Oldal 61 [61]
THE RESONANCE OF MANAWAKA: LANDSCAPES OF RECONCILIATION
Prairie background by marrying Brooke Shields, a British literature professor.
However, their marriage soon turns stifling, largely due to Brookes patroniz¬
ing behaviour and controlling nature. Some critics, such as Laura K. Davis,
draw a parallel between Morag’s experience and Canada’s history of coloniza¬
tion. Imed Sassi likens Brooke to Prospero, embodying “the white patriarchal
figure” who regards Morag as his possession (160). Amid Morag’s struggles for
autonomy, personal liberation intertwines with Canada’s colonial traumas.
Ironically, it is within the confines of the cage of her home that Morag
discovers her means of escape through books and writing. Starting to write
her first novel, Morag uses storytelling as a refuge from marital constraints.
She creates a heroine through whom she can realize herself, allowing her
freedom to explore her identity as a woman, a writer, and a Canadian. In this
narrative journey, Morag’s writing, like Laurence’s storytelling, becomes a
reflection of the vast Canadian landscape, a canvas for coming to terms with
identity, ancestral heritage, and past wrongs. Just as storytelling becomes a
healing and transformative experience for Morag, Laurence offers her writing
as a source of healing and reconciliation for Canada itself, connecting the inner
landscapes of characters with the physical landscapes of their homeland.
The exploration of ancestral history at both national and individual levels
resonates in Canadian literature during the wave of national sentiment of the
1960s and 1970s. As a successful writer, Morag embarks on a journey to Scot¬
land in search of her roots. However, her true quest is not finding the ancestral
land but rather discovering the landscape of Christie’s tales. The motif of
pilgrimage to Morag’s ancestral country was inspired by Laurence’s own jour¬
ney to Scotland in pursuit of a deeper understanding of a distant past she had
not personally experienced (Laurence, “A Place to Stand On” 6). However,
Laurence’s exploration goes beyond her ancestral history. Drawing from Lau¬
rence’s experience with decolonization in Africa and her critique of the con¬
tinued oppression of Indigenous peoples in Canada, Davis argues that “by
gender and by her own self-positioning, [Laurence] aligned and sympathized
with the oppressed” (7). By writing about the Métis history as a white, mid¬
dle-class writer, Laurence defies the norms of her time.
Despite Laurence’s engagement with Indigenous themes, the Métis charac¬
ters in her Manawaka fiction can still appear somewhat flat and schematic,
primarily serving to challenge the Pioneer myth and warn of the potential loss
of Indigenous cultural heritage and pristine Canadian wilderness. The Métis
in the Manawaka texts often play a secondary role of “the Others” with whom
the white majority is compared and contrasted. Daniel Coleman observes that
in Canadian literature written by non-Indigenous authors, “Indigenous, or
Métis figures are not central and fully rounded characters but usually ones
whose function is to establish the roundedness, sensitivity, or civility of the
British White character” (33). Britishness, as Coleman points out, is an
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