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. (16) /1 was a painter, sketching arch of the Romanesque chapel which Nathalie long arabesques in the sand, like heads of has rented with Julien and their friends Sylvia hair, like the tracks of fantastic birds. (9) and Robert:

J'observe Sylvia: je la sens continuelle- Une chapelle romane sans cloitre ni cime- ment comme un oiseau pret a s'envoler et tiere, Sylvia, Robert, Julien, Gaspard et je ne comprends pas sa presence tenace ni moi, et dans la belle voute, comme un le frolement leger de ses ailes de cendre Pantocrator avec ses grands yeux fixes: sur mon cceur. (115-116) /1 observe Syl• Anne que je suis seule a voir. (77) / A Ro• via, sensing that at any moment she might manesque chapel, without cloister or ceme• break into flight, wondering why she is tery. Sylvia, Robert, Julien, Gaspard and still here, her ashen wings ruffling my myself. And, high in the lovely vault, like tender heart ... and I fail to understand. a Pantocrater gazing down with large, (58) fixed eyes: Anne, whom I alone could see. (38) In contrast, the constraints imposed on women by patriarchal society are symbolized by The implied comparison with Christ does not restrictive hair styles. Nathalie's first lover detract from Anne's essential femininity. Rath• demands that she put up her hair to conform to er, this simile subverts the patriarchal Judeo- his vision of womanhood: Christian tenet that God is necessarily mascu• line, as expressed in this statement by a Le premier, il a pris les deux tresses que member of the clergy opposed to the ordina• j'avais sur le dos, il n'en a fait qu'une, tion of women, quoted by Stone in When God enorme, me l'a enroulee sur la tete et m'a was a Woman: "Christ is the source of Priest• dit: «Voila, tu es une femme!» (15) / The first one seized the braids hanging down hood. The Sexuality of Christ is no accident my back and wound them together, mak• nor is his masculinity incidental. This is the ing an enormous coil that he rolled on top divine choice."8 Furthermore, the unorthodox of my head, "Now, you're a woman." (8) image of Anne as Pantocrater adored by Na• thalie recalls an earlier image in which Natha• When her lover Julien forces Nathalie to visit lie speaks of "le Christ hallucinant au plafond a lesbian bar as part of his crusade to "cure" de la coupole" (18) in a church in Decani. Na• her, she notices that the lesbian couples imitate thalie feels nothing but contempt for the priest the power structure of heterosexual couples, of this church who, in her view, represents each couple including a long-haired woman madness while the architecture itself represents with soft features and a short-haired woman reason. Rejecting Christian theology, Nathalie with angular features (37). To her, the rela• nonetheless accepts Christian architecture as a tionship between these women is but a travesty fitting setting for her Goddess, an ironic of her love for Anne. Long, flowing golden reversal of the early Christian custom of con• tresses are then fitting symbols of freedom and verting pagan temples into their own (Stone magic within Nathalie's personal mythology xvii-xviii). centred on Goddess worship in a patriarchal society that wishes to control women. Several literary images suggest the divine nature of Sylvia, Nathalie's adult lesbian lover: Images of Anne are not taken exclusively "C'est une espece de deesse...." (98) / "She from a pagan context. Nathalie also envisages was a sort of goddess" (49); "Sylvia, dans cette eglise, pretresse en collants noirs...." (98) by a jade doll, a less exalted figure than the / "A priestess in black tights" (49); "Sylvia, timeless statuette of the divine Anne. ma deesse!" (137) / "Sylvia, my little goddess" (69). Nathalie sees her as a natural inhabitant Though she resembles Anne in many ways, of pagan Greece: "Je la voyais comme une Sylvia is a less pure incarnation of the Great elfe a travers des oliviers tortueux et argentes Goddess. Unlike Anne who was incapable of du gouffre de Delphes, ou bien, dansant autour duplicity, Sylvia lies effortlessly. When Natha• de la petite Tholos de Marmaria, bercee d'un lie realizes this, she is in fact relieved since it doux air de flute." (120) / "I saw her as an elf, means that her love for Sylvia does not threat• glimpsed through the twisted, silvery