The Evolution of the Franco-American Novel of New England (1875-2004)
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BORDER SPACES AND LA SURVIVANCE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE FRANCO-AMERICAN NOVEL OF NEW ENGLAND (1875-2004) By CYNTHIA C. LEES A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 Copyright 2006 By Cynthia C. Lees ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my supervisory committee, five professors who have contributed unfailingly helpful suggestions during the writing process. I consider myself fortunate to have had the expert guidance of professors Hélène Blondeau, William Calin, David Leverenz, and Jane Moss. Most of all, I am grateful to Dr. Carol J. Murphy, chair of the committee, for her concise editing, insightful comments, and encouragement throughout the project. Also, I wish to recognize the invaluable contributions of Robert Perreault, author, historian, and Franco- American, a scholar who lives his heritage proudly. I am especially indebted to my husband Daniel for his patience and kindness during the past year. His belief in me never wavered. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................ iii LIST OF FIGURES .................................................... vii ABSTRACT.......................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 SITING THE FRANCO-AMERICAN NOVEL . 1 1.1 Brief Overview of the Franco-American Novel of New England . 1 1.2 The Franco-American Novel and the Ideology of La Survivance ..........7 1.3 Framing the Ideology of La Survivance: Theoretical Approaches to Space and Place ....................................................13 1.4 Coming to Terms with Space and Place . 15 1.4.1 The Franco-American Novel and the Notion of Place . 18 1.4.2 The Franco-American Novel and Space . 21 1.5 Attempts to Script a Franco-American Identity . 23 1.6 Exploring Uncharted Territory....................................34 Notes .............................................................42 2 WILDERNESS, RURAL, AND URBAN SPACE . 44 2.1 Space and Place in Two Franco-American Novels of Immigration . 44 2.2 Jeanne la fileuse: Topographies of Lower Canada and Fall River . 49 2.3 “Les campagnes du Canada”: The Articulation of the Ideology of La Survivance ...................................................53 2.3.1 The Archetypal Coureur de Bois in “Les campagnes du Canada” . 57 2.3.2 The archetypal Seigneur and Fils de la Liberté in “Les campagnes du Canada”.............................................61 2.3.3 Lavaltrie and Contrecoeur: The Representation of Place . 62 2.4 “Les filatures de l’étranger”......................................65 2.4.1 Fall River, Massachusetts: Idealized Urban Space . 67 2.4.2 Jeanne Girard and Granite Mill . 70 2.4.3 The (Un)Making of a Hero ................................73 2.5 The Working Class, the Franco-American Elite, and Spaces of Inequality . 75 2.6 Canuck: A Novel of Dis-location .................................83 iv 2.6.1 Lowell and the Fabric of Despair . 87 2.6.2 From Lowell to the Cantons de l’Est: Places of Metamorphosis . 94 2.6.3 Lessons from “La vie d’un errant” . 101 2.7 Place and Placelessness in Jeanne la fileuse and Canuck ..............105 Notes ............................................................108 3 GENDERED SPACE................................................111 3.1 Considerations of Gender in La Jeune Franco-Américaine and Les Enfances de Fanny ............................................111 3.2 Doctrinal Intertexts in La Jeune Franco-Américaine and Les Enfances de Fanny ......................................................115 3.3 Patriarchal Space .............................................120 3.3.1 Jeanne and Jean Lacombe ................................127 3.3.2 Fanny Johnston and Mr. Lewis . 131 3.4 La Jeune Franco-Américaine and the Angel in the House . 135 3.5 Gendered Space in Les Enfances de Fanny .........................146 3.6 The Ideology of La Survivance in La Jeune Franco-Américaine and Les Enfances de Fanny ............................................157 Notes ............................................................161 4 THE SPACE OF DISCONTENT ......................................164 4.1 The Foundering of the Ideology of La Survivance ....................164 4.2 Jack Kérouac: “All my knowledge rests in my ‘French-Canadianness’” . 172 4.2.1 The Town and the City: Spaces of Conflict and Disorientation . 