Two Solitudes (Masterplots II: British and Commonwealth Fiction Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Hugh MacLennan
- First Published: 1945
- Type of Work: Regional realism
- Time of Work: 1917-1939
- Setting: The Saint Lawrence River valley, Montreal, Nova Scotia, and Maine
- Principal Characters: Athanese Tallard, Kathleen Tallard, Marius Tallard, Paul Tallard, Father Emile Beaubien, John Yardley, Janet Methuen, Heather Methuen, Huntly McQueen
- Genres: Long fiction, Realism, Regional fiction
- Subjects: Culture, Children, Family or family life, Politics, Race, Communication, 1910’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, New England, Canada or Canadians, Isolation
- Locales: Canada, Montreal, Canada, Maine, Nova Scotia, Canada
The Novel
Two Solitudes has much of the panoramic quality of John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga (1922), though it is informed by a more partisan attitude. Superficially a chronicle of two generations of Canadians in the Montreal region~, it is in fact a penetrating study of the beliefs and behaviors, the myths and animosities, that have caused French-Canadians and English-Canadians to resist amalgamation into a homogeneous nation and to exist as two separate peoples, uncommunicative and isolated. Yet the novel transcends the communal barriers and abstractions...
[The entire page is 1936 words long]
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