Telling Stories Narratives of Female Identity in Three Canadian Novels

Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Reid, Amy

Keywords

Female Identity, Canadian Novels, Atwood, Margaret, Herbert, Anne, Laurence, Margaret

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

This thesis addresses the complicated relationship in contemporary Canadian women's narratives between history and memory, and the construction of female identity. I examine three novels that are framed by an actual historical event: Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, Anne Hebert's Kamouraska, and Margaret Laurence's The Diviners. Through the interplay of personal recollection and dominant forms of discourse, i.e. History, all three novels create a female identity that assumes power through its active contestation of a unitary truth or self. In Chapter 1 on Alias Grace, storytelling affords its protagonist some distance from society's misperceptions of her character. If storytelling can be defined as a manipulation of the truth, the chapter claims that this manipulation is what provides agency and allows the protagonist to create a self apart from public judgment. Relating her past to another affords the main character control over her self, but the chapter acknowledges that given the struggle between narrator and listener for control of the narrative, female identity remains fluid and plural. Like the main character in Alias Grace, the heroine of Hebert's Kamouraska also desires protection from societal judgments. My analysis focuses on the manipulation of language rather than the effects of engaging others with one's story. By using different linguistic strategies, the heroine avoids her own complicit guilt in a murder, and also creates a sense of self that is separate from the one the Law enforces. Margaret Laurence's The Diviners brings forth guild of a different sort: the guilt of allowing one's self and other to be silenced. Laurence's protagonist is a writer who re-writes the history of those ostracized in some way by larger Canadian society. She unburies the history of minor cultures hidden in a multitude of written and oral forms: songs, myths, etc. This chapter ties together the ideas presented in the previous two chapters. Laurence's work is the most straight-forward in its articulation of the links between identity, narrative, history and memory. The chapter focuses on practical strategies for dealing with the silence of one's and others past. Whereas the other two novels focus on looking back, Laurence's characters maintain a strong grasp on the present through the re creation of their pasts. In closing, this thesis explores how narrative shapes female identity, and how this identity engages with individual memory and defies traditional, and often patriarchal claims of an immobile and silent self. Even though these are three Canadian novels, the truths revealed relate to women's literature as a whole.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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