Displacement and Hybridization in Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka Novels

Abstract

Laurence’s Manawaka novels portray the condition of the Metis in Canada for they belong to the unprivileged section of society. Emma LaRoque in her “The Metis in English Canadian Literature” observes that the majority of the Metis were systematically coerced from their land which was not only a vast prairie full of buffaloes but also of settlements and farming strips. The issue of the Metis was colonization and eventual powerlessness. In another essay, “Metis and the Feminist” she draws our attention to the Metis’s extreme poverty and alienation from financial and material privileges of the mainstream Canada” (58). Atwood says, “The Indian emerges in Canadian Literature as the ultimate victim of social oppression and deprivation” (116). The Indian as social victim may be found in George Ryga’s play The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. In Ryga’s play, the Indian heroine is subjected to every possible form of exploitation-economic, cultural and sexual and is finally raped and murdered. In Laurence’s novels, The Indians are represented by the Metis Tonnerre family (118). The socio cultural issues result in the displacement of its members.