA from McGill University in 1957. She married radio broadcaster Howard Engel in 1962, had two children, and divorced in 1977.
Engel lectured at Montana State University, Missoula, between 1957 and 1958 and taught at the Study School in Montreal, Quebec, between 1958 and 1960. In 1963, she taught at St. John’s School (Royal Air Force school) in Cyprus. She served as a writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, between 1977 and 1978 and at the University of Toronto between 1980 and 1981.
Engel’s highly symbolic novel Bear records the rebirth of Lou, an aging archivist in Ontario’s Historical Institute. Lou lives like a mole buried under maps and manuscripts, unhappy in her isolation and feeling old before her time. She breaks out of her lethargy, however, when an island estate is left to the institute, and she must travel to northern Ontario to catalog the books. In nature, especially in her encounters with a chained up male bear that inhabits a cabin behind the estate house, she finds fulfillment, including emotional and physical satisfaction, and in time experiences a kind of rebirth.
In The Glassy Sea, the protagonist divorcée Rita Bowen, a former Anglican nun, is a lonely, middle-aged woman living on an isolated island as a result of her divorce settlement from an Ontario politician. In time, she comes to realize that women must help women and returns to her original convent, where she establishes a shelter for abused women. Engel switches to Toronto in her comedic Lunatic Villas, which was written as a response to the author’s children’s unrealistic views on life. The protagonist, Harriet Ross, a freelance writer and single mother of seven children, lives unhappily in a Toronto neighborhood—Rathbone Place, nicknamed Lunatic Villas—in a run-down, grimy home until an English woman, Mrs. Saxes, arrives on a bicycle one snowy night and changes their lives.
Numbered among Engel’s awards are a 1976 Governor General’s Award for Bear, the Canada Council Senior Arts Fellowship, 1968, 1973, and 1976, and the City of Toronto Book Awards in 1982 (cowinner) for Lunatic Villas. Though she died in 1985, Engel has remained a highly regarded Canadian writer; she became an officer of the Order of Canada in 1982. Her novels portray seemingly simple women whose deeper complexities emerge when they encounter new challenges. In 2010, editor Christl Verduyn published Engel's final, unfinished novel, "Elizabeth and the Golden City," in a volume that includes the unfinished manuscript preceded by a background of the story that inspired the novel.
Author Works
Long Fiction:
No Clouds of Glory, 1968 (also known as Sarah Bastard's Notebook)
The Honeyman Festival, 1970
Monodromos, 1973
Joanne: The Last Days of a Modern Marriage, 1975
Bear, 1976
The Glassy Sea, 1978
Lunatic Villas, 1981 (in Canada as The Year of the Child)
Nonfiction:
The Islands of Canada, 1981
Marian Engel’s Notebooks: “Ah, mon cahier, écoute...”, 1999
Marian Engel: Life in Letters, 2004
Short Fiction:
Inside the Easter Egg, 1975
The Tattooed Woman, 1985
Young Adult Fiction:
Adventure at Moon Bay Towers, 1974
My Name Is Not Odessa Yarker, 1977
Other:
Marian and the Major: Engel's "Elizabeth and the Golden City", 2010
Bibliography
Fiamengo, Janice. "Marian Engel's Last Novel." Review of Marian and the Major: Engel's "Elizabeth and the Golden City", edited by Christl Verduyn. Canadian Literature, vol. 207, pp. 135–6. Offers a review of Engel's unfinished and previously unpublished novel, discussing Engel's fascination with the story that inspired it.
Gault, Cinda. "Marian Engel's Bear: Romance or Realism?" Canadian Literature, vol. 197, 2008, pp. 29–40. Analyzes the reasoning behind perspectives that consider the book a romance as well as those that consider it an example of realism.
Gault, Cinda. National and Female Identity in Canadian Literature, 1965–1980: The Fiction of Margaret Laurence, Margaret Atwood, and Marian Engel. Edwin Mellen Press, 2012. Gault compares and discusses common literary criticism of the authors' works, focusing on providing alternative interpretations that highlight their contributions to female identity and cultural nationalism rather than readings that categorize them as romances.
"Marian Engel." Historica Canada: The Canadian Encyclopedia, 7 Oct. 2015, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/marian-engel/. Accessed 21 June 2017. A concise biography of Engel from her early years to her death.
Meoni, Alessandra. "De-metaphorizing and Becoming Animal: When the Animal Looks Back; A Reading of Marian Engel's Bear." Acta Scientiarum: Language and Culture, vol. 22, no. 1, 2011, pp. 89–95. Provides an analysis of Engel's Bear with a focus on the way in which Engel's representation of the bear is radical in that the bear retains its animality, allowing the main character to redefine her sense of self.