branches en her worship of Anne, her "idole ancienne" of the olive trees on the Gulf of Delphes, or (127) / "her ancient idol."9 In fact, she finds in dancing about the little Tholos of Marmaria, this new love a deliverance from the potential• rocked by the sweet notes of a flute" (65). ly destructive identification with the dark side Like Anne, she is associated with a statuette of of the Great Goddess, the "Mother of all magical powers, specifically a jade princess things," appearing here as the Terrible Mother that Robert has purchased for her birthday. who maintains the individual in a state of During a trip to Paris where he encourages dependence:10 Nathalie to follow her true lesbian nature by taking Sylvia as her lover, Robert places the Mais je retrouvais aussi, en meme temps, statuette in the room as a symbol of Sylvia to une certaine forme d'equilibre, comme si ce bronze ancien au lieu d'adherer a moi sanctify his lovemaking with Nathalie: comme ma propre chair, se fut soudain detache et place" devant mes yeux sans me Les deux mains croisees sous la nuque, il toucher physiquement: peut-etre plus pre• me regarde en faisant des ronds de fumee sent et plus visible mais moins lourd et bleue, de petits cercles qui s'agrandissent moins destructeur. (128) / At the same et vont couronner le jade insolite, diamant time, I had recovered at least a part of my dans la fange, Sylvia minuscule, deesse equilibrium, as if that ancient bronze figure du foyer dans cette chambre minable. that I had once confused with myself had (110) / His hands clasped behind his suddenly detached itself from me and head, he gazed at me, blowing rings of become a separate entity, more present and blue tobacco smoke, little circles that more visible perhaps but infinitely less grew larger and larger and drifted over to ponderous and destructive. (64-65) crown the strange little jade figure at his side, a diamond in the mud, a minuscule Sylvia, a household goddess ensconced in Sylvia's letters reveal that she perceives Anne that pathetic room. (55) as her only serious rival: "Je serai la lumiere et la chaleur de ton corps et mes cheveux cou- As they make love, Nathalie notices the statu• leront jusqu'a la pointe de mes chevilles pour ette who seems to respond in a coquettish effacer le Botticelli de ton pare ensorcele" manner to the scene: "la poupee de jade a rele- (149) / "I shall be the light and the warmth of ve son eventail devant sa bouche et j'ai crie: your body. I shall let my hair grow right to my «Sylvia!» a la face de la terre." (116) / "the ankles, to efface the little Botticelli in the jade doll raised her fan before her mouth, as I park" (74). In her love for Sylvia, Nathalie is cried 'Sylvia!' to the hidden face of the world" finally able to dissociate herself from the (59). Both lovers see the other as a substitute Great Goddess figure that she worships and to for Sylvia and their lovemaking constitutes rit• accept an imperfect, human love. ual worship of this flawed goddess represented The intimacy between Sylvia and Nathalie be unhappy and confused. Shake off your is evident in the echoes of Nathalie's mono• suffocating prejudices and learn for once logue contained in Sylvia's letters; for to listen to your instincts. (75) example, Sylvia's reference here to Anne as Botticelli's creation, a comparison made by The relationship offered is rather less than the Nathalie near the beginning of the novel, as unique and all-consuming passion that Natha• we have seen. Long before the reader, Sylvia lie and Anne once shared, but Nathalie is has heard Nathalie's life story; she is the pre• tempted. Her love for Sylvia, while permitting ferred narratee, the confidante. Still, Nathalie her to distance herself somewhat from the is unable simply to leave Julien for Sylvia as more oppressive aspect of Goddess worship, Sylvia begs her to do. Instead, she aspires to has allowed her to accept the compromises return through suicide in a blaze of fire to her necessary in an adult relationship: eternal cult of Anne: "Peut-etre alors je trou- verai une paix ineffable jusqu'a la fin des J'ai envie de prendre les gens comme ils temps dans l'eclaboussant bonheur de mes sont, avec leurs folies, leurs nevroses et quinze ans retrouves" (157) / "Perhaps, then, leurs caprices et tous les mensonges et I shall find the