Margaret Laurence's Manawaka novels are marked by an impulse toward self-examination and transformation in the lives of four female protagonists. Following the confessional model, Laurence's first two novels, The Stone Angel, and A Jest of God are written in the first person, but the later two, The Fire-Dwellers and The Diviners, are not. By focalizing through the eyes of the protagonist, narration is expanded in such a way that even her third-person novels attain the immediacy the first-person. Until now, however, the question as to why Laurence makes this shift in narrative voice has not been adequately examined.
