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Articles

Volume 06, Number 1 (1981)

Waste Heritage: The Effect of Class of Literary Structure

  • Robin Mathews
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1981-01-01

Abstract

Novels that challenge the social-political order also challenge conventional wisdom about literary structures and heroes who make choices that - however indirectly - legitimize the status quo. The act of literary criticism involving analysis of class and class implications is by its nature, therefore, revolutionary in capitalist society. The novels that strongly invite such criticism because of their class consciousness are rare in English Canadian fiction. However, Irene Baird's Waste Heritage is one novel that does belong in that category. Baird's novel is instructive because it can provide a basis for rejecting the general sense that there is no class interest in Canadian literature, and it can show why Canadian critics are timid about using an analysis of class as a way of making Canadian literature more accessible and comprehensible to readers.