Compromising positions: Representations of adultery in twentieth-century English-Canadian prose fiction

Abstract

The family is often viewed as the most basic social institution and the one on which broader institutions are founded, and traditionally in Canada heterosexual marriage has resided at the heart of the nuclear family. The increasing prominence of adultery in English-Canadian literature throughout the twentieth century, however, raises questions regarding the nature of marriage and the duties and responsibilities associated with it. The challenges implicit in literary works concerned with adultery can fruitfully be read against changing contemporary social mores as evinced, for example, in amendments to Canadian divorce legislation. Moreover, consideration of points of intersection between material experience and literary representations of marriage and adultery can help to clarify shifts in Canadian moral and cultural values, such as the movement toward a more conservative view of adultery in the closing decades of the twentieth century.