ROUGH outline for apologia with some thoughts fior body

I. Defining a significant novel

A. Timelessness
i. ability to appeal to different generations
ii. impact upon the reader
B. Variation upon a classic theme
C. Thesis

II. Author

A. Brief history of Shields
i. born as an American
ii. life lived in Canada
B. Other works
i. poems and plays
ii. Stone Diaries
C. Awards
?D. Battle with breast cancer? Relevant?

III. Unless

A. Brief synopsis of the novel
B. Character
i. Reta
ii. Nora
D. Relatable Theme
i. relationship between mother and daughter
ii. a mother's struggles
iii. her sense of helplessness
iv. journey to understand

IV. Struggles as a woman

A. Daughter's search for 'GOODNESS'
i. looking for place in the world
B. Frustration with lack of female recognition
i. ideas not being fully heard
C. Reflection on a woman's nature?
i. inability to fully act to make a decision
ii. unsent and unsigned letters
iii. writing a 'light read'

V. Writing as a Canadian woman
A. CBC book reviews
i. balance of gender
B. Novelists
i. Atwood
ii. Lawrence
iii. Moffat
C. More equality in recognition


-I believe a great novel must go beyond the statistics to the subject matter. Defining a novel's impact by the level of it's sales is unreflected of the story within. Nicholas Sparks writes best sellers. He is on the top five New York Time Best Sellers list at this time with his new novel The Lucky One. I might read this novel, I might even enjoy it, but will I look back months or even weeks later and be able to find that it has influenced my thoughts? I finished reading Unless the second week of September and I continue to find myself, even without the aid of this project, pulling the novel from my mind to examine it.

-The topic of women's rights is heavily on my mind. Not the rights of women to vote or to make the same money as their male counter parts but their right to be heard. For rights to be equal all views must be seen and heard equally. If women's voices are push aside or go unacknowledged by influential figures (like in all the samples of writing Shield's give in Unless) than how can women be equal? I find myself reading articles now and looking for influences and quotes from women. Where many magazines will utilize quotes from women doctors or lawyers, in academic papers there is a strong lack of works by women.

- Being a Canadian writer is both a curse and a blessing. To be thought of as a Canadian author can be constricting. Margaret Lawrence wrote an article about what she called 'the victim theory'. She wrote about Canadian authors having their genre and it seems that it is not highly regarded outside Canada. So to be a Canadian author and write Canlit may just cripple ones chances of being a widely known influential novel.

On the other hand, when regarding Canadian authors the divide between the male and female writers is pretty equal. A Canadian English student is just as likely (or even more likely) to know a work by Alice Munro as they are to know the name Mordecai Richler. This can close the divide between the amount of recognition a woman author receives