SOURCE: Cameron, Elspeth. “Midsummer Madness: Marian Engel's Bear.” Journal of Canadian Fiction, no. 21 (1977-1978): 83-94.

In the following essay, Cameron argues that the protagonist of Bear escapes alienation and “hibernation” by coming together with nature.

“In this country, she thought, we have winter lives and summer lives of completely different quality.”¹ Marian Engel's Bear presents the “summer life” of one Lou, a Toronto archivist, who goes to northern Ontario on a research assignment. The “winter life” Lou leaves resembles that of a hibernating animal as, mole-like, she digs among the maps and manuscripts in her basement room at the Institute (p. 11). Although she considers her job “the least parasitic of the narrative historical occupations” (p. 89), “She was still not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived” (p. 20). Her predecessor, Miss Bliss, whose life has been anything but blissful, has long...