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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Voices Past, Present and Future:
Acadian Identity in the Novels of Antonine Maillet

presented by

Bernadette Marie Donohue

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. French Literature

degree in

 

 

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Date 5' 21 ’ ?i

MSU i: an Affirmatiw Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

 

 

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Michigan State
University

 

 

 

 

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1/” WM“

VOICES PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: ACADIAN SOCIAL IDENTITY IN
THE NOVELS OF ANTONINE MAILLET

By

Bernadette Marie Donohue

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Romance 85 Classical Languages

1999

ABSTRACT

VOICES PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: ACADIAN SOCIAL IDENTITY IN
THE NOVELS OF ANTONINE MAILLET

By

Bernadette Marie Donohue

A prolific Canadian writer whose complete body of novels, plays
and short stories traverse more than two hundred years of Acadian life,
Antonine Maillet's works testify to the stories of her people's past, and to
the birth of a new sense of Acadian identity from the eighteenth century
to the present. Maillet is attempting to give her readers a glimpse of
what she calls the "petite histoire" of the Acadian people. She is not
trying to create a history of the Acadian people, nor even to represent
Acadia, but rather to give voice to the people who made the history.
Through her many characters, we begin to form an image of a people, a
people who are engaged in the process of reclaiming and reestablishing
the land, the language, the traditions and the stories threatened by the
Deportation.

This study will examine the characters in Maillet's novels who are
trying to rebuild the mythical way of Acadia, and who will witness the
passage of their people from an oral culture to a written one. The types

of characters which can be found in Maillet's works present to the reader

an image of Acadian identity, and at the same time contribute to the
enhancement of this Acadian identity, for Maillet's work is both
representative of and constitutive of a certain cultural identity. If
Maillet's objective is to reveal the "petite histoire" of her people, then her
characters embody the real experiences and concerns of the Acadian
people, and in studying them, we can understand-~from the inside--what
Hans Runte terms "acadianitude." Maillet characterizes Acadian identity
both by portraying the characteristics of acadianitude and by creating
characters who embody this culture.

In my analysis of Maillet's novels it becomes clear that not only are
there certain characters who appear in several novels, there are also
certain character types which occur again and again in her novels. Her
novels focus largely on small, isolated Acadian villages, at various epochs
during the life of the Acadian people. Central to the life of these villages
is the storyteller, who maintains his people's culture by telling the stories
of the epic and legendary heroes, as well as the outrageous and equally
legendary outlaws and rebels which color the "petite histoire" of the
Acadian people. The last generation of these storytellers will, like Maillet
herself, transition to the world of writing. These are they characters who
represent the stubborn, rebellious, faithful and indomitable spirit which
has kept the Acadian culture alive for more than two hundred years after
it ceased to exist as a nation. These are the characters who give life to

Maillet's "petite histoire."

Copyright by
BERNADE’I‘TE MARIE DONOHUE
1999

To my father, who would have liked to see this.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable help and support of my
advisor, Joseph Donohoe. I would also like to thank the members of my
dissertation committee, Ehsan Ahmed and Laurence Porter. I am
indebted to Madame Antonine Maillet for taking the time to meet with me
and to share her ideas and philosophies, and to Denis Bourque for his
assistance in arranging the meeting. Karen Klomparens has been a
wonderful mentor and supporter to me, and has kept me employed
during the past three years. I also appreciate all the suport of my family
and friends, especially my mother, Phil and Isabelle, without whom I

would not have been able to finish my dissertation.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ..................................................................... 1

Epic Hero(in)es, Legendary Figures and Cultural Icons
Chapter 1 ......................................................................... 10

Before the Law: Outlaws and Rebels
Chapter 2 ......................................................................... 48

Storytellers, Conteurs, Menteurs, Menteux, and Défricheteux
de parenté: Maintaining the Oral Tradition

Chapter 3 ......................................................................... 8 1
From Oral to Written Literature

Chapter 4 ......................................................................... 116
Conclusion ....................................................................... 144
Notes ................................................................................ 1 52
Works Cited ..................................................................... 167
Bibliography of Antonine Maillet ....................................... 174

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INTRODUCTION

Je suis acadien

Ce qui signifie

Multiplié fourré dispersé acheté aliéné vendu révolté
Homme déchiré vers l'avenir (Runte 110)

