Margaret Laurence

Canadian novelist

• Born: July 18, 1926
• Birthplace: Neepawa, Manitoba, Canada
• Died: January 5, 1987
• Place of death: Lakefield, Ontario, Canada

Biography

Jean Margaret Wemyss Laurence was one of Canada’s most successful and influential twentieth century novelists. Her mother died when she was young, and her father, after remarrying and having one son, died when that child was two years old. In 1938 the widow and her two children moved in with her autocratic father in Neepawa. In Laurence’s autobiographical stories in A Bird in the House, the grandfather appears as an authority against which the heroine and her widowed mother struggle. Laurence’s themes—struggles against oppressive forces, search for identity, and attempts to overcome failures in communication—developed from this situation. The fictional town of Manawaka is based on her hometown.

Laurence took honors in English at the University of Winnipeg and covered the local labor news for a year for the Winnipeg Citizen. Her awareness of exploitative structures expanded in that year to include political oppression. In 1948 she married Jack Laurence. They moved to Africa and had a daughter and a son. During these years in Africa, Laurence produced her first novel, This Side Jordan, the short-story collection The Tomorrow-Tamer, the travel journal The Prophet’s Camel Bell, and translations of African folktales. A theme common to much of Laurence’s work is the growth of an outsider’s self-knowledge and humility in an alien environment. The stories in The Tomorrow-Tamer were collected in 1963, by which time This Side Jordan had already appeared. The jolt that independence brought to individuals—Ghanaians as well as bewildered and sometimes angered Europeans—is the theme in both.

The theme of The Stone Angel is survival with dignity and warmth for others. The stone angel is the monument that Hagar Shipley’s father erected for her mother’s tomb in Manawaka and reflects Laurence’s horror at the materialism of her pioneer ancestors. Hagar tells her own story through flashbacks and finally acknowledges that her plight was self-made. This honesty alone makes her an attractive protagonist. Effects of environment and heredity become increasingly important as Laurence becomes more concerned with identity. The children of pioneers are left to forge their identities without their fathers’ material wealth. Pride in family and origin replaces their fathers’ pride in personal success. In A Jest of God Laurence uses the first-person point of view to reveal the protagonist’s mocking self-evaluations. Except for her self-awareness, Rachel Cameron could be dismissed as an old-maid schoolteacher. Her situation seems to be leading to tragedy, but like other Laurence heroines, Cameron’s end is not tragic; she endures crisis and becomes strong.

Stacey MacAindra, in The Fire-Dwellers, is a conventional woman, a middle-class housewife facing imaginary as well as real dangers. The world in which she lives, however, one that includes the atom bomb and Vietnam War, is grotesque, even apocalyptic. Laurence’s complex narrative technique is marked by interruptions from internal and external sources. The levels of Stacey’s consciousness include her inner voice, bits of her memories set to one side of the page, challenges and appeals to God, and italicized dreams and fantasies. The exterior world, as for example represented by radio and television news, jars her when it breaks through to her consciousness. The title refers to her as the nursery-rhyme ladybird who must fly home because her house is on fire and to her children who will burn. A metaphorical fire, her sexual frustration, burns within her, and from without, the atom bomb and the firebombs in Vietnam are shown nightly on the television news. The protagonist of The Diviners, Morag Gunn, is an extraordinary writer with ordinary concerns. The title refers to individuals such as Morag who contribute to the understanding of life and to Morag’s friend, a true water diviner. This novel displays the most complex structure of all, with two new techniques, Snapshots and Memorybank Movies. The mythologizing of the past is one way the protagonist searches for identity.

Laurence denies a connection with women’s liberation and, despite her use of Christian ideas, also rejects the institution of the church. Like Carl Gustav Jung, she finds God in the human soul and describes religion in terms of a “numinous experience” that can lead to psychological change. Laurence redefines salvation as discovery of self and believes grace is given to find a new sense of life’s direction. During her entire writing career Laurence enjoyed critical as well as popular acclaim. In all of her fiction, she portrays her characters as beings caught between the determinism of their personal history and their free will, torn between body and spirit, fact and illusion. Endurance and progress are their tests and goals. In their search for self, these women must liberate themselves from the past as well as embrace it. Laurence says that for a writer of her background, inevitable themes concern survival with dignity and the ability to love.

Author Works

Long Fiction:

This Side Jordan, 1960

The Stone Angel, 1964

A Jest of God, 1966

The Fire-Dwellers, 1969

The Diviners, 1974

Short Fiction:

The Tomorrow-Tamer, 1963

A Bird in the House, 1970

Nonfiction:

The Prophet’s Camel Bell, 1963 (pb. in U.S. as New Wind in a Dry Land, 1964)

Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists, 1952–1966, 1968

Heart of a Stranger, 1976

Dance on the Earth: A Memoir, 1989

Margaret Laurence–Al Purdy, A Friendship in Letters: Selected Correspondence, 1993 (John Lennox, editor)

A Very Large Soul: Selected Letters from Margaret Laurence to Canadian Writers, 1995 (J. A. Wainwright, editor)

Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman, 1997 (John Lennox and Ruth Panofsky, editors)

Children’s/Young Adult Literature:

Jason’s Quest, 1970

Six Darn Cows, 1979

The Olden Days Coat, 1979

The Christmas Birthday Story, 1980

Edited Text:

A Tree for Poverty: Somali Poetry and Prose, 1954

Bibliography

Buss, Helen M. Mother and Daughter Relationships in the Manawaka Works of Margaret Laurence. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria, 1985. A Jungian reading of the four Manawaka novels and A Bird in the House, this book raises some interesting issues about the mother-daughter relationships that Laurence depicts, although at times the archetypal readings can be somewhat dense. Includes a select bibliography of criticism on Laurence and some later feminist criticism that informs the critic’s work.

