Margaret Laurence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jean Margaret Laurence (née Wemyss) (18 July 1926 – 5 January 1987) was a Canadian novelist and short story writer.
Born in Neepawa, Manitoba, Laurence was the daughter of solicitor Robert Wemyss and Verna Jean Simpson. Following the death of her mother when Laurence was four, Margaret Simpson, a maternal aunt, came to take care of the family. A year later, Simpson married her father and, in 1933, gave birth to a son Robert. In 1935, Robert Wemyss Sr. died of pneumonia.
Contents |
[edit] Education
In 1944, Laurence attended Winnipeg's United College (now the University of Winnipeg) on scholarship, pursuing an honours English degree. She wrote for the student newspaper and became involved with the "Old Left" socialist reform group. She graduated in 1947. Soon afterwards, she was hired as a reporter for The Winnipeg Citizen, where she wrote book reviews, a daily radio column and covered labour issues.
[edit] Personal life
Following her graduation from United College, she married John Fergus Laurence, an engineer. His job took them to England (1949), the then-British protectorate of Somaliland (1950 – 1952) and Ghana (1952 – 1957). Laurence developed an admiration for Africa and the African peoples which found expression in her writing.
In 1952, Laurence gave birth to daughter Jocelyn during a leave in England. Son David was born in 1955 in Gold Coast. The family left the Gold Coast just before it gained independence as Ghana in 1957, moving to Vancouver, British Columbia, where they stayed for five years.
In 1962, she separated from her husband and moved to London, England for a year. She then moved to Elm Cottage (Penn, Buckinghamshire) where she lived for more than ten years, although she visited Canada often. Her divorce became final in 1969. That year, she became writer in residence at the University of Toronto. A few years later, she moved to Lakefield, Ontario. She also bought a cabin on the Otonabee River near Peterborough, where she wrote The Diviners (1974) during the summers of 1971 to 1973. Laurence served as Chancellor of Trent University in Peterborough from 1981 to 1983.
In 1986, Laurence was diagnosed with lung cancer late in the disease’s development. According to the James King biography,The Life of Margaret Laurence, the prognosis was grave, and as the cancer had spread to other organs, there was no treatment offered beyond palliative care. Laurence decided the best course of action was to spare herself and her family further suffering. She committed suicide at her home in Lakefield on January 5, 1987. Her literary papers are housed in the Clara Thomas Archives at York University.
[edit] Literary career
Laurence began to write short stories shortly after her marriage, as did her husband. Each published fiction in literary periodicals while living in Africa, but it was Margaret Laurence who continued to write and expand her range of prose. Her early novels were influenced by her experience as a minority in Africa, and show a strong sense of Christian symbolism and ethical concern for being a white person in a colonial state.
It was after her return to Canada that she wrote The Stone Angel, the book for which she is best known. Set in remembrance of a fictional prairie small town, the novel in narrated retrospectively by Hagar Shipley, a ninety year old living in her eldest son’s home in Vancouver. Published in 1964, the novel is of the literary form that looks at the entire life of a person, and Laurence produced a novel grounded in a uniquely Canadian experience. After finishing school, the narrator moves from Toronto to Manitoba, and marries a rough mannered homesteader Bram Shipley against the order of her father who disinherits her. The couple struggles through the economic hardship and climatic challenges of Canadian frontier existence, yet she eventually leaves her husband as poverty and personal differences destroy the union, although they never divorce. She moves with her children to Vancouver where she works as a domestic for many years, something that betrayed her social class and upbringing. The novel is often assigned reading in Canadian secondary and post-secondary schools.
Laurence was published by McClelland and Stewart, the famous Canadian publishing company, and she became one of the key figures in the emerging CanLit tradition. Her published work after The Stone Angel express the changing role of women's lives in the 1970s. Although on the surface, her later works like the The Diviners depict very different roles for women than her earlier novels do, it is safe to say that Laurence throughout her career was faithfully dedicated to presenting a female perspective on contemporary life, most skillfully painting the choices- and consequences of those choices- women must make to find meaning and purpose in life.
In later life, Laurence was troubled when a fundamentalist Christian group succeeded in briefly removing The Diviners as course material from Lakefield High School, her local secondary school.
[edit] Awards and recognition
In 1967, Laurence won the Governor-General's Award for her novel A Jest of God (1966). In 1972 Laurence was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
The Stone Angel was one of the selected books in the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, championed by Leon Rooke.
[edit] Bibliography
- A Tree for Poverty (1954) — anthology of Somali poetry and folk stories
- This Side Jordan (1960)
- The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963) — collection of ten short stories set in West Africa
- The Prophet's Camel Bell (1963) — non-fiction account of Laurence's life in Somaliland
- The Stone Angel (1964) was set in the fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba (based on Neepawa, Manitoba, where Laurence grew up). ISBN 0-226-46936-0
- A Jest of God (1966) was also set in Manawaka. It won the Governor-General's Award in 1967. The book was made into the 1968 movie Rachel, Rachel, starring Joanne Woodward.
- The Fire-Dwellers (1969)
- Long Drums and Cannons: Nigerian Dramatists and Novelists 1952-1966 (1968)
- A Bird in the House (1970) — collection of short stories
- Jason's Quest (1970) — children's book
- The Diviners (1974)
- Heart of a Stranger (1976) — essays
- Six Darn Cows (1979) — children's book
- The Olden Days Coat (1980) — children's book
- A Christmas Birthday Story (1982) — children's book
- Dance on the Earth: A Memoir (1989)
[edit] References
- King, James. The Life of Margaret Laurence. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1998. ISBN 0-676-97129-6.
- Powers, Lyall. Alien Heart: The Life and Work of Margaret Laurence. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-87013-714-X.
- New, W. H., ed. Margaret Laurence: the Writer and Her Critics (1977)
- Thomas, Clara. Margaret Laurence (1969)
- Thomas, Clara. The Manawaka World of Margaret Laurence (1975)
- Woodcock, George, ed. A Place To Stand On: Essays By and About Margaret Laurence (1983)
