Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

The Documentary Value of the French-Canadian Novel

Author(s): Patricia M. Gathercole
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Autumn, 1958), pp. 375-378
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40097965
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The Value
Documentary of
French-Canadian
Novel
By PATRICIA M. GATHERCOLE
or any period, like works
of other literary genres, often mir-
ror contemporaryevents and prob-
lems either by means of direct portrayal
or through the depiction of the mood of
the writer. In this article it will be shown
that especially in French Canada the con-
temporary novel has been of remarkable
documentaryvalue during the last two dec-
ades,describinghappeningsof international
significance as well as internal conditions.
The most recent works by some of the best
known writers, in particular the novels of
Gabrielle Roy, Roger Lemelin, and Ger-
maine Guevremont, deal with social, politi-
cal, and religious questions. They discuss
the attitude of French-Canadians toward
the English and the Americans, the role
of the clergy in the French section of
Canada, the violent impact of war, and
the tense life of many city-dwellers. De-
scriptions of nature, and of landscape in
general, become subordinated to psycho-
logical study of characterand a sociological
approach.
Although the first French-Canadian
novels were historical and essentially patri-
otic in inspiration, often relating the ad-
ventures and struggles of sturdy defri-
cheurs in pages reminiscent of Chateau-
briand, the portrayalof contemporarycon-
ditions began to be stressed in the French-
Canadian novel at the beginning of the
twentieth century and has been continued
up to the present. Members of "L'ficole du
Terroir," founded in 1909 by a group of
regionalists,wrote about facets of the exist-
ence of the habitantswhich applied to their
times: sugar-drawing, spring ploughing,
and harvesting. Emphasis was placed upon
problems of a domestic and rural nature:
Damase Potvin, in such novels as L'appel
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the
de la terre (1912), wrote fresh descriptions
of peasant life in the province of Quebec,
notably in the Saguenay region. Louis He-
mon, in Maria Chapdelaine (1916), besides
painting the French-Canadiancountryside,
described the peasants whom he had
known since his days as a farm hand at
Peribonka. Germaine Guevremont con-
tinues today this tradition of what may be
called the peasant novel, concerned with
daily problems of the French-Canadian
farmer. She paints realistic types which are
continued throughout her works in the
manner of the roman-fleuve- in her collec-
tion of short-stories,En pleine terre (1942),
and in the novels, Le survenant (1945) and
Marie-Didace (1947). Sparkling descrip-
tions of the lake country north of Quebec
City afford a natural background for the
grim inner struggles of the protagonists
and inevitable clashes of personality which
lead to displays of jealousy and hatred.
Many contemporary French-Canadian
novelists, however, have come to present a
different phase of life in French Canada:
They interpret modern city existence and
prefer to set forth the problems of the
lower middle class in its thickly populated
milieu. The novelistic characters,often Bal-
zacian in their realism, represent a world
proletariat struggling desperately to im-
prove its social and economic status. In Au
pied de la pente (1945), Les Plouffe (1948),
and Pierre le magnifique (1952), Roger
Lemelin depicts the squalid existence of
the poor in the Lower Town of Quebec
City. With satirical verve he describes im-
poverished workers and mothers harrassed
by their numerous offspring. The life of
a destitute family in Montreal is likewise
portrayed with extreme sensitivity by Ga-
brielle Roy in Bonheur d'occasion (1947).
376 BOOKS ABROAD
She gives a painfully accurateword-picture
of the tenement district of this French-Ca-
nadian city: its nauseating smells, over-
loaded clothes lines, and filthy streets
swarming with ragged children and other
unfortunates, "un peuple de fourmis":
Des enfants jouaienta la marelletout
autour de la gare et leurs cris s'enten-
daienta traversles sifflementsde la loco-
motive qui avait repris de la vitesse et
devalaitentreles cours,les arbresmaigres,
les cordes tendues ou sechait le linge,
entre ces aper^us d'intimite, mornes,
rapides, que les trains decouvrent en
traversantles villes. D'ou il se tenait,
Emmanuel voyait les fleches de la pa-
roisse percer les tourbillons de fumee.
Son quartiercontinuaitsa vie ordinaire
. . . Les menageresallaientvivement,de
grospaquetssur le buste.Et la-haut,dans
sa guerite elevee au-dessusdes toits, le
signaleurdu chemin de fer se penchait
quelquefoisa une vitre crasseuse,et on
aurait dit qu'il regardaitpassersous lui
un peuple de fourmis (p. 391).