Coger, Greta M. K., ed. New Perspectives on Margaret Laurence: Poetic Narrative, Multiculturalism, and Feminism. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996. Offers critques of Laurence’s works from Africa and Canada.

Gunnars, Kristjana, ed. Crossing the River: Essays in Honour of Margaret Laurence. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Turnstone Press, 1988. Twelve previously unpublished essays by Canadian and international writers and critics pay tribute to Laurence’s life and work. Includes some interesting new insights.

Hind-Smith, Joan. Three Voices: The Lives of Margaret Laurence, Gabrielle Roy, Frederick Philip Grove. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin, 1975. Designed for students and the general reader, this volume is very helpful as an introduction to Laurence’s work. It includes biographical information, at the same time providing narrative summaries of the major works.

Irvine, Lorna M. Critical Spaces: Margaret Laurence and Janet Frame. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1995. Irvine provides chapters on early review and critiques, maturing opinions, biographical and critical studies, and the role of politics, gender, and literary study. Includes a detailed bibliography.

Kertzer, J. M. “Margaret Laurence and Her Works.” In Canadian Writers and Their Works: Fiction Series, edited by Robert Lecker, Jack David, and Ellen Quigley. Toronto: ECW Press, 1987. This study is divided into the four parts, “Laurence’s Works” being the longest and most thorough section. Despite its scholarliness, this study’s clear style and extensive bibliography make it invaluable.

King, James. The Life of Margaret Laurence. Reprint. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2002. A good, updated biography of the author. Includes bibliographical references and an index.

Lucking, David. Ancestors and Gods: Margaret Laurence and the Dialectics of Identity. New York: P. Lang, 2001. A study relying on feminist criticism and semiotics.

Morley, Patricia. Margaret Laurence. Boston: Twayne, 1981. An extremely helpful and complete study of Laurence’s work, which the author approaches by first arguing that Laurence, despite the fact that her work tends to focus on two very disparate places, Africa and Canada, has shown a consistent development of ideas and themes. She then looks at the African works, followed by the Manawaka cycle. Includes a complete chronology up to 1980, biographical information, an index, and an annotated select bibliography. A useful reference tool.

New, William, ed. Margaret Laurence: The Writer and Her Critics. Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1977. This volume is an anthology of criticism on Laurence and interviews with her. Contains an informative introduction by the editor and, most important, three central essays by Laurence herself, which are invaluable aids to the understanding of her fiction.

Nicholson, Colin, ed. Critical Approaches to the Fiction of Margaret Laurence. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990. An excellent collection of critical essays on Laurence, most written specifically for this book. They cover such topics as Laurence’s place in the Canadian tradition in fiction, her work on Africa, close readings of specific works, comparison with Tillie Olsen and Jack Hodgins, and the use of autobiography in her writing. Includes a helpful preface and an index.

Riegel, Christian, ed. The Writing of Margaret Laurence: Challenging Territory. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1997. Essays on Laurence’s African stories, the novels, and Laurence’s Scots Presbyterian heritage and other early influences. Includes a bibliography.

Sorfleet, John R., ed. “The Work of Margaret Laurence.” Journal of Canadian Fiction 27 (1980). This issue, devoted to Laurence, comprises four stories, a letter and an essay by Laurence, and nine essays by Canadian critics on various aspects of her fiction.

Stovel, Norma. Rachel’s Children: Margaret Laurence’s “A Jest of God.” Toronto: ECW Press, 1992. Discusses Laurence’s 1966 novel A Jest of God.

Thomas, Clara. The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1976. A close reading of the works in the Manawaka cycle combined with an argument that although Laurence’s characters talk Canadian, Laurence cannot be restricted to the category of Canadian or prairie writer, as her concerns, experiences, and philosophy are far from limited to one nation, or even one continent. Supplemented by a complete bibliographic checklist.

Verduyn, Christl, ed. Margaret Laurence: An Appreciation. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 1988. The eighteen essays in this invaluable book chronicle the evolution of Laurence’s vision in both her fiction and the chief social concerns of her life. The essay topics range from studies of her early African-experience stories to Laurence’s own address/essay “My Final Hour.”

Woodcock, George. Introducing Margaret Laurence’s “The Stone Angel”: A Reader’s Guide. Toronto: ECW Press, 1989. A close reading of the novel The Stone Angel, the first of the Manawaka series. Examines the novel’s plots, characters, themes, origins, comparisons, and critical reception, as well as Laurence’s work as a whole. Includes a useful chronology of Laurence’s life, a brief biography, and an index.

Woodcock, George, ed. A Place to Stand On: Essays by and About Margaret Laurence. Edmonton: NeWest Press, 1983. A thorough, rich exploration of Laurence’s craft and works, containing essays by Laurence and various critics published over more than twenty years. The book is highlighted by interviews with Laurence. Also includes a useful bibliography.