Margaret Laurence: Life and Works, Including ‘A Bird in the House’
Margaret Laurence
Margaret Laurence was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, in 1926. She graduated from Winnipeg’s United College in 1947. From 1950 until 1957, she lived in Africa, where she met her husband. During this time, she translated Somali poetry and prose and began her career as a fiction writer with stories set in Africa.
Upon her return to Canada in 1957, she settled in Vancouver, where she devoted herself to fiction with a Ghanaian setting: her first novel, This Side Jordan, and her first collection of short fiction, The Tomorrow-Tamer. Her two years in Somalia were the subject of her memoir, The Prophet’s Camel Bell.
Laurence divorced and moved to England, where she wrote five books about the fictional town of Manawaka, patterned after her birthplace, and its people: The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners.
Laurence settled in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1974. She complemented her fiction with essays, book reviews, and four children’s books. Margaret Laurence died in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1987.
A Bird in the House: Margaret Laurence
Summary
Vanessa MacLeod decides not to go to the Remembrance Day Parade. She is sitting on a branch, feeling sad and embarrassed for not going. Then, she decides to go into her house. While she was going in, she has a hysteric attack, which is calmed by her grandmother, who asked her why she hadn’t gone to the parade.
Vanessa then went to her father, and they talked about her uncle, who died in the Great War. After that little talk, Grandmother MacLeod called both to have lunch. At the table, Beth, Vanessa’s mother, said that Ewen’s salary wasn’t enough to maintain that house, which was why she had decided to keep up her work in the office. But Ewen refused that option. Vanessa positioned herself in favor of her father. After that, they also talked about Noreen, who was fascinated by religion instead of boys.
Noreen started talking to Vanessa about the dimensions and the aspect of Heaven and Hell. When Noreen offered Vanessa to do an Ouija, she refused and went into her room, which was dark. That’s why Vanessa decided to open the windows, and a sparrow came in. After flying around the room, the bird fell exhausted. With Noreen’s help, Vanessa took it out. Then Vanessa, who had been told the fatal meaning of a bird in a house in superstition, accompanied her father to church. At the exit, both talked again about Hell and Heaven.
Sometime after, her father, who was a doctor, and Dr. Coates started fighting against the flu, which affected Vanessa as well. Once Vanessa was recovered, some months later, Dr. Ewen caught pneumonia, which led him to death.
Due to the multiple debts that the MacLeod’s house caused, they had to sell the house, making Noreen return to the farm, moving Grandmother MacLeod to Aunt Morag’s house, and Vanessa and her mother to Grandmother Connor’s house. One day, Vanessa found among her father’s things a letter from a French lover he had during the Second World War. She broke the letter and the photos within it and threw them into the fireplace.
Analysis
- Author, Narrator, Protagonist: Author (Margaret Laurence) = Narrator (Vanessa) = Protagonist (Vanessa)
- Voice: First person (The author is the same as Vanessa, who is the narrator and the protagonist of the story)
- Topics: Tempus Fugit; Loyalty; Liberty’s sacrifice; Opposition between wish and reason.