Lesbian Love and the Great Goddess in Louise Maheux- Forcier's Amadou
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Lesbian Love and the Great Goddess in Louise Maheux- Forcier's Kathleen L. Kellett-Betsos Amadou Ryerson Polytechnical Institute ABSTRACT This paper examines the portrayal of the lesbian lover as an embodiment of the Great Goddess figure in the Quebec novel Amadou. A study of literary imagery and intertextuality in this novel shows how the first person narrator, Nathalie, creates her own personal mythology of a pagan, matriarchal cult in direct opposition to the dominant patriarchal, Judeo-Christian order upheld notably by her husband, a self-appointed Christ figure and representative of the Father's law, who proposes to save Nathalie from her own lesbian desires. RESUME Cet article examine la representation de l'amante lesbienne comme incarnation de la Grande Deesse dans le roman quebecois Amadou. Une 6tude des images litt6raires et de rintertextualite dans ce roman rdvelent la facon dont la narratrice autodiegetique, Nathalie, cree sa propre mythologie d'un culte matriarcal et paien qui s'oppose directement a l'ordre patriarcal, judeo-chretien predominant appuye notamment par son mari, soi-disant Rddempteur et representant de la loi du Pere, qui voudrait proteger Nathalie de ses desirs lesbiens. LTHOUGH LOUISE MAHEUX-FORCIER'S tance to accept the narrator's bisexuality as a first novel, Amadou, received the Prix responsible adult choice. In the past few years, A du Cercle de France upon its publica• more and more critics, especially those outside tion in 1963, critics were slow to recognize its Quebec, have chosen to study the complex literary importance. Warmly praising Amadou structure and imagery of this novel. In 1987, in 1964, Andre Brochu foresaw that certain David Lobdell published a comparative study critics would camouflage their moral disap• of Maheux-Forcier's Amadou and By Grand proval of this novel, one of the first in Quebec Central Station I lay down and wept by En• to mention the taboo subject of lesbianism, by glish Canadian writer Elizabeth Smart, as poe• criticizing its aesthetic form (338). tic celebrations of eroticism. He stresses the tendency to transform the loved one into a More recently, Roseanna Dufault, a femi• divine figure. In this study, I would like to nist critic, has shown how the reception of this pursue the theme of the divine loved one in novel has been negatively affected by a reluc• Amadou to show how literary image and inter- text work together in the narrator's discourse Egyptian figurines, all the marvellous to create a pagan, matriarchal world in direct Greek urns, in existence. (21) opposition to the patriarchal, Judeo-Christian order. elle etait aussi, tres exactement, une sta• tuette de terre cuite creee par un artiste joyeux et bon, en des temps inconnus.... In the matriarchal myth created by the (47) / She was like a terracotta figurine, narrator Nathalie, the Supreme Deity is her whose limbs had been shaped by a noble, first love, Anne, the metonymic incarnation of joyful artist in some prehistoric atelier.... Beauty: "Elle etait la Beaute et tout naturelle- (23) ment, elle decouvrait la beaute autour d'elle / "She was beauty incarnate and re• It is no accident that this first passage is sponded naturally to the beauty of the world immediately preceded by a reference to the 1 about her...." (23). Nathalie kneels before a intertext that clarifies its significance: "Puis vision of Anne as one of Botticelli's creations, quand je glissais ma cuisse douce entre ses "superbe et nue dans ses cheveux" (45) / "a cuisses elle devenait serieuse et nous disions superb, naked figure with a luxuriant head of les chansons de Bilitis" (13) / "But when I slid hair" (22) — one cannot help but think of Bot• my soft thigh between her own, she grew seri• ticelli's "Birth of Venus." Anne's role as a pa• ous and we chanted the songs of Bilitis" (7). gan idol, a manifestation of the Great Goddess Les Chansons de Bilitis, published by Pierre 2 image, is especially supported by metaphors Louys in 1894, are verses in the sapphic mode, equating Anne with a statuette: the fictional memoirs of Bilitis, supposedly a contemporary of Sappho.3 As Nathalie encoun• Je l'avais trouvee comme mon ami Jean ters Anne for the first time on a hot dusty decouvre ses petites statuettes en Turquie street, so Bilitis discovers her true love, et ressuscite des villes endormies, en- Mnasidika, unexpectedly: "Je l'ai trouvee fouies sous la poussiere et les avalanches comme un tresor, dans un champ, sous un et le temps et le feu. Anne m'attendait du buisson de myrte ..." (118) / "I discovered her fond des ages, couverte de terre et pareille like a treasure, in a field, under a myrtle a moi. (13) / I had discovered her in the bush."4 Around her neck Mnasidika wears as same way that my friend, Jean, discovers protection a nude statuette of the goddess As- his little statuettes in Turkey, resurrecting tarte (119). In a poem describing the statuette, sleeping cities buried beneath the dust of Bilitis proclaims the Goddess as "la Tres- avalanches, time and fire. Anne was waiting for me at the bottom of the ages, Belle," "la Tres-Amoureuse" and "la Mere-de- covered with earth, a replica of myself. toutes-choses" (120-121). As an incarnation of (7) the Great Goddess, Anne obviously embodies beauty and love but, as we shall see, her role Toute la beaute du monde resume e dans as "Mother of all things" is ambiguous. At the ses cheveux! [...] Sur ses savates, toute la same time, Nathalie's veneration of Anne in terre qui recouvre depuis des siecles, the form of a statuette contravenes the Judeo- toutes les statuettes egyptiennes encore Christian ethic by breaking the commandment enfouies et les vases grecs merveilleux! against the worship of graven images. In her (43) / In that head of hair was to be found book When God was a Woman, Merlin Stone all the beauty in the world. [...] On those emphasizes the widespread destruction of im• battered shoes, all the earth that had lain for centuries over all the unexcavated ages of the Great Goddess perpetrated by the Jews and, later, by the Christians, who wished de ce meuble, il decouvre un jour, une to replace the ancient matriarchal religion with chevelure doree. Alors, il tombe amoureux their own, as commanded by the Scriptures de cette chevelure; il fait l'amour avec elle 5 et invente des plaisirs les plus rares ... (xvii). mais il finit pas se trahir et se retrouve dans un asile d'alienes. Mais je suis cer- Related to Anne's role as graven image is taine que cet homme n'etait pas fou. (126- the fetishism of golden hair which Nathalie 127) / It's a terrible story about a collector considers her personal talisman. Anne is often who buys an Italian antique, and in one of described in reference to her golden hair: "un the drawers he discovers a golden hair. He visage-enfant, ble d'or et clin d'oeil mali- falls in love with that hair, he makes love cieux" (34) / "the haunting memory of a to it, he invents the rarest pleasures ... but child's face, a flash of golden cornsilk, a mis• he ends up betraying himself and he finds chievous wink" (17). Because of Anne's mem• himself in a mad house. But I'm sure that ory, Nathalie is later drawn to a golden-maned man wasn't mad. (64) horse (15), to the golden-haired dog Gaspard and then to the ash-blond Sylvia. At the death By this implied comparison, Nathalie affirms of Gaspard, Nathalie holds the dog in her the sanity of her own belief in the face of a arms: "J'etais recouverte d'une chevelure world that sternly imposes its sexual and reli• blonde, talisman de ma vie: j'etais «cheveux gious norms and could only see Nathalie's fas• d'or» comme on est gemeaux ou verseau...." cination with the golden hair of her idol as a (134) / "Suddenly, I was covered in long, symptom of madness. blond hair, like a talisman, the talisman of my life: I was Golden Hair, just as others are Along with its mythic significance, hair Gemini or Aquarius" (68). The synecdoche symbolism in this novel mirrors the subjection which concentrates Anne's divine power in her of women. Anne's flowing long hair represents golden hair belongs to the metonymic rather her freedom. Nicole Bourbonnais emphasizes than the metaphoric principle, according to the euphoric nature of Anne's death, "un geste Roman Jakobson's distinction. Ewa Thompson delibere et joyeux" (Bourbonnais 179), as the points out the relationship between metonymy young girl dives into the pool of water with and J.G. Frazer's concept of "contagious her long hair streaming behind her "comme magic" as expressed in The Golden Bough: une trainee de poudre lumineuse au soleil" "things that have once been in contact with (14) / "like a trail of luminous powder" (8). each other continue to act on each other at a This luminosity links Anne's hair with the distance after the physical contact has been pervasive fire imagery in the novel. Her death severed."6 The idea that the golden hair could represents the magical fusion of fire and water hold a magical power through its spatiotem- and, as such, parallels Nathalie's later suicide poral association with Anne is fundamentally in purifying fire.7 pagan. In an intertextual reference to Guy de Maupassant's short story "La Chevelure," The theme of feminine freedom repre• Nathalie asserts her pagan faith in the face of sented by long, unconfined hair reappears in a modern world which can only perceive such certain images linking hair and birds as sym• a belief as madness: bols of freedom: C'est un conte assez horrible: c'est l'his- je tracais sur le sable, de grandes arabes• toire d'un collectionneur qui achete un ques de cheveux; cela faisait comme des vieux meuble italien et dans une cachette empreintes d'oiseaux fantastiques que la mer venait lecher en me rapportant mes her as a Pantocrater, a Byzantine Christ, in the sandales.