Explorations of "an alien past": Identity, Gender, and Belonging in the Short Fiction of Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood

Abstract

The short fiction of Canadian writers Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, and Margaret Atwood highlights the continued and evolving complexity of national identity and gender inequality issues, in Canada and transnationally. These texts, written by three of Canada's most well-known and successful female authors, who are all white English-speaking Canadians of British descent, highlight the continued social, cultural, and political hegemony of Settler Canadians, and suggest that this connects with the endurance of patriarchal dominance over women from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first. Approaching these stories through a perspective that combines settler colonial and gender theory, this study demonstrates how identity continues to be regulated through the combined power of the state, cultural influences, institutional practices, and social relationships. The anxieties about place and belonging relating to the settler colonial past are linked with transnational concerns about the desire for a 'core' identity and home in Europe after the Second World War. The focus is primarily on female characters who demonstrate that social and political exile can be imposed on those who challenge ingrained definitions of belonging and patriarchal gender roles. Although post-colonialism, post-nationalism, and post-feminism have become part of Canadian political and cultural discourse, national identity and gender inequalities are still perpetuated by the dominant Settler Canadian majority.