The conflict between the generations in 'The Diviners'

Term Paper , 2007 , 17 Pages , Grade: 2,7

American Studies - Literature

This paper deals with the conflict between the generations in Margaret Laurence’s novel The Diviners. As this book is partly autobiographical, the first chapter gives a short biography of the author Margaret Laurence. Her life and experiences had a great influence on her writing and several parallels between her own life and the one of the novel’s hero Morag Gunn can be identified.
After a short summary of the plot in chapter 3, the paper deals with the different relationships between the generations in the novel.
For this paper, the main character Morag Gunn and the character Jules Tonnerre are of special interest. Therefore their relationships to their parents’ generation and their child Pique are described in detail.
This paper is completed by a short conclusion.

CONTENTS

1. Introduction

2. Short Biography of Margaret Laurence

3. The Plot of The Diviners

4. Morag Gunn’s Relationships within the Novel
4.1 Morag and her parents Colin and Louisa
4.2 Morag and Christie and Prin Logan
4.3 Morag and Pique

5. Jules Tonnerre’s Relationships within the Novel
5.1 Jules and Lazarus Tonnerre
5.2 Jules and Pique

6. Conclusion

7. Bibliography

1. Introduction

This paper deals with the conflict between the generations in Margaret Laurence’s novel The Diviners. As this book is partly autobiographical, the first chapter gives a short biography of the author Margaret Laurence. Her life and experiences had a great influence on her writing and several parallels between her own life and the one of the novel’s hero Morag Gunn can be identified.

After a short summary of the plot in chapter 3, the paper deals with the different relationships between the generations in the novel.

For this paper, the main character Morag Gunn and the character Jules Tonnerre are of special interest. Therefore their relationships to their parents’s generation and their child Pique are described in detail.

This paper is completed by a short conclusion.

2. Short Biography of Margaret Laurence

Jean Margaret (Peggy) Wemyss was born in Neepawa, Manitoba on July 18 in 1926 to Robert Harrison Wemyss, a lawyer, and his wife Verna Jean. Verna died when Margaret was at the age of 4 and her father later married Verna’s sister, Margaret Campbell Simpson, a teacher and librarian. Throughout the years, she became one of Margaret’s greatest encouragers.

After her father’s death, when she was 9 years old and her brother was even a baby, the family went to live with Grandfather Simpson. As someone who has always been interested in reading and writing, she always had someone who encouraged her, especially her step- mother. Later she wrote for and was an editor of the Black and Gold, the Neepawa Collegiate paper. When she was in grades eleven and twelve, she had several articles published in the Neepawa Press.

After graduating from High School in 1944, Margaret attended United College (which is now the University of Winnipeg) and was assistant editor of the college paper Vox.

In 1947, she graduated from United College with a Bachelor of Arts degree and then married John Fergus Laurence on September 13 in 1947. Afterwards she worked for a time as a reporter for the Winnipeg Citizen.

In 1950, after living a short time in England, Margaret and her husband moved to British Somaliland. While there, she wrote a translation of Somali prose and poetry, A Tree for Poverty. During that time, Margaret Laurence started to write seriously: a travel book and The Prophet’s Camel Bell described her experiences in Somaliland.

They moved to Accra, Ghana in 1952 with their 2- month old daughter Jocelyn, who was born in England. During their subsequent five years in Africa, Margaret produced her first novel This Side Jordan, which won the 1961 Beta Sigma Phi award for the best first novel by a Canadian. Out of her African years arose a great interest in contemporary literature by Africans, which resulted in her study of Nigerian fiction and drama.

Their second child, David, was born in Ghana in 1955.

After leaving Africa, the family lived for five years in Vancouver, and during this time, Margaret wrote The Christmas Birthday Story, a children’s book which was rewritten later.

After the time in Vancouver, when she separated from her husband in 1962, there followed seven years in England and the purchase of her home Elm Cottage in Penn, Buckinghamshire. In the ten year period from 1964 to 1974, the Manawaka books were published. Most famous are The Stone Angel, The Fire Dwellers or A Jest of God.

While still living in England, Margaret established a summer home on the Otonobee River in Southern Ontario, which she named Manawaka Cottage and where she wrote The Diviners during the summers of 1971 to 1973.

Her return to Canada became permanent in 1973, and she made her home in Lakefield, Ontario. But, despite her years away from her birthplace, Margaret Laurence continued to consider herself as a Prairie person.^[1]

Margaret Laurence received honorary degrees from more than a dozen Canadian Universities, and she was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971, and had numerous other honors bestowed upon her.

An one hour long documentary film, named Margaret Laurence- First Lady of Manawaka, was produced by the National Film Board of Canada. Adaptions of many of her works have been made for radio, television and stage. Her books and other writings have been translated into several languages and received attention and praise from many countries.

The last decades of her life focused on promoting causes she passionately supported through letters, lectures, essays and fundraising campaigns: peace, social justice, the equality of women and environmental protection.

Margaret Laurence, who suffered from lung cancer, died on January 5 in 1987 and, at her request, her ashes were brought by her children to be interred in Riverside Cemetery, Neepawa on June 23. It was the day before the official opening of The Margaret Laurence Home, the former Simpson house where she had lived in her youth.

3. The Plot of The Diviners

The Diviners is the story of an independent woman who refuses to abandon her search for love. It is the story of the 48-year-old Morag Gunn as she struggles to finish another novel. As she works, she reminisces about her life. It's her own story, but it's also the story of the men and women who have fostered her, for good and bad: her parents, who died when she was only at the age of five; her eccentric stepfather Christie Logan, the despised town scavenger and his peculiar and very inactive wife Prin; Morag’s overbearing and repressive husband Brooke Skelton, who tried to obliterate her dreams to write; and her sensuous but unreliable Native lover Jules Tonnerre, who inspires her, with whom she bears a daughter and with whom she is never happy because she does not share her life with him. She is not able to found a family and to give her daughter a real family life with father and mother at her side.

Morag also has a difficult relationship with her daughter Pique.

For Morag Gunn, growing up in a small town on the Canadian prairie, Manawaka, in Manitoba, is a toughening process – putting distance between herself and a world that wanted no part of her. But in time, the loneliness that had once been forced upon her becomes a precious right – relinquished only in her overwhelming need for love. Again and again, Morag is forced to test her strength against the world – and finally, after having made many experiences and after having escaped from her unhappy marriage, she achieves the life she had determined to be hers, when she returns to rural Canada in hopes of coming to terms with the past.

4. Morag Gunn’s Relationships within the Novel

The relationships of the generations, of the relationship of past, present and future are major themes in the novel.

Therefore, this chapter deals with the relationships of the main character Morag Gunn.

As the book has a special structure, namely the novel unfolds two time lines, that of the present and that of the past, it is possible to distinguish the occuring characters between those who appear in Morag’s present life and those who only appear in her memory. The novel follows even over five decades.

Characters of the past in her memory are for example her parents, Christie and Prin Logan and Lazarus, and the present and most important ones are her daughter Pique and Jules Tonnerre.

[...]

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^[1] < http://www.mts.net/~mlhome/bio.htm>

• College: Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Amerikanistik, Anglistik und Anglophonie)
• Course: Settling the Prairies: History and Myth- Making in the United States and Canada
• Grade: 2,7
• Author: Meike Krause (Author)
• Publication Year: 2007
• Pages: 17
• Catalog Number: V76725
• ISBN (eBook): 9783638812665
• ISBN (Book): 9783638814362
• Language: English
• Tags: Diviners, Settling, Prairies, History, Myth-, Making, United, States, Canada