peace I have been seeking. A toutes les pauvres chimeres dont le coeur peace that will carry me right to the end of de 1'homme est tapisse comme de mon- time, in the diffuse happiness of my resur• strueuses orchidses vivaces... (124) / But I had made up my mind to take people as rected fifteenth year" (80). Dufault contests the they were, with all the deceptions and poor prevalent interpretation that Nathalie commits chimeras that paper the walls of the human suicide because of her inability to abandon her heart like monstrous, perennial orchids... obsession with her adolescent idol in order to (63) have a mature relationship. She insists that Na• thalie has achieved "a valid adult relationship" During Julien's interrogation, Nathalie is with Sylvia as opposed to her adolescent love caught between two visions of the world: "Les for Anne (108); rather, it is Julien who puts an verites de Julien et de Sylvia s'affrontaient end to Nathalie's relationship with Sylvia by dans ma nuit" (157) / "The truths of Julien and confiscating her letters (109). While it is Sylvia came face-to-face in my night" (79). In doubtlessly true that Julien's merciless interro• choosing to die, Nathalie returns to her child• gation of Nathalie for days after his discovery hood vision of the Great Goddess, the Mother of the letters leads her to the murder-suicide, of all things. Her alternate choice of an adult Nathalie's ambivalence over Sylvia's invitation lesbian love cannot be realized in the world to resume a menage a trois is already evident, dominated by the patriarchal order. as implied by Sylvia's entreaties:

Though there is no textual metaphor identi• Mais oui, j'aime Robert et Robert m'aime fying her as a goddess, Nathalie herself has ... et t'aime aussi! C'est tout simple! Le magical powers, obtained partly through her coeur des hommes n'est-il pas assez grand association with Anne, often identified in the pour deux? Je t'en prie, ne sois plus mal- heureuse et perdue et sors de l'etouffe- text as her double: "Anne etait vivante... Je ment des prejuges et vis ta vie comme tu l'avais creee: elle etait moi-meme ..." (13) / la sens. (149-150) / Yes, I love Robert "Anne was alive. I had created her. She was and Robert loves me. He loves you, too. my love, she was myself (8). As Bourbonnais It's very simple, really. Isn't the heart of has indicated, this identification occurs particu• man large enough for two? Please don't larly through the metaphor of Nathalie as the dark side of Ophelia corresponding to the The ambivalent image of Robert corres• golden Ophelia represented by Anne, who ponds to that of the Father. Nathalie tells drowned before reaching adulthood (179-180). Robert of a childhood memory of her father Nathalie is Ophelia gifted with the power to guiding her in a rowboat. Wishing to initiate a arise from the dead: "Ophelie miraculeuse, lesbian relationship between Nathalie and his sans cesse ressuscit.ee!" (21) / "miraculous wife Sylvia, Robert remarks: "peut-etre suis-je Ophelia, ceaselessly ressuscitated" (11). Also, cette espece de bon vieux bonhomme retrouve Nathalie's true element is not water but fire: au bout de ta barque errante, tout pret a t'in- "Tout flambe toujours autour de moi; je suis diquer la route, d'un geste des deux mains." l'amadou qui cotoie l'etincelle" (70) / "Every• (112-113)/ "Perhaps I am that fellow sitting in thing bursts into flame. I am the tinder that the end of your boat, ready to guide you with produces the spark" (34). Having killed Julien, a movement of my hands" (57). Bourbonnais' Nathalie resolves to kill herself by setting the statement that Robert and Julien respectively house on fire, but she desires to emerge from come to represent the positive and negative as• this fire to rejoin Anne in the mythical time of pects of the Father (178) seems valid but does their adolescence. Ultimately, she can only not take into account the problematic nature of choose the magical solution: having bought the Robert's role in Nathalie's life. However, "poudre magique" (41) to kill Julien, she at• whether his motives are pure or selfish, Robert tains purity through the divine powers of fire, shows Nathalie that her road to happiness is "un grand feu de joie" (157) / "a raging fire of through an acceptance of her lesbian nature joy" (80). and of her attraction to Sylvia.

