Divining for meaning and searching for a female literary identity in Alice Munro s Lives of girls and women and Margaret Laurence s The diviners

Abstract

This dissertation aims at investigating how Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence appropriate canonical genres, specifically the Bildungsroman and the Künstlerroman, to subvert them and represent different versions of the female subject through autobiographical novels written by women. The investigation focuses on two novels: Lives of Girls and Women (1971), by Alice Munro, and The Diviners (1974), by Margaret Laurence. In Alice Munro s novel, the strategies of the blurring of genres, the idea that reality perspectives change according to the experience and memory of each individual, as well as an emphasis on the development of the protagonist as an individual and as a writer are matters amply discussed. In Margaret Laurence s novel, the emphasis on the subjective aspect of memory, the deconstruction of gender stereotypes and the renegotiation of the representation of the female subject to the achievement of an autonomous female identity in life and art are the main issues debated. This dissertation intends to show how the representation of the female identity is redefined by two Canadian writers who appropriated dominant discourses in order to subvert them and then, rewrite their histories