Autobiographical History and the Lure of the Recent Past: France Théoret’s L’Homme qui peignait Staline

Autobiographical History and the Lure of the Recent Past: France Théoret’s L ’Homme qui peignait Staline Karen Gould T HE TREATMENT OF HISTORY, memory, and collective identity has formed the basis of much critical discussion of Quebec litera­ ture over the past several decades, especially literature containing distinctly nationalist themes. More recently, the circulation of post­ modern theories in critical discourse and the problematizing of historiog­ raphy (history-as-fiction) in contemporary fiction have renewed critical interest in the exploration of how writers recall, speculate, and theorize on the past as it is constituted in writing. A number of recent novels by Quebec women writers reconstruct the past by privileging personal reminiscence in the refiguring of history: Jovette Marchessault’s La Mère des herbes; Madeleine OuelletteMichalska ’s La Maison Trestler; Monique LaRue’s La Cohorte fictive; Francine Noël’s Maryse', and France Théoret’s L ’Homme qui peignait Staline.1In these as well as other texts, the project of inscribing women into Quebec’s cultural history often means supplementing, altering, and even undoing traditional historical accounts.2 Using fictionalized jour­ nals, parody, and fragmented narrative structures to undermine conven­ tional notions of historical truth and objectivity, Quebec women writers draw attention to contemporary women’s views of their past and of their assigned place in history. In so doing, they are redefining both the parameters and the contexts for understanding women’s lives. Throughout her writing, France Théoret has explored the relations of family, class, culture, and history in the formation of female subjectivity and the female writing subject. As a deconstructionist feminist and selfproclaimed practitioner of écriture au féminin,3Théoret has resisted the constraints of tradition-bound genres, ignored the cultural interdictions placed on discussing certain aspects of women’s lives, and struggled openly in her texts with the difficulty and pain of self-inscription. Writ­ ing against traditional literary practices, Théoret promotes a conscious, if uneasy blending of heterogeneous materials, combining the personal and social; the corporeal and intellectual; the lived and imaginary; the existential present and re-membered past. The radicality of Théoret’s Vo l . XXXIII, No. 2 83 L ’E s pr it C réa te u r artistic vision lies not only in the topics she dares to treat (menstruation, abortion, prostitution, the male gaze, violence toward women, paternal judgment, women’s rage, the censoring of women’s words) but also in her refusal of fixed literary forms and narrative unity on a grand scale. Théoret’s L ’Homme qui peignait Staline is a hybrid work of autobio -historical-fiction that combines autobiographical, historical, and allegorical elements with feminist effects. The text’s three main sections form a feminist triptych in which the author connects reflections on art, culture, history, and the family to women’s search for self-expression through memory work and through the act of writing. The first novella in L ’Homme quipeignait Staline parodies masculinist aesthetics in the male-dominated avant-gardes of the 1960s and 70s through the eyes of a young student-wife. In the second section of her work, Théoret critiques female domesticity and women’s circumscribed space in traditional Quebec culture through a series of short texts that portray women’s dependence, anger, isolation, and struggle for recogni­ tion both within and outside the heterosexual couple and the conven­ tional family unit. Théoret thus ties her initial ironic presentation of the modernist/marxist debates over art, reality, and realism to descriptions of women’s marginalization and alienation in the home, within the tradi­ tional family, and in their relations with men. In a series of reconstituted scenes and painful memories, the narrator of Théoret’s final story explores the tragedy of unwanted pregnancies and reflects on women’s lack of control over their bodies and lives in traditional Quebec culture, despite the emerging discourses of modernization and modernity in the 1960s and 70s. Emphasizing the historical forces that have influenced the lives of Quebec women is of primary importance to Théoret in this text. The stories of individual women (young girls, students, married women, isolated mothers—virtually all of modest...