Other novelists describe the quickened toward the British augments a feeling of
pace of modern city life as causing unhappi-
ness and depression in spirit, not only for a longstanding dislike of the English, which
the poor, but also for the bourgeois with occasionally approachesa seething spirit of
adequate means of support. Characteristic
scenes are full of clatter and tension. An alyzed with considerable clarity. Lemelin,
amusing episode in Roy's Alexandre Che-
nevert (1954) reveals a hard-pressedbank
teller struggling with his tray during the
noonday rush at Northwestern Lunch in ily.
Montreal:
II faisait des droles de pas, hatifs,
comme un homme portantun objet pre-
cieux. Neanmoins,a chaquecoup de cou-
de qu'il recevait,sa tassese deversait.II en pose
fut navre. Le cafe, c'etait absolumentce
qu'il y avait de meilleur ici. II se de- Canada
pechait.Us etaientplusieursdu reste qui
se croisaient,se precipitaientde-ci, de-la,
a la recherched'une table . . . Comme
Alexandrearrivaita la place qu'il avait
reperee,quelqu'unde plus agile que lui
s'en emparaet s'assit,rayonnant.Alexan-
dre lui lan^aun coup d'oeilaigri en bran-
lant un peu la tete. II repartitdans une
autre direction.Au moment ou un con-
sommateur se levait en s'essuyant la
bouche, Alexandre se faufila sur cette
chaise encore chaude. Le couvert sali
n'etaitpas enleve.Des megotstrempaient
dans un reste de sauce figee. Alexandre
se fit une placepropreau coin de la table.
II commengason repaspar un comprime
qu'il avalaavecun peu d'eau(pp. 48-49).
This tenseness serves to bring out in Alex-
andre a continuous series of hostile emo-
tions and complexes. Although annoyed by
the clamor and screechingof his neighbors'
radios, he spends long hours at home listen-
ing to disquieting news broadcastson his
own set. According to Roy, Alexandre
typifies many men today who are restless
and tense, vexed by all that is tawdry in
modern life. His depressedstate of mind is
similar to that portrayed in the contempo-
rary poems of Saint-Denys Garneau and
Anne Hebert.
Psychological attitudes of their compatri-
ots regarding other nationalities interest
novelists of French Canada. The uneasy
state of mind of some French-Canadians
melancholia: In the case of a small group,
revolt against a haughty overlord, is an-
for instance, colors several scenes of Les
Plouffe with antipathy on the part of his
characters as regards the British royal fam-
On the occasion of the official visit of
King George VI to the Dominion, it is
asserted that the English come as tourists
to Canada after the difficult pioneering
work has been done, with the express pur-
of replenishing their coffers: "Les
Anglais sont tous pareils. Us viennent au
quand ils sont dans le besoin,
quand tout est defriche"(p. 162). On hear-
of the advent of the Second World War,
ing
Father Plouffe states abruptlythat the Eng-
lish, "le monstre anglo-saxon et materi-
aliste" (p. 210), will now slyly take posses-
sion of French-Canadiansthrough national
conscription. Gabrielle Roy, in La petite
poule d'eau (1950), emphasizes the desire
of a certain class of British people in Can-

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 FRENCH-CANADIAN NOVEL
ada to dominate: An English teacher, in-
structing a large French-Canadian family
in an isolated section of Manitoba, insists
that her pupils forget their French ancestry
and recognize that they are in an English
province: "Le gouvernement est anglais,
la province est anglaise, se tuait a expliquer
Miss O'Rorke; vous devez vous mettre avec
la majorite et la volonte generale."
The prejudice of a number of French-
Canadiansagainst their neighbors south of
the border is shown on occasion to be no
less bitter: Several novelists express fear
that American materialismin its most ugly
aspect is attacking French Canada. Roy's
Alexandre Chenevert accuses Americans
of having proposed material progress as
the chief end of human existence. The fam-
ily cure of Les Plouffe, giving vent to his
anti-American feeling, affirmsthat Quebec
under American control would be crowded
with high buildings, symbols of material-
istic progress, instead of with monuments
recalling the simple religious faith of the
past. He tells Father Plouffe that the
French-Canadians'general situation would
be worse than it has been under British
rule: "Si les fitats-Unis nous avaient eus,
je pense que ga aurait ete pire qu'avec les
Anglais. La Province serait couverte de
buildings plus hauts que des eglises, les
pretres n'auraient plus d'influence, parce
qu'aux Etats-Unis, la religion, ga n'a pas
d'importance. Vous avez vu le pasteur
protestant?Un joueur de baseball!"Ovide,
the youthful protagonist in the same novel,
imbued with a few of the deeply-rooted
ideas of his priest, watches a group of
American tourists making vulgar display
of wealth at the Chateau Frontenac, and
concludes that these visitors are often brash,
impolite, and devoid of intellectual inter-
ests: "Des enfants trop grands pour leur
age."
