Lifelines: Marian Engel's Writings

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Christl Verduyn’s study of Marian Engel’s life and works shows the
innumerable links between Engel’s novels and the 50 notebooks she
penned. For Engel, writing—in all its forms—was an umbilical cord, a
lifeline. Her witty and perceptive notebooks become Verduyn’s
lifeline, her way into the novels and the means by which she reveals
Engel’s focus on feminist themes and concerns.

In addition to her pursuit of writing, which was prolific, Engel served
as the first chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada; meanwhile, she was
raising twins, largely as a single parent—hence her lifelong interest
in the links between female identity and creativity, and the constraints
to their development. Verduyn sees the tattooed woman, the title
character of one of Engel’s stories, as the writer’s central symbol,
the clue to her life and work: a daring thesis, well defended.

Verduyn, chair and professor of Canadian Studies at Trent University,
edited Dear Marian, Dear Hugh: The MacLennan-Engel Correspondence
(1995). Lifelines reveals a profound understanding, both intellectual
and intuitive, of Engel’s life and work.