1. Introduction

1.1 About the Author

Jean Margaret Laurence (1926-1987) was one of the major figures in Canadian literature. She was also a founder of the Writers' Trust of Canada, a non-profit literary organization that sought to encourage Canada's writing community. Her novels portrayed strong women striving for self-realization while immersed in the daily struggle to make a living in a male-dominated world.

Margaret had stayed in Somaliland and Ghana with her husband (later divorced) for several years. Her first publications reflected her life at that period. Her first novel, This Side Jordan (1960), dealt with how old colonials and native Africans suffered through the exchange of power as Ghana became a nation. The Prophet#8217;s Camel Bell (1963) also published as New Wind in a Dry Land was an account of her life in Africa. The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963) was a collection of African stories.

Laurence#8217;s next three novels were set in Canada and were woman-centered. In The Stone Angel (1964), an ancient prairie woman tells her life struggles. A Jest of God (1966) made into the motion picture Rachel, Rachel (1968) and The Fire Dwellers (1969) were about two sisters, a Manitoba school teacher and a Vancouver housewife, each trying to achieve personal fulfillment. After her fifth and sixth novels, The Diviners (1974) and Heart of a Stranger (1977), Laurence turned to writing children#8217;s stories.

As one of the most important writers from Western Canada, Margaret Laurence had made a lasting contribution to literature through her novels. These books influenced a whole generation of writers in Canada because of their style, rural-Western perspective and also the voice they gave to women. She also published short stories, essays and memoirs. Many of Laurence#8217;s books had been translated into other languages and had made her work well-known in other parts of the world such as Europe, Africa and Australia.

Throughout her life and work, Margaret Laurence maintained an abiding interest in the M#233;tis, that mixture of French, Scots, and Indians that originated in the days of the fur traders in the area of the Red River in what was now Manitoba, Canada. It was said in A Place to Stand on (1983), edited by George Woodcock that those who were not Indian or M#233;tis had not yet earned the right to call Gabriel Dumont ancestor. Theirs was a story of repression that recapitulated the theme of female oppression in much of Laurence's writing. Just as the M#233;tis tried to maintain their independence from a paternalistic Canadian government in Ottawa, so Vanessa MacLeod struggled to escape the Brick House and her grandfather's influence, and Morag Gunn tried to reassert her inheritance.

1.2 About the Book

The Loons was the fifth of eight works collected into the novel A Bird in the House (1970). The main force of the book came from Vanessa as she recalls, and sometimes recalled recalling, scenes from her childhood with varying degrees of insight.

The Loons described a marginal woman --- Piquette, who suffered from both sexual and racial discrimination. The reason behind racial discrimination is that Piquette is a M#233;tis. M#233;tis people are the mixed-blood descendants of Indians and the white people. They were not accepted by the mainstream society. They were at the bottom of the society. The sexual discrimination facing Piquette was brought about by the patriarchal society within the M#233;tis. In patriarchal society, female and nature full into accessories and the one to be conquered.