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

Margaret Laurences A skirt in the signboard Margaret Laurences A Bird in the House differentiates itself from the four other novels that make up the Manawaka series that has helped shew her as an icon of Canadian literature. It does not present a maven story instead, it is a compilation of eight well-crafted short stories (written between the days 1962 and 1970) that intertwine and combine into a single narration, 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 hold 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 senior, wiser Vanessa, storage her own childhood from a future point years later. Laurence handles the narrative style quite cleverly the experiences of the child-Vanessa are portrayed with all the honor and navety and shock that first accompanied them, yet are similarly tainted and clarified by the wisdom of the older-Vanessa. ... the narrator becomes Vanessa, the woman, who takes on the vocalization and attributes of the child she was and, at the same time, remains her present self, out-of-the-way(prenominal) older and wiser in compassion and understanding.1 It is the perspective of the older and wiser Vanessa that allows the reader to pick up on the important ideas, images, and themes that the author is trying to air to us. A Bird in the House is far more than semi-autobiographical, is far more than the simple story of a young girl outgrowth up in the prairies during the great Depression it is a work of... ...e. The dumbness of Laurences weaving is remarkable the symbols, the characters, and the characters are drawn together into a glutinous whole. ... the characters reflect the books central metaphor and ar e thus symbolically unified ... the stories chart how they are all caught up in parallel captivities and tenanted in divergent flights. (Davidson 99) They are, indeed, all drawn together by the shucks 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. in all 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.