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Articles

Volume 10, Number 1 (1985)

The Confessional Revisited: Laura Salverson's Canadian Work

  • Terrence L. Craig
Submitted
May 22, 2008
Published
1985-01-01

Abstract

Laura Salverson's autobiographical Confessions of an Immigrant's Daughter is interesting not because she led an unusually interesting life but because, on top of her detailed snapshots of urban and pioneer scenery, three major motives for her writing can be identified. Her autobiography is in part an adequate and modest explanation of the background of The Viking Heart, her first novel. In addition, we also see Salverson's adjustment to two greatly different parents. As well, we notice her desire to present the Icelandic settlers to the English-Canadian community in such a way as to do away with the barriers of prejudice that surrounded all "foreign" or "alien" groups in the West. She certainly, as we can tell from her writing, felt that it was unfair of English-Canadians to look down upon Icelandic immigrants.