This paper reviews three novels by Canadian women
authors as a way to compare and contrast their
writing styles, and how
these styles work to convey the complex relations of mothers and daughters. All three stories, (Hetty Dorval, The Swamp Angel, The Fire-Dwellers) deal with issues of language, silence, and the value of symbols and metaphors to express what is often inexpressible for women. This essay explores these themes through the
writing of the
authors, Ethel Wilson and Margaret Laurence, who portray a relation of writer with subject, where the ambiguities of understanding women in society become a shared project of story and writing.