Margaret Laurences A Bird in the House Essay -- Laurence A Bird in th

Margaret Laurences A lady in the ingleside Margaret Laurences A Bird in the House differentiates itself from the four other novels that make up the Manawaka series that has helped point her as an icon of Canadian literature. It does not present a single story instead, it is a compilation of eight well-crafted short stories (written between the years 1962 and 1970) that intertwine and combine into a single archives, working as a whole without losing the essential independence of the parts. It tells - at least on a surface level - of the childhood of a young girl named genus Vanessa MacLeod , and of her trials and tribulations in the small Manitoban t give birth of Manawaka. The narrative style of the stories is important, since it is through Vanessas own eyes that we learn of her family and life - yet the eyes belong to an sr., wiser Vanessa, retention her own childhood from a future point years later. Laurence handles the narrative style quite cleverly the experi ences of the child-Vanessa are portrayed with all the white and navety and shock that first accompanied them, yet are in addition tainted and clarified by the wisdom of the older-Vanessa. ... the narrator becomes Vanessa, the woman, who takes on the constituent and attributes of the child she was and, at the same time, remains her present self, distant older and wiser in compassion and understanding.1 It is the perspective of the older and wiser Vanessa that allows the contributor to pick up on the important ideas, images, and themes that the author is trying to pick out to us. A Bird in the House is far more than semi-autobiographical, is far more than the simple story of a young girl ripening up in the prairies during the great Depression it is a work of... ...e. The closeness of Laurences weaving is remarkable the symbols, the characters, and the characters are drawn together into a sticking whole. ... the characters reflect the books central metaphor and are t hus symbolically incorporated ... the stories chart how they are all caught up in parallel captivities and intermeshed in divergent flights. (Davidson 99) They are, indeed, all drawn together by the doll in the house.Works Cited1. qtd. in Davidson, Arnold E. Cages and Escapes in Margaret Laurences A Bird in the House. University of Windsor Review 16 (1981) 95.2.Margaret Laurence, A Bird in the House (Toronto McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1970), 43. totally further references are to this edition and are included in my text.3. Jon Kertzer, That House in Manawaka Margaret Laurences A Bird in the House (Toronto ECW Press, 1992), 57.