Acadian poet Raymond Le Blanc's words point up the embattled history
of Acadian identity. The Acadians represent a minority in Canada,
francophones in largely anglophone provinces, overshadowed by the
'other' francophone Canadians—-the Québécois. Like their neighbors to
the west, the Québécois, Acadians have had to struggle to maintain their
language, their culture, their traditions, and their communities. Unlike
the people of Quebec, the Acadians have had no land to truly call their
own, for "Acadie" technically ceased to exist in 17131 when the Treaty of
Utrecht caused the French colony to be ceded to the British. But the
Acadians did not cease to exist as a people. Although, as provided by the
treaty, the Acadians were designated neutrals, they were still torn
between their allegiance to their French culture, and the Roman Catholic
religion, and their newly enforced allegiance to the English. They were
willing to swear allegiance to the King of England,2 but only with the
provision that they could maintain their faith, and not be required to
take up arms against the French in Quebec and in France.3 Their
refusal to turn against their French heritage, which led ultimately to
their Deportation in 1755,4 has continued for more than two hundred
years, and has helped the Acadians to maintain their language and

traditions, as well as a profound sense of who they are.

The Acadian people are probably best known to the world at large
for the story of their diaspora, or "le Grand Dérangement" of 1755. At
this time, the English ruthlessly carried out a relatively large-scale
deportation of the Acadians (Griffiths, Deportation 141-4). Ironically,
what was meant to obliterate them as a people was to become the
defining event in the elaboration of their identity. According to Eloise
Briére,

the story [of the deportation] has been the basis for a shared

feeling of community among the Acadian diaspora of North

America (the Canadian Maritime Provinces, Louisiana, and New

England) from 1755 to modern times. Its significance lies in the

collective death and rebirth it embodied. A communal experience

that sealed the bond between language and collective emotion, the
retellings of the Grand Derangement provided a basis for Acadian

identity. (4)

The story of the deportation and its aftermath has become a symbol of
Acadian identity for Acadians and non-Acadians alike. As historian P.D.
Clarke maintains, "1e mythe unificateur de l'Acadie prenait forme--c'était
celui du paradis trouvé et du paradis perdu, c'est-a-dire celui de la Terre
promise" (25). Rather than obliterating the identity of the Acadian
people, the Deportation gave it shape and pointed it toward the future.

Probably the best known literary reference to the Deportation is
Longfellow's poem Evangeline, a mythical account that has nonetheless
contributed significantly to the shaping of the Acadian identity.
Longfellow's poem was popular not only in the United States, it was also

translated into many different languages, including French.5 Evangeline

became a symbol of Acadia, and of the loss inflicted by the Deportation.
According to Clarke:

Evangeline est devenue un symbole culturelle puissant qui a joué

un réle non négligeable dans le développement de l'identité

collective acadienne. C'est un symbole qui s'accordait
parfaitement avec la conception cultivée par l'élite acadienne, celle
d'une Acadie primitive, harmonieuse et chrétienne, brisée par la

Deportation puis ressuscitée par la Providence. (31)

The image conveyed in Longfellow's poem, one of a pastoral and
patriarchal society, and a romantic yet ineffectual heroine--whose life
was completely controlled by outside circumstances--has long been the
image that represented Acadia to Acadians and non-Acadians alike.
Like the Acadians, Evangeline's life was forever altered by the
Deportation. Unlike many of the Acadians, Evangeline never came back
to Acadia, spending her life looking for her lost lover.

Not only did many Acadians, like Pélagie, heroine of the novel
Pélcrgie-la-Charrette,6 return to Acadia after the Deportation, some
actually never left, having avoided deportation by hiding in the woods.
These were the people who would repopulate Acadia, and devote
themselves to keeping their culture alive. In the generations following
the Deportation, the Acadians, like the Québécois, refused to be
absorbed into an anglophone society, and maintained their communities
and their way of life. Unlike Quebec, Acadia no longer existed as a
political entity, but the people still existed, and they continued to
struggle to maintain their identity. They did this largely by maintaining
their language, culture and traditions, and by celebrating the memory of

”le Grand Derangement" and their attachment to the land of their birth.

 

 

 

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"Depuis des lustres, la mémoire est considérée comme un élément clé
dans la construction de l'identité nationale" (Clarke 3). Their past, which
to a great extent they idealized, became the foundation of the Acadian
sense of identity:

Les ideologies acadiennes étaient celles de la survivance, posées

sur la prémisse d'un retour a un passé idéalisé, contrepoint a un

statu quo par trop plein d'embt‘iches. Ces fondements
s'exprimaient dans un ensemble national sous 1e triumvirat de la
langue, de la foi et des origines. (...) Pendant un siécle, ces
ideologies, auxquelles se greffa l'histoire, furent au coeur du

discours identitaire en Acadie. (Clarke 19)

The