SOURCE: Hair, Donald S. “Marian Engel's Bear.” Canadian Literature, no. 92 (spring 1982): 34-45.

In the following essay, Hair explores mythical and specifically Canadian elements in Bear.

Marian Engel's Bear has received a good deal of popular attention, part of it from readers who are attracted to the sort of thing promised by the blurb on the cover of the paperback edition: “The shocking, erotic novel of a woman in love.” The promise, one notes, is, for the most part, kept, but the novel is likely to be of interest for a good deal longer than most books of this sort because it is much more than the story of a woman in love with a bear. In fact, the novel can be read on several levels, and there is much in it to delight the academic critic as well as the casual reader.

One starting place for the academic...