Searching the Female Text in Sinclair Ross, Denise Boucher and Pol Pelletier [thesis]

223 Pages·1994·8.64 MB·English

by  Catherine May McLaughlin

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UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
Searching the Female Text in Sinclair Ross, Denise Boucher
and Pol Pelletier
BY
Catherine May .McLaughlin
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and
Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts.
DEPARTMENT OF COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Edmonton, Alberta
Fall 1994
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K1A0N4 K1A0N4
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UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
RELEASE FORM
NAME OF AUTHOR: Catherine May McLaughlin
TITLE OF THESIS: Searching the Female Text in Sinclair
Ross, Denise Boucher and Pol Pelletier
DEGREE: Master of Arts
YEAR THIS DEGREE GRANTED: 19 94
Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta
Library to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to
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reproduced in any material form whatever without the
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Catherine May McLaughlin
506 - 18A Street N.W.
Calgary, Alberta
T2N 2H2
June 17, 1994
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UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH
The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend
to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research for
acceptance, a thesis entitled "Searching the Female Text in
Sinclair Ross, Denise Boucher and Pol Pelletier" submitted
by Catherine May McLaughlin in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.
___________ • *■ / 7_______ -
Univ. Professor PI. D . Blodgett
supervisor
Univ. Professor Milan Ditnic
i
/ssssoocc. . Professor Claudino Botvin
June 15, 1994
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DEDICATION
This thesis is dedicated, with deep love and gratitude, to
the memory of my parents, Margaret Jane and Michael Patrick
McLaughlin.
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Abstract
Mythologists like Joseph Campbell, Barbara G. Walker,
Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerbrant , J.E. Cirlot and Northrop
Frye have identified the existence of myths detailing the
exploits of goddesses and their repeatedly sacrificed and
reborn sons and consorts. These stories can be found, often
in inverted form, in patriarchal texts like the Bible and
Greek myths. The goddess legends are also extensively
alluded to in the Canadian works examined in this thesis,
which comprise Sinclair Ross's novels As For Me and My
House, The Well, Whir of Gold, and Sawbones Memorial; Denise
Boucher's play Les fees ont soif; and Pol Pelletier's play
La lumiere blanche.
Sacrifice of a god, the son/consort of the goddess, is
central to the goddess myths; creation, according to Cirlot,
is sacrifice's ultimate aim. In Ross's novels, sons, aided
by wives or mothers, replace husbands and fathers. However,
Ross's works also allude to the patriarchal palimpsest in
which mythologists find the goddess legends: despite their
mythically ascribed capabilities, wives and mothers in these
novels remain mired in patriarchal roles, their talents
sacrificed. Similarly, Les fees ont soif hints at the
goddess origins of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene; in so
doing the play recalls the suppression and inversion of such
origins in biblical and church texts. Indeed, church and
court conspire against the play's Mary Magdalene figure in a
symbolic re-enactment of that suppression. The stakes are
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again raised to a metatextual level: the stories of the
goddesses come to represent stories of female power and
experience erased from the patriarchal canon.
In Pelletier's La lumiere blanche, goddess allusions
again abound, and patriarchy's limitations are once more
painfully met; as in Les fees ont soif, a female character
is openly sacrificed. However, the play refuses to pit
patriarchy against matriarchy, seeking rather to deconstruct
both ideologies, to break apart and re-examine gender roles:
those assigned both to patriarchal heroes and to goddesses.
Writing emerges from this iconoclasm. Indeed, the
production of texts serves as a measure of renewal in all of
the works studied in this thesis. In La lumiere blanche, in
nearly all of Ross's novels and in Les fees ont soif,
female - created texts detailing womanly experience take form
alongside, or indeed out of, stories of repression,
indicating that sacrifice's drive towards creation has not
been futile.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Heartfelt thanks to my parents for their great love of
language and of learning, and, blessedly, of me; to my
partner Brian Mahoney for his loving, life-saving presence;
to Natalie and John Carley, Mary and Cecil Loughlin, and the
rest of my family for their enduring love and benevolent
support of my educational endeavours; and to my thesis
supervisor and mentor E.D. Blodgett and the members of the
Dept, of Comparative Literature, University of Alberta, for
their eternal patience, encouragement and wisdom.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Chapter One 16
1. Myth 16
2 . Sacrif ice 18
3. Drama 2 3
4. Palimpsest 24
5. Rehearsals and Drama 35
6. Carnival 4 5
7. Conclusion 49
Chapter Two 73
1. The Well 73
2. Whir of Gold 91
3. Sawbones Memorial 102
Chapter Three 122
Chapter Four 160
Conclusion 199
Works Cited 205
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