Feminism in Women's Canadian Literature in the 1960s and the 1970s

This bachelor thesis focuses on feminism in selected Canadian novels published in the 1960s and 1970s. The discussed novels are Marian Engel's Bear, Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel, Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, and Margaret Atwood's Surfacing. This thesis will concentrate on the feminist aspect of each work, and primarily on the rebellion against the patriarchal society - each of the protagonist rebels in a different way. Lou from Bear is using a feminine language to overpower men, as well as her sexual awaking and a rebirth into a new woman. Hagar's rebellion in The Stone Angel manages to subvert the male- dominated society, primarily thanks to her hidden femininity in the beginning, and also because of Laurence's usage of the first-person narrative in the present tense, which seemed to have been unusual in her time. Del from the Lives of Girls and Women subverted the society by choosing her own path, in the form of becoming a writer, as well as her breaking the taboos about women's sexuality by not only reading and talking about it but also by experimenting. The no-name narrator from Surfacing then again uses her language to take a feminine stance in society. Her rebellion is then also pictured by her quest for a better woman inside her. The second main focus of this thesis will be..