Escaping girlhood : gender and growth in four works by Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro

Margaret Laurence and Alice Munro are two of many Canadian women writers who, during the last three decades, have chosen to write novels of female development. In A Bird in the House, The Diviners, Lives of Girls and Women and Who Do You Think You Are? Laurence and Munro depict strong, young heroines growing up in repressive, small-town Canada, and they show how patriarchal society restricts the spiritual and creative development of young women. This thesis looks at four major works of fiction by two of Canada's foremost authors in an attempt to identify common characters, themes, events and structures, and to formulate a model of the modern Canadian female Bildungsroman.