The morbid world of the Quebec novel

The morbid world of the Quebec novel Jane Moss In a recently published Quebec novel the narrator, who is in a hospital dying of cancer, says to himself: J'ai mal, je suis mal dans ma peau, dans mes os. J'ai mal, donc je vis. (I am sick, I feel bad in my skin, in my bones, I am sick, therefore I live.) ' This morbid echo of Descartes sums up the feeling of a number of characters in French-Canadian novels published since 1940: a feeling that being ill is an essential part of being in Quebec. A survey of Quebec literature since 1940 reveals a persistent preoccupation with pathological imagery. Whether they deal with rural farmers and villages, the urban poor, white-collar workers, or the middle class, many Quebec authors portray characters who suffer from tuberculosis , scrofula, malnutrition, blindness, deafness, paralysis, alcoholism, and idiocy. Often, we encounter people deformed by birth defects or mutilated by accident, women whose health has been ruined by annual pregnancies, characters who languish because of vaguely defined physical and mental maladies. In this atmosphere of disease and illness, it is not surprising that the action moves frequently to sickrooms, hospitals, and sanatoriums and that doctors often figure as key characters. In some instances, descriptions of illnesses add to the social realism of the work. The high incidence of disease reflects the fact that the Quebec lower classes often live in poverty and under unsanitary conditions. As Ben-Zion Shek points out in Social Realism in the French Canadian Novel,1 Jane Moss 153 some illnesses described are directly related to the bad working conditions forced on oppressed Québécois. However, many writers use images of illness in a more metaphorical sense. This emphasis on physical, psychological , and sexual debilities suggests that these authors consciously or unconsciously see Quebec society as unhealthy. They portray characters as weakened, deformed, mutilated, and paralyzed by the social, economic, political, and religious climate of Quebec. To be sure, the realistic and naturalistic bent of certain writers accounts for some of the morbidity. Depression-era poverty is responsible for malnutrition, chronic colds, and consumption in works by Roger Lemelin, Gabrielle Roy, Marie-Claire Biais and others. In Au pied de la pente douce (1944),3 the Saint-Sauveur parish of Quebec City has the usual cases of disease related to poverty. Flora Boucher has seen three of her children die in infancy and a fourth deformed by illness. Gaston Boucher suffered an attack of pleurisy and measles at age four which left him with a hearing problem and a falsetto voice. Later, a botched spine operation deformed his torso, thereby weakening his heart (pp. 18-19). The rival Colin clan also has its share of the diseases of poverty and ignorance. Tit-Blanc Colin is an alcoholic; his daughter, Germaine, seems old at eighteen, tired out by cleaning other people's houses; his son, Jean, dies of a knee injury complicated by infection and hereditary arthritic scrofula (pp. 289-97). Even the burlesque comic elements of the novel are touched by disease. The pious, prudish Latruche sisters have organized a cult around a supposedly saintly young man who died of malnutrition and consumption. The two-part structure of Au pied de la pente douce is balanced by the deaths of first Gaston Boucher and then Jean Colin. Everything seems to conspire to undermine the health of these two adolescents. The physical deformity which cripples Gaston is matched by a psychological infirmity stemming from his mother's determination to control him, to keep him as a dependent child. Her actions cause Gaston to suffer a nervous attack which leads to his final illness (p. 146). The fatal heart attack is caused by the discovery that Denis, the brother he worships and envies, is dishonest and egocentric (pp. 175-76). Jean Colin's death is also hastened unwittingly by his family and friends. An aggravated knee injury, made worse by a fever, turns into a serious problem. Called in to treat the abscessed knee, Dr. Boutet recognizes the signs of arthritis probably caused by poor diet and by genetic weaknesses due to alcoholism and syphilis. In her ignorance, Jean...