Mary Lavin Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Catherine A. Murphy

Critical Essay by Catherine A. Murphy

Frequently in Mary Lavin's stories the normal world view of an individual is suddenly transfigured by the awareness of an extended dimension of reality. This extended dimension, Miss Lavin implies, is a larger cosmos enveloping and consistently influencing the normal world, though its existence is not consistently perceived. (p. 69)

Mary Lavin's [stories demonstrate her] own observation of the force of the "intuitive imagination" [and] … her apprehension of a "plane of reality" beyond that known merely by observation and experience…. Moreover, [in] the characteristic action of her stories of ordinary experience, the synthesis of external perceptions … [is] modified by an individual's habitual process of feeling…. (p. 70)

However, the group of Miss Lavin's stories which involve experience encountered at a time of heightened imagination … does a good deal more. These stories describe an individual's apprehension of an extended dimension of reality, the "spiritual reality" …; they not...
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