Jean Margaret Laurence,
CC (née Wemyss) (18
July 1926 – 5 January 1987) was a Canadian
novelist and short story
writer.
Early years
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 they
had a son, Robert. In 1935, Robert Wemyss Sr. died of
pneumonia.
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, covered labour issues, and hosted a
daily radio column.
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 British Somaliland (1950–1952), as well
as the British colony of the Gold Coast (1952–1957).
Laurence developed an admiration for
Africa
and of its various populations, 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 the
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 at 8 Regent St.,
Lakefield, on January 5, 1987. She was buried in her hometown in
the Neepawa Cemetery, Neepawa, Manitoba. Laurence's house in
Neepawa has been turned into a museum.
Her literary papers
are housed in the Clara Thomas Archives at York University
.
Literary career
One of Canada's most esteemed and beloved authors by the end of her
literary career, Laurence began writing short stories shortly after
her marriage, as did her husband. Each published fiction in
literary periodicals while living in Africa, but Margaret continued
to write and expand her range. Her early novels were influenced by
her experience as a minority in Africa. They 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 a fictional
prairie
small town, the novel is narrated retrospectively by
Hagar Shipley, a ninety-four year old woman
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 from a Canadian experience.
After
finishing school, the narrator
moves from Toronto
to Manitoba, and marries a rough-mannered homesteader, Bram Shipley, against the wishes of
her father, who then disinherits her — disinheritance a recurring
theme in much of Laurence's fiction. The couple struggles
through the economic hardship and climatic challenges of Canadian
frontier existence, and Hagar, unhappy in the relationship, leaves
Bram, moving with her son John to Vancouver where she works as a
domestic for many years, betraying her social class and upbringing.
The novel is required reading in many North American school systems
and colleges.
Laurence was published by Canadian publishing company
McClelland and Stewart, and she
became one of the key figures in the emerging
Canadian literature tradition. Her
published works 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, depicting 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.
The Stone Angel, a
feature-length film based on Laurence's novel, written and directed
by Kari Skogland and starring
Ellen
Burstyn premiered in Fall 2007.
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.
The
University of
Winnipeg named a Women's
Studies Centre, and an annual speaker series, in Laurence's
honour.
At
York
University in Toronto, one of the undergraduate residence buildings
(Bethune Residence) named a floor after her.
Bibliography
Notes
- Margaret Laurence: Canada's Divine Writer | CBC
Archives
- Review - The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence -
January Magazine
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)
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