Coral Ann Howells

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First published in 1987, this is an introductory study of the most widely read Canadian women’s novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. At its centre lies the question of how the search for a distinctive cultural identity relates to the need for a national cultural identity in the post-colonial era. Coral Ann Howells argues that Canadian women’s fiction throughout the period of study represents how the Canadian cultural identity exceeds its geographical limits, and those traditional structures of patriarchal authority need revision if women’s alternative views are to be taken into account. Including short biographical sketches and a complete list of the books published by the authors under discussion, writers examined include Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Margaret Laurence.

First published in 1987, this is an introductory study of the most widely read Canadian women novelists of the 1970s and 1980s. At its centre lies the question of how the search for a distinctive cultural identity relates to the need for a national cultural identity in the post-colonial era. Coral Ann Howells argues that Canadian women’s fiction throughout the period of study represents how the Canadian cultural identity exceeds its geographical limits, and those traditional structures of patriarchal authority need revision if women’s alternative views are to be taken into account. Including short biographical sketches and a complete list of the books published by the authors under discussion, writers examined include Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Margaret Laurence.

The current Gothic revival in literature and film encourages us to look again to the earliest Gothic novels written beween 1790 and 1820, when Gothic was the most popular kind of fiction in England. Dr. Howells proposes a radical reassessment of these novels to emphasize their importance as experiments in imaginative writing. Her object, the study of feeling, is central to Gothic, for its spell consists in the feelings it arouses and exercises. As pseudo-historical fantasy, Gothic fiction embodies contemporary neuroses, especially sexual fears and repressions, which run right through it and are basic to its conventions. This study traces the effort to articulate these disconcerting emotions in symbol, incident, landscape and architecture. The chronological design suggests developments in Gothic, from the initial explorations of Mrs Radcliffe and M. G. Lewis, through the Minerva Press novelists and Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey", to new directions taken by C. R. Maturin in "Melmoth the Wanderer" and later by Charlotte Bronte whose "Jane Eyre", arguably the finest of Gothic novels, places the earlier experiments in perspective.

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