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Identity In The Fire Dwellers

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Laurence also makes a parallel study about the women torn in between the quest of identity and the struggle for space and the desire to live happily with their husband and her children in the sister novel The Fire Dwellers. Stacey MacAindra is the sister of Rachel Cameron, she is thirty-nine years old house wife with four children who is lost and desperate because her husband does not understand her nor even listens to her miseries and sufferings. Like Rachel, Stacey is seen fluttering like a bird in the cage, though she tries hard to break the rules, she is unable and therefore remains a passive sufferer. Laurence portrays Stacey as typical Canadian woman who knows that she is in need of freedom but the societal walls bind her to come from the restrain.
Stacey’s life is a struggle against domination of the male society. She lacks the bravery and self-confidence because of her …show more content…

Stacey’s every attempt of self-realization makes her guilty, as she is having only one identity of a mother of four children- as a person to wait for her children at home. Here, Stacey too like Rachel is a caged bird, who knows how to fly but doesn’t fly because they are the persons to take care of their children. She even says that,
“At the day of judgment, God will say Stacey MacAindra, what have you done with your life? And I’ll say, well let’s see sir, I think. I loved my kids. And he’ll say. Are you certain of that? And I’ll say, God, I’m not certain about anything anymore. So he’ll say to hell with you, then. We’re all positive thinker up here. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. May be He’d say, Don’t worry, Stacey. I’m not all that certain, either. Sometime I wonder if I even exist. And I’d say, I know what I mean, Lord. I have some trouble with myself” (FD 14).
Her communication with God shows her social phobia and her inability to deal with the expectations of being a

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