Margaret Laurence's Women: Isolation and Survival in the Manawaka Sequence

This bachelor thesis examines the theme of isolation and survival in A Jest of God (1966) and The Fire-Dwellers (1969), the second and third novel in Margaret Laurence's Manawaka sequence, on the background of Margaret Atwood's book Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature (1972). At a time when Canadian literature was a nebulous term, Atwood identified the notion of survival as the common, unifying theme in literary works produced by writers across the vast country, with victims, death, terror and isolation as the accompanying motifs. She defines the concept as multi-faceted, distinguishing the external/physical survival found in early Canadian explorer writing and the internal/psychological survival common in later fiction writers. Furthermore, based on the argument that as a colony, Canada is inherently victimized, she proposes a system of four Victim Positions into which we can categorize Canadian protagonists. Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) is considered one of the fundamental figures of the English- Canadian novel. In the Introduction I provide insight into the socio-cultural climate of the time period and the bleak state of Canadian publishing industry at the time. Since Laurence's works are tied to the Manitoba prairie, I touch on the significance of regionalism in understanding Canadian..