Morig's Vision In The Diviners

Laurence presents quest for spiritual vision in her novels. Like Laurence, Morag Gunn, the heroine of The Diviners, uses her pen as a vehicle to travel into the past and divine truths lying hidden from view. Her pilgrimage into the past at the age of forty-seven is a spiritual quest for the meaning of heritage or identity. It is symbolically manifested in the search by an adopted child for her dead parents the loss of whom grieves her more in her forty-seven year than ever before. She says “perhaps I only want their forgiveness for having for forgotten them” (p.27) In the novel’s time-present sequence, Morag is hoping to mitigate the gloom and confusion she feels over her daughter pique’s growth into womanhood and corresponding demands

What she learns is the Scotland not the true land of her own ancestors, instead of learning her own past land “Christie’s real country”(p.135)- the land of her birth is. Morag feels lonely in Vancouver or in England. She feels that where she belongs “she will never she belongs”(p.359). And that her spiritual home is her birth place. When she returns Canada and lives in a small town called McConnell’s landing similar to Manawaka. She acknowledges the value of her birthplace and on her roots she writers the novel” Shadow of Eden”. She realizes that she lost her childhood garden, so she feels different and she is craving for her father’s land. Finally she accepts the value of her father’s land and realizes where she belongs.

In Mcconnell’s Landing. Morag suspects that the local water diviner Royland who looks as “Old As Jehovah’ is soon to become her new Shaman. She feels about to learn” something of great significance from him something which would explain everything”, the mystery of “his work, her own the generation, the river”.This spiritual quest persuade in the novel’s time present is its main forward

But later only she realizes that she misses her native. Her inner growth is an evident from the manner in which she engages herself with creative writing. She writes five novels and all within the time span covered by “The Diviners”. All the novels of Morag have important internal relationship to “The Diviners” is Spear of Innocence. It is followed by Prospero’s child, Jonah, Shadows of Eden and her fifth novel, which she finishes in the last sentence of the book and which is obviously The Diviners. All these five novels show the inner progression of Morag. They reveal the Spiritual growth with sequence.

The first of Morag’s novel The Spear of Innocence is about Lilac, its heroine aborts herself an Eva Winkler’s, a childhood friend of her did. After the success of the novel she leaves her husband Brooke. She writes this novel to Brooke who had not agreed to have a child of their own. She feels that staying with Brooke will mean “Chained forever to that image” (p.63) of herself, which he must have and which must forever be distorted because, fourteen years older than she and insists that she has no