An ethical critique of men in Laurence and Atwood

The characterization in fiction of one sex by the other raises disputes among both. Accuracy and intent are argued to determine what the writer really meant. Agreement is difficult to achieve. Yet without it, we risk the devaluation of our literature.; It is with the desire to sustain the value that I have studied the characterization of men in Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood. Hoping for agreement, I have used ethical criticism to achieve some balance to understand intent and comment on accuracy. Having also reviewed the disputes, I find some hope that we can agree on meaning. How we act on our agreement, however, we have still to discuss.; I begin with a review of some contemporary ethical critics. I believe they best define the ethical concerns that apply to current fiction and thought about it. The issue of a specifically women's language and writing, which concerns Margaret Atwood particularly, receives consideration, with some investigation of how it could be a straw man. A survey of writers on the female creation of male characters during the last three centuries, or the period of the development of the novel, helps define ethical types useful in analyzing Laurence and Atwood. The opposed types of men defined by those writers is the basis of a qualified definition of the types used here as the conventional man and the alternative man.; My examination of the novels of Margaret Laurence and Margaret Atwood, plus Laurence's interconnected stories in A Bird in the House, concerns both the men who appear in them and what the narrators say about men. I raise questions about assumptions and intent, and I consider the consequences of the characterizations and comments.; I finally compare the two writers' male characters and their comments, with reference both to what each has said about her work and to what the few critics on their male characterization have written.