The Diviners (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Laurence
- First Published: 1974
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: The early 1970’s
- Setting: Manawaka, a small, fictitious prairie town in Manitoba; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Toronto, Ontario; Vancouver, British Columbia; London, England; and McConnell’s Landing, a small, fictitious town in Ontario
- Principal Characters: Morag Gunn, Jules “Skinner” Tonnerre, Pique Tonnerre, Christie Logan, Prin Logan, Brooke Skelton, Dan McRaith, Royland
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Bildungsroman, Domestic realism, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: 1970’s, Self-discovery, Memory, Mothers, Parents and children, Gender roles, Authors or writers, Extrasensory perception or powers, Marriage, Writing, College life, Novelists, Women’s issues, Single parents or single-parent families, Adultery, Death or dying, Adoption or adopted children, Canada or Canadians, Rivers or waterways, Small-town life, Heroes or heroism, Water
- Locales: Toronto, Canada, Vancouver, Canada, Manawaka, Canada
Form and Content
The Diviners is the fifth and last work in Margaret Laurence’s cycle of fiction concerning Manawaka, a mythical prairie town based in part on her own home, Neepawa, Manitoba. Concerned most conspicuously with one woman’s search for her roots, The Diviners is also an epic tale about the origins of Canada as a whole and the Indian, French, English, and Scottish peoples who formed the nation.
Morag Gunn is the offspring of Scottish immigrants forced off their land in the eighteenth century by the Highland Clearances. Orphaned at five when...
[The entire page is 2078 words long]
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