177 4.2.2 Narrative Space and Voice in The Town and the City ...........182 4.2.3 Spaces of Spiritual Questing: A Tale of Fathers, Sons, and (Holy) Ghosts ...............................................189 4.3 Marie Grace de Repentigny Metalious: “The Ultimate Iconoclast of French-Canadian Institutions” ...................................198 4.3.1 No Adam in Eden: The Double Discourse of an Ethnic Autobiographer ........................................201 4.3.2 The Mythic Habitant and Coureur de Bois Debunked ..........206 4.3.3 Social Space and Discrimination: “Canuck Girls from the South End” .................................................211 4.4 Charleen Touchette: Franco-American and Pied Noir .................217 4.4.1 Woonsocket, Rhode Island: A Space of Oppression and Abuse . 219 4.4.2 “Indian Country”: The Search for Roots . 223 4.5 Surviving La Survivance .......................................228 Notes ............................................................234 5 REMEMBERED SPACE ............................................236 5.1 Memory and the Ethnic Self in L’Héritage and Le Petit Mangeur de fleurs 236 5.2 Writing Memory in le Parler Populaire ...........................240 v 5.3 Le Petit Mangeur de Fleurs and the Space of Childhood . 248 5.3.1 Narrative Strategies for Configuring Memory . 251 5.3.2 Memorable Places and Proustian Moments . 255 5.4 L’Héritage and the (Un)burying of Cultural Memories . 262 5.4.1 Cultural Memory and Spaces of Transformation . 266 5.4.2 Images of Loss and Fragmentation in L’Héritage ..............272 5.5 Identity and Language in Le Petit Mangeur de Fleurs and L’Héritage ....275 Notes ............................................................281 6 CONCLUSION ....................................................283 Notes ............................................................297 REFERENCES .......................................................299 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .............................................318 vi FIGURE Figure page 1 Communication about the Spiritual Path . 232 vii ABSTRACT Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy BORDER SPACES AND LA SURVIVANCE: THE EVOLUTION OF THE FRANCO-AMERICAN NOVEL OF NEW ENGLAND (1875-2004) By Cynthia C. Lees May 2006 Chair: Carol J. Murphy Major Department: Romance Languages and Literatures This dissertation examines nine texts written by Franco-American novelists of New England. Themes of migrancy, exile, and cultural survival (la survivance) ground my study. I explore the negotiations of cultural, social, political, linguistic, and gendered spaces as experienced—and chronicled in these novels—by the 1.5 million French-Canadian laborers and their families who migrated to New England between roughly 1865 and 1930. The portrait of the migrant that emerges from these novels is one of Other to American mainstream culture. The ideology of la survivance, a preservationist stance adopted by the Franco-American elite, promoted the maintenance of ties to the French language, French-Canadian cultural traditions, and Roman Catholicism and may have ultimately contributed to the migrant's sense of otherness. This dissertation counters narrow literary criticism of Franco-American prose fiction as thesis novels and proposes instead a new reading of the texts as flawed viii ideological novels. I argue that the texts fail to sustain a convincing argument in their defense of, or attack on, the tenets of cultural survival and therefore emerge as more complex and ambivalent than the label roman à thèse implies. The ambiguities in these texts subvert the message they seek to deliver, thereby undermining their pro- or contra-survivance positions. Theories about the metaphorical and material implications of socially produced space frame the literary analysis in this study. This framework necessitates the crossing of disciplinary borders, since my analysis draws upon literary theory, the social sciences, women's studies, and cultural criticism. I apply key arguments advanced by such pioneers of spatial hermeneutics as Michel de Certeau, Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Nora, and Yi-Fu Tuan. Three distinct periods mark the evolution of Franco-American prose fiction. An initial phase of French-language novels published between 1875 and 1939 is followed by the production of English-language texts. A change in linguistic gears occurs in 1983 with a return to writing in French by a modest number of Franco-American authors. Language choice implies the stages of acculturation and assimilation of the minority group. The recent reversion to French-language texts indicates a resurgent ethnic pride and identification with Franco-American cultural heritage. ix CHAPTER 1 SITING THE FRANCO-AMERICAN NOVEL 1.1 Brief Overview of the Franco-American Novel of New England For over sixty years the few scholars active in the field of Franco-American literature have engaged in debate over the nature and, more fundamentally even,