Women's Writing in Québec

Abstract

200 Women's Writing in Québec Valérie Raoul University of British Columbia, Vancouver Few of us who teach in anglophone universities have the luxury of devoting a whole course to women's writing in Québec,' but in a Canadian university it is sometimes possible. At the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, I have had the opportunity over the last twenty years to include work by women writers from Québec in more general courses on women's writing in French, on Québec writers of both sexes, and on the French novel. I have also taught a one-term course devoted entirely to francophone Canadian women writers. When given for students in the French program our courses are entirely in French, but I have developed a parallel version of this course given in English using texts in translation, aimed at drawing students from Women's Studies or Canadian Studies. The outline appended to this article will be for a one-semester course, and will suggest, as far as possible, texts available in both French and English. The content can be adapted to senior undergraduate or graduate level students. As well as the level of students concerned and the language of instruction, other preliminary reflections must be made that relate to the varying contexts and potential points of comparison, when dealing with "women's writing in Québec." These include considerations of geography and language, history and politics, and feminist or gender-based theory. The Canadian context: geography and language Teaching in a Canadian context makes one very aware of the thorny issues that must be taken into account when making decisions about what texts to include and how to approach them. In English-speaking Canada, works in French produced anywhere in Canada (including Québec) are sometimes considered part of "Canadian" literature, and may be taught in translation in English departments. The term "Québec writers" also includes many writers who work in English. The national association for teachers of Canadian literature is called the "Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures," the plural recognizing both Quebec's literary and linguistic autonomy, and the existence of anglophones in Québec and francophones in other provinces. When French departments offer courses labeled "Québec literature" (in deference to Quebec's justified dislike of the term "French-Canadian"), works by francophone writers from outside Québec risk being left in limbo. Some such works, like Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion (1945; translated as The Tin Flute), are part of the canon of "national classics" and WOMEN'S WRITING IN QUÉBEC201 seem to "belong" to all Canadians. Although Roy wrote and set her best known novel in Montréal and spent most of her life in Québec, her roots were in Manitoba where she was bom and raised. She remained a staunch federalist, and for some Québécois cannot be considered a "truly québécois " author. The same is trae of Antonine Maillet, winner of the prestigious French Prix Goncourt for Pélagie-la-Charrette (1979), which traces the history of her native Acadie, now located in the bilingual province of New Bmnswick. Although the street where she lives in Outremont (Montréal) has been renamed after her, Maillet's status as part of the Québec literary scene is ambivalent. The third "great name" of that generation of women writing fiction in Canada in French, Anne Hébert, spent most of her life living in Paris, and distanced herself from the "national question." Yet she is undoubtedly accepted as Québécoise, because she was bom and raised in Québec and chose to die there. Classification is even more difficult in the case of a contemporary novelist, Nancy Huston, who is of English-Canadian (Albertan) origin but lives permanently in Paris and writes versions of her books in both languages. Debates have raged over whether she should be eligible for the Governor General's Prize for writing in French or in English, both or neither.2 Other contexts and points of comparison Issues concerning the relationship between Québec writers and the English or French-speaking components of the "rest of Canada...