How They Write Us: Accepting and Excepting 'the Jew' in Canadian Fiction

From the beginning to the end of the twentieth century, several female novelists in Canada have portrayed Jewish characters in their fiction. The earliest example appears in the form of a German Jewish peddler in Anne of Green Gables. By mid-century much fuller and more nuanced treatments appear in Gwethalyn Graham's Earth and High Heaven and in the more cosmopolitan portraits of Mavis Gallant's short stories. In the second half of the century, writers such as Margaret Laurence, Carol Shields, and Ann-Marie MacDonald offer realistic and sympathetic characterizations of Jews. As the century progresses and Canadian society opens in its acceptance of minorities, these writers depict the positive and negative sides in their ambivalent attitudes towards acculturation. Most of these authors revise earlier semitic stereotypes from their modernist, feminist vantage points.