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Articles

Volume 01, Number 1 (1976)

Hugh MacLennan: The Nationalist Dilemma in Canada

  • Robin Mathews
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1976-01-01

Abstract

Hugh MacLennan's first novel, Barometer Rising, and his last, Return of the Sphinx, present his understanding of power and criticism of power in Canada. Because McLennan is a nationalist, and perhaps because he is a patriot, he has thought deeply and written with sharp insight about the colonial condition, the character of the powerful middle class in a colony, the psychological feeling of deracination among colonials, and their fear of people from imperial centres. While his analysis of the social fabric of this country has been flawed, with his criticisms of capitalism and class division not leading to any fundamental analysis, he is the only writer thus far who has taken the larger social order in Canada, as it effects individual lives and motivation, as his pervasive subject.