The contemporarynovel in Quebec also
servesas a forum for the discussionof politi-
cal issues of concern both at home and
abroad. The actual horrors of the Second
World War may be graphically recounted
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377
together with arresting problems that arise
during the period of conflict. G. Guevre-
mont, in Marie-Didace,portraysthe human
mind disturbed and sometimes unbalanced
as a result of the suffering caused by infla-
tion. This same mental attitude is carried
forward by other novelists, such as Y. The-
riault and F. Loranger, who depict the
man in the street worrying over strained
relations with Russia or the potent force
of the atomic bomb. From a perusal of sev-
eral different novels the reader can also
grasp fairly concretely the French-Canadi-
an's dominant interest in internal politics
and his concern for the maintenance of
freedom of thought. The author of Marie-
Didace criticizes all political sides at elec-
tion time for their failure to adopt a firm
policy and for the subsequent changing of
their program according to the exigencies
of the moment. The Communists, in par-
ticular,are mentioned as having sympathiz-
ers in French Canada among members of
the working-class. Communist-inspired
strikes take place at a Quebec lumber-camp
(in Lemelin's Pierre le magnifique) in reac-
tion against bourgeois arrivistes.A constant
fear of Communism, especially on the part
of the Catholic Church, is felt throughout
the pages of many novels. The parish priest,
afraid of leftist tendencies, may warn his
congregations that there are Communists
in their midst, as well as workers who are
sympatheticto Marxist ideals: "L'ombrede
la griffe de Moscou plane sur nos tetes et
menace notre foi, notre eglise."
The French-Canadiannovelist frequently
insists upon the importance of religion, in
particularof Catholicism. The town priest
is constantly advising his parishioners re-
garding complicated questions in their per-
sonal lives. Religious fervor plays a signifi-
cant role in the home to the extent that
colonists are describedreciting prayersin a
family circle twice a day (Les opinidtres
of L. Desrosiers). Holy figures decorating
the walls of humble dwellings give inspir-
ation to numerous poverty-strickencharac-
ters. Religion, however, is shown not only
378 BOOKS ABROAD
in its external manifestations, but also in
all its magnificent power. Following a
series of private tragedies, Rose-Anna La-
casse, the troubled mother in Roy's Bon-
heur d'occasion,emerges as a woman of un-
usual courage who radiates a contagious
spirit of optimism. She is presented in
moments of reminiscence, when she recalls
the happy days of her youth; she is also
shown in times of despair: "Mais voici que
derriere ces malheurs, ces inquietudes
clairement enoncees, elle en voyait d'autres,
toute une legion qui se levait a chaque
detour de ce dedale qu'elle suivait. Alors
elle se tut ... Et d'avoir tant de douleurs
secretes porta Rose-Anna a la compassion"
(P-356).
Although French-Canadian novels may
often lack skilled artistry in form, they are
interesting for the social historian since
everyday problems of contemporarysociety
are treated with sincerity and realism. In-
stead of consulting historical and sociologi-
cal works, the social analyist might well
turn to these volumes to obtain a valuable
insight into daily life in Quebec province.
In place of offering long descriptionsof ex-
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ternal nature and seasonal occupations as
they did before, French-Canadiannovelists
now concentrate rather on the human
mind- man troubled by questions of in-
ternal conditions and religion, by the men-
ace of war and other international prob-
lems. During recent years psychological
novels written in Quebec reveal the antipa-
thy of some French-Canadianstoward the
English and Americans. Various works de-
scribe how the average city-dweller, sub-
ject to moods of depression, is irritated by
the noisy contrivances of modern civiliza-
tion. In spite of the fact that it has been
greatly neglected in the past, the French-
Canadian novel deserves a place of special
attention in the future and may be consid-
ered a stimulating subjectfor a comparative
study with the English Canadian and
American novels of the same period. The
reader's interest is aroused by the mass of
material that is set before him. The French-
Canadian novel, now broader in its appeal
than in previous generations, reflects the
thinking and emotional state of a people
and frequently of twentieth century man.
Roano\e College