Marian Engel is best known as the author of Bear, which won a Governor General's Award in 1977, but she has written extensively and memorably about urban life in southern Ontario and was also active i...
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In the following essay, Cameron argues that the protagonist of Bear escapes alienation and “hibernation” by coming together with nature.
“In this country, she thought, we have ...
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In the following essay, Verduyn discusses her experience studying Engel's personal archival papers and addresses questions of biographical and psychological issues related to such research.
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In the following essay, Osachoff finds the figure of the bear in Engel's novel to be a warning against romanticizing nature.
Bear, by Marian Engel, has been taken as the perfect example of a...
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In the following essay, Cowan analyzes similarities in setting, plot, and theme between Bear and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
In Bear, Canadian novelist Marian Engel's heroine f...
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In the following essay, Hair explores mythical and specifically Canadian elements in Bear.
Marian Engel's Bear has received a good deal of popular attention, part of it from readers who are ...
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In the following essay, Howells discusses Bear in the context of the Canadian wilderness myth.
Sure, they're women's books, because they're about women and written by a woman &...
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In the following essay, Howells examines Engel's narrative shift between fantasy and realism in Bear and The Tattooed Woman, arguing that this shift speaks to Engel's position in feminis...
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In the following essay, Verduyn examines Engel's private notebooks, or cahiers, to determine their significance to écriture féminine.
First thought: I am hooked on orthodoxy. K...
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In the following essay, Verduyn analyzes Engel's early and unpublished writings to explore her devotion to her writing, the evolution of her themes throughout her career, and the degree to whic...
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In the following essay, Verduyn discusses the dichotomy in women's lives between life and letters as explored by Engel in The Glassy Sea.
I was going to have to turn human again so I could t...
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Marian Engel
Critical Essay by Elspeth Cameron
