"Porte Fermee Et Coeur Ouvert": Epistolarity and Self-Discovery in Canadiennes D'hier‪.‬

In 1941, the literary world in Quebec was still reacting to Claude-Henri Grignon's polemical piece "Notre culture sera paysanne, ou ne sera pas," published in L'Action Nationale, when a quirky and unusual text appeared quietly on the Montreal literary scene. Canadiennes d'hier, the epistolary novel by Marie Bonenfant (pseud. for Elisa Michaud(1)) did not receive much critical attention when it first appeared: very few newspapers reviewed it, and only a small number of reviews had positive comments (Action Catholique, La Presse, and Le Canada francais were among those few).(2) Even since its reprint in 1994, I am unaware of any lengthy review or publication about this peculiar text. However, it is a text worth studying for its social and historical value, as it provides an alternative view of life in rural Quebec during the early twentieth century. Furthermore, I believe that Bonenfant's recit skillfully defied conventional narratival practices of her time period. Her literary choices, whether naive or intentional, allowed her to conclude her novel with a non-traditional and very modern position of closure for her heroine. Yet, simultaneously, the story appeared to follow conservative patterns of plot development dating from much earlier in the century. These opposing narrative techniques confounded her contemporaries. What is it about Canadiennes d'hier that resists definition? At first glance, one could easily interpret this novel as an archetypal romance narrative combined with the traditional roman de la terre, so prominent in the conservative literary culture of Quebec from the first half of the twentieth century. Yet it also follows the general structure of an autobiographical novel,(3) overlaid with an epistolary form; thus it is reminiscent of certain early twentieth-century French writers such as Colette, but mixed with the eighteenth-century nuances of a Mme de Lambert or Mme de Genlis. The melange found in this short text is disconcerting, to say the least. However, by examining its diverse structures, we can better understand the complex cultural statements that the novel makes and the ways in which it overcomes its apparently conservative story line.