One male deity intrudes on Nathalie's pre• Nathalie admits that she searches for the dominantly matriarchal cult: Robert as Eros. In image of her father in the arms of her male fact, Nathalie is unsure whether to judge Rob• lovers (65). Yet no man ever supplants Natha• ert by Julien's patriarchal bourgeois standards lie's lesbian lovers. If Anne embodies all the or by reference to her own pagan vision: "Qui beauty in the world, all Nathalie's male lovers es-tu, Robert? un horrible deprave ou bien are summed up in a synecdoche of the general Eros en personne, dieu de 1'Amour, plonge a for the particular as "l'homme": "j'avais su mes cotes, dans une reverie souriante et tran- tout de suite que l'amour c'etait cela, pur quille?" (117)/ "Who was that man sitting be• comme le feu et indomptable [...] et j'en avais side me? A horrid, depraved creature? Or Eros connu ensuite toutes les caricatures avec himself, the God of Love, sunk in a tranquil, l'homme" (35-36) / "I had discovered love, a smiling reverie?" (59). Robert's role in Natha• thing as pure and indomitable as fire [...] next lie's world is obscure: does he serve only him• to which all my experiences with the men I self, seeking to regain Sylvia through Nathalie, had subsequently known were no more than a motive that Nathalie attributes to him (115), mere caricatures" (18)." The search for the or does he serve Sylvia as his elusive goddess? Father is, of course, especially destructive In the context of the worship of the great when it leads to Nathalie's relationship with Goddess. In the context of the worship of the Julien. Great Goddess, his relationship to Sylvia resembles that between the Great Goddess As- At first glance, Nathalie's father does not tarte and her Consort, generally represented as appear to support the conventional Judeo- her lover or son, of secondary importance Christian patriarchal order. It is her mother (Stone 19). rather than her father who attempts to teach her Judeo-Christian doctrine. While her mother himself, he clung to a bouquet of preju• does many charitable works, Nathalie detects dices and preconceived ideas that he had in her no real love for the poor: "Elle parlera tried in vain to strip of its petals since his de «ses pauvres» comme elle parle de «ses arrival in Europe. As i could have told bijoux», puis elle annoncera: «un coeur»!" (42) him, the flowers of the average Catholic / "She would speak of 'her poor' as she spoke childhood are perennials ... (66). of 'her jewels,' then announce 'One heart!'" (21). Christian love here becomes self- She condemns as simplistic his obsession with righteous possessiveness, just as it does in the commandment against adultery: "la hantise Julien's crusade to "save" Nathalie. Her moth• hysterique du sixieme commandement" (131) er also teaches her guilt, whispering to her / "the hysterical obsession with the sixth com• daughter that God punishes wrongdoing: "tu mandment" (66). As Stone makes evident, the vois: le bon Dieu t'a punie" (120) / "You see, Judeo-Christian prohibitions against infidelity the good Lord has punished you!" (61). In were primarily a way of assuring patrilinear contrast, Nathalie's father refuses all religion decent and of controlling women, who had and all friendships as a myth and a drug (49). enjoyed great sexual freedom within the cult Nathalie adores her father because he treats of the Great Goddess (Chapter 9, 180-197). her as an individual of equal intelligence (43). Julien cannot accept Nathalie's love for Anne Yet he is every bit as oppressive as Julien. He and he becomes violent over her relationships is the supreme authority in the household, with Robert and Sylvia. Before returning to his imposing isolation upon his wife and daughter. family in Quebec, he marries Nathalie to Until the arrival of Anne, Nathalie revels in ensure his complete control over her and later, this isolation, though she later comes to upon discovering Sylvia's letters begging Na• understand how much her mother had suffered, thalie to return, he strikes Nathalie to the needing human companionship (49). Though ground. He cannot accept that happiness for Nathalie's father accepts Anne as a companion Nathalie lies beyond his dominion. for his daughter, he believes that truly strong individuals stand alone, needing no one. His Lobdell is inaccurate when he suggests in daughter's worship of the Great Goddess his article that Julien is the only character who through lesbian love would not conform to his does not undergo metamorphosis through rather rigid precepts. imagery (72). Julien is, in fact, a caricatural incarnation of the Christ figure, as the literary In opposition to Nathalie's pagan and pre• images in this novel make evident. He is a dominantly matriarchal world, Julien is the "moine defroque et nostalgigue" (96) / "a de• principal upholder of the Judeo-Christian, pa• frocked monk given up to nostalgia" (48), a triarchal tradition. Nathalie emphasizes his in• "grand-pretre alcoolique" (115) / "alcoholic ability to rid himself of his traditional Catholic high-priest" (58). Even though Julien con• upbringing: demns the institution of Christianity, he af• firms the importance of Christ himself: Julien, incertain de lui-meme, s'agrippait inconsciemment a un bouquet de prejuges Moi, je crois au Christ, c'est-a-dire en tant et d'idees toutes faites qu'il s'etait vaine- qu'etre humain muni d'un pouvoir magne- ment applique a effeuiller depuis son tique extraordinaire, le Christ de Renan, arrive en Europe: les fleurs d'une enfance homme avant tout, et qui a traverse vingt catholique sont vivaces et on ne guerit pas siecles avec son «aimez-vous les uns les facilement ... (130-131) / Uncertain of autres». (87) / I believe in Christ, the larger-than-life figure endowed with an The relationship between Julien, Christ extraordinary magnetism, the Christ of figure, and Nathalie, worshipper of the Great Renan: a man, first and foremost, who has Goddess, was doomed to failure from the start, come down to us through the centuries being based on misconceptions on both sides. with his everlasting credo of "Love one Finding Nathalie alone and sick, outside in a another." (44) torrential rain, Julien the self-proclaimed sav• iour could only suppose that she needed to be Robert remarks on Julien's role as self- saved. For her part, when she awoke in Jul• appointed Saviour: "C'est un type exception• ien's apartment, Nathalie's first impressions of al; il nous a tous tires du fond de l'eau a Julien situated him in her pagan world. The plusieurs reprises. Tous ses amis sont en dette envers lui. C'est un sauveteur par vocation ..." stripes on his shirt reminded her of Greek col• (102) / "He's an exceptional man, he's pulled umns; his physique reminded her of the Greek us all to the surface more than once; every one Alexis Zorba (25-26) and so she might possib• of his friends is obligated to him. He's a born ly have been forgiven for thinking that she saviour ..." (51). However, Julien seems to be was in the presence of a reincarnated Greek motivated more by self-righteousness than by god. Christian love. He is determined to rescue Na• thalie from her own lesbian desires by what• Upon their return to Quebec, Julien returns ever means necessary. In Nathalie's words, he forever to the patriarchal, bourgeois world works toward her "conversion" (96). She com• from which he had never been able to free plains: "tous ses anciens appetits missionnaires himself. His entire family is dominated by a parfumes d'encens et de fleur bleue se sont modern idol, television, described by Nathalie canalises sur moi qui ne demandais rien" (131- as a new incarnation of the trinity: "Zeus, le 132) / "All the ancient, messianic fervour, Veau d'or et Dieu le pere tout a la fois!" (144) perfumed with incense and blue flowers, had / "Zeus, the Golden Calf and God the Father come to be focused on me, who had asked all rolled into one!" (72). The masculine char• nothing" (66). Julien's role as a harsh, judge• acter of this new idol is consistent with Natha• mental representative of the Father's law is lie's world view.13 Also, Nathalie has only evident in the image of him reading Sylvia's contempt for Julien's sister, an old maid with letters, "blotti dans ses fourrures comme sous plastered down hair who studies astrology, a une toge ..." (156) / "wrapped in his furs like bastardized relic of the pre-Christian tradition. a sultan" (79), the word "toge" meaning not Obviously this patriarchal setting stifles the ex• only "toga" but also "a judge's robes," a pression of feminine eroticism and creativity. meaning not conveyed in Lobdell's translation. At the end of the novel, Nathalie finds a note To return to her cult of the Great Goddess, from him: "je t'aime, Nathalie, et je te rendrai Nathalie must destroy the Christ figure who de tout mon amour a une vie saine et normale, represents the patriarchal order. True to the Julien." (157) / "I love you, Nathalie, and I am Judeo-Christian tradition, Julien the Saviour is resolved with my love to restore you to sanity another incarnation of the Father. Nathalie re• and normality, Julien" (80). To be normal is to jects Julien and his paternal care because, like turn away from her lesbian lover Sylvia, an the tree that was her first love before the arriv• earthly image of the Great Goddess, and to al of Anne, he has succumbed to the ossifying love man, created according to the Bible in effects of aging: God's image.12 C etait au commencement du monde et particularly, for lesbians. As Dufault has j'etais amoureuse d'un arbre. II etait jeune pointed out (104), Maheux-Forcier writes in et beau et droit. [...] II est devenu enorme, the tradition of the Sappho model described by cet arbre! Je n'aime pas les gens qui en- Elaine Marks in her article "Lesbian Intertex- graissent ni les choses qui vieillissent... tuality." This is especially evident in the allu• Julien a grossi (12) / It was at the begin• ning of the world. I was in love with a sion to Les Chansons de Bilitis from the same 15 tree. The tree was young and fair and tradition. The modernity of Maheux-Forcier's straight. [...] That tree became enormous. perspective manifests itself in her celebration I don't like people who grow fat, I don't of the Minoan-Mycenean civilization, a per• like things that grow old. Julien grew fat. spective that Marks considers typical of the (7). new feminist view of Sappho:

In rejecting Julien and the aging tree, Nathalie The Minoan-Mycenean civilization that also rejects the Father since, as Bourbonnais preceded the Oedipal institution of patri• has indicated, her love for the tree sprung archal law is glorified. What began a long from the fact that it was planted by her father time ago as the domestication of Sappho 14 has become a concerted effort to imagine on the day she was born (177-178). Bourbon• a world before the domestication of wom• nais remarks that in killing Julien, Nathalie an, before the deliberate taming of her commits the ritual murder of the Father which sexuality and her language. (362) permits the liberation of the self (176). How• ever, if Nathalie's suicide magically releases However, while criticizing the attempt by men her into a mythical, intemporal world, the pa• to domesticate women, Maheux-Forcier also triarchal order still prevails in the world she shows the danger of glorifying the past; Natha• leaves behind. The police will arrive, Julien's lie is most fulfilled when she can maintain the family will mourn, but Nathalie will have Great Goddess on her pedestal while partici• changed nothing in the society that oppressed pating in the flawed world of human love. her. What Maheux-Forcier celebrates in the ancient civilization of Sappho is a vision of sexual If Nathalie herself is unable to change her freedom for women, denied to them by the society, Maheux-Forcier's Amadou and her patriarchal, Judeo-Christian order, once a subsequent novels have participated in a monolithic force in Quebec society. movement of sexual liberation for women and,

NOTES

1. In this article, all translations of passages from December 1894, though it bears the date 1895 (110). Amadou are taken from David Lobdell's English He discusses Louys' literary deception in some translation, unless otherwise indicated. detail (110-112). 2. The theme of the lesbian lover as an incarnation of 4. The translation is mine. the Great Goddess reappears in Une foret pour Zoe 5. Stone cites for example Deuteronomy 12:2,3. which, along with Amadou and L 'lie joyeuse, makes 6.Her e Thompson (160) quotes J. G. Frazer, The up a trilogy. There, the protagonist Therese refers to Golden Bough (New York, 1963) 12-13. her lover as "Isis," the name of the Egyptian 7. According to Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, manifestation of the Great Goddess. the idea of fire as a purifying and regenerating force 3. According to H.P. Clive, the first edition of Les is prevalent from the Occident to the Orient (435). Chansons de Bilitis was first published on 12 8. Stone uses this quotation from Bishop C. L. Meyers 14. The association between Nathalie's birth and the in the San Francisco Chronicle (25 October 1971) planting by the Father of a tree which is all as an epigraph (ix). andstraight underlines the traditional phallic connota• 9. My translation. LobdelPs translation of "mon idole tions of the tree; according to Chevalier and Gheer- ancienne" as "my former idol" (64) is questionable. brant, the tree as a symbol of force and power, asso• The adjective "ancient" generally means "former" ciated with the sun, represents the Phallus, emblem only when used before the noun; when used after of the father (66). Moreover, the sexual connotations the noun, it means "ancient" so that this metaphor of the tree are also apparent in "Arbre," the first is actually related to all the other images of Anne as poem is Les Chansons de Bilitis, where Bilitis an ancient statuette. speaks of sitting naked in a tree, astride a branch: 10. In his book, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the "Je sentais le bel arbre vivre quand le vent passait Archetype, Erich Neumann speaks of the negative au travers; alors je serrais mes jambes davantage et function of the Great Mother in "holding fast, fixat• j'appliquais mes levres ouvertes sur la nuque cheve- ing, and ensnaring": "the Great Mother in her func• lue d'un rameau" (3) / "I felt the beautiful tree live tion of fixation and not releasing what aspires to• when the wind passed through; then I pressed my ward independence and freedom is dangerous" (65). legs harder and I placed my open lips on the hair- 11. Unfortunately, Lobdell's translation eliminates the covered nape of a branch." (My translation.) synecdoche here by using the plural "men." 15. Les Chansons de Bilitis are part of the lyrical tradi• 12. Stone emphasizes the disparagement of women evi• tion which has, as Marks points out, perceived dent in the Judeo-Christian claim that man was lesbianism more positively than the prose narrative created first in God's image, whereas woman was tradition: "The discourse on lesbians in prose narra• created from man's rib: 219. tive tends to reproduce some culturally accepted 13. The Golden Calf, originally a symbol of goddess derogatory point of view on women loving women, worship (Stone 177), would seem to represent here whereas the lyric poem tends to represent the lesbian only a false idol. as synonymous with a mysterious world of feminine pleasure" (361).

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