The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

 

About the Author:

Jean Margaret Laurence CC (née Wemyss; 1926–1987) was a Canadian novelist and short story writer, and is one of the major figures in Canadian literature. She was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that seeks to encourage Canada's writing community. One of Canada's most esteemed and beloved authors by the end of her literary career, Laurence began writing short stories in her teenage years while in Neepawa. Her first published piece "The Land of Our Father" was submitted to a competition held by the Winnipeg Free Press. This story contains the first appearance of the name "Manawaka" (a fictional Canadian town used in many of her later works). Shortly after her marriage, Margaret began to write more prolifically, 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 (1964), the novel for which she is best known. Laurence went on to write four more works of fiction set in Manawaka. Novels which she wrote are: This Side Jordan (1960), The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966), The Fire-Dwellers (1969), The Diviners (1974), The Loons; and the short story collections are The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963), and A Bird in the House (1970).  She has also written children’s books namely Jason's Quest (1970), Six Darn Cows (1979), The Olden Days Coat (1980), and The Christmas Birthday Story (1982).

Critical Analysis:

The Diviners, Margaret Laurence’s last novel in the series of Manawaka fiction has been applauded by many critics as the most exceptional accomplishment in her profession. The novel is about Morag Gunn, who is born in small-town Manitoba and lost her parents at a young age. The novel is divided into five sections – “River of Now and Then,” “The Nuisance Grounds,” “Halls of Sion,” “Rites of Passage,” and “The Diviners”. The “River Now and Then” and “The Diviners” surrounds the three leading sections of the book. “The Nuisance Grounds” examines Morag’s present that comes to peak in two phone calls. In “Halls of Sion,” Morag apparently escapes from Manawaka and from her parents only to search for her own roots. In “Rites of Passage,” Morag has exposed her life down to the bare prerequisites and sets out on in search for “vital truth”.

Morag was brought up by the town scavenger and his dim wife. She goes to University in Winnipeg to escape the life she was brought up into. In the University she marries her Professor and also she becomes a writer. Morag leaves her husband who refuses to let her become a mother and writer. After her separation Morag meets her childhood friend/lover, lives with him and has a baby. She raises the baby on her own in Vancouver, London, and McConnell’s landing. When her child leaves, she feels lonesome and starts searching for her own roots – where she has come from. Finally, she finds out the reality that her ancestry is nowhere but in the same place where she was brought up.

 

As the novel moves more into her life, it’s obvious that she had concealed her identity for a very long period in her life. This is seen in her marriage with Brooke and then their separation. Morag has a feeling that Brooke was the one who made her what she required to be and she used him to defend her from the reminiscences of her past. However, when she finds that she can’t just be a camouflage and that people in her past are significant she feels relaxing with Jules and comprehends that she has been a protection in herself from herself. After they have relationship she understands that she doesn’t belong to reconcile down with a man who needs her and she wants her own self to be something that she is responsible for. Morag is presented as a character who often feels herself a stranger in Manawaka. Her poverty always makes her feel ashamed and she is embarrassed by Christie and Prin. She acquainted with a silent friend in Jules Tonnerre, a youth in her school. They walk and talk and, ultimately, she has her first physical relationship with him. Jules is never permanent in her life, he moves in and out of her life, never staying for long. Jules tells Morag the tales that he had heard from his drunken father Lazarus which are entirely different from that of the stories told by Christie. Morag realizes that the truth has different version and the stories of Christie no longer impress her even though Heroism exists in those stories. Morag wanders from place to place in search of a home, which she at last realizes she must make for herself in Canada. She also searches for her identity as a woman, mother and writer and as an individual in a community. She swears never to return to Manawaka but Morag understands that she must come back to the place she never considered and she had left behind: The land Christie has created for her. When she finds out that he is dying she returns home and she admits to Christie, that he has been a real father to her. In this novel, Morag is trying to find out who she is; she uses photographs to help demonstrate who she is.

Yet another significant idea to consider in the book is the past vs. present. The novel opens up with the words “the river flowed both ways” this is important because it essentially sets up the whole novel by conversing how the past and present are important but it’s also vital when considering Morag’s identity, she lives her entire life by trying to return to the past challenging to figure in which her true self is being found. One of the important and relevant themes of The Diviners is that of stories told by Christie and Prin and how these echo the human life. Morag connects very strongly with the stories of her ancestors in Scotland, the stories that comprise her own life, and the stories she writes for and about herself. Morag is also intently interested in the inaccuracy of experience and stories to reflect what really happened. Morag is an established writer, but her dedication is not easier than before. She is also a single parent with a growing daughter whose own characteristics must be respected. She used to think words could do anything. This sense of lack of a significant identity makes her agree to a voyage of journeying across time and space towards acquiring an adequate self-perception and that represents the novel. It is the past that shows the present and its own face. An assessment of the past is not an easy matter of recovering for Morag. She has problematized the genuineness of her past by a frequent invention of her lived past and modified it to her needs. It is Morag’s relation with her inherited past, responsible for her inability to come to terms with her present. She can determine her present crisis only when she begins to accept and value her legacy in its true outlook. Margaret Laurence deliberately and clearly intertwines in a well-built nationalist objective through Christie’s tales of Piper Gunn and Jules’s tales. The Diviners is not just a story of a person’s journey towards self-discovery; but it is also a story of many people of  Canada. Both Christie and Jules are marginalized and treated as substandard human beings, and are insulted and kept away by the society. The present fails to provide them with any sense of a typical identity. Morag’s acceptance and re-evaluation of her inherited past finally releases her from conflict with her past. The image of the river flowing both ways at the beginning of the novel again appears at the end of the novel symbolise both past and present. Morag, sees the necessity of achieving such a total presence as that of the river is necessary for an integrated and whole identity. Like the river Morag too achieves a self-realisation by incorporating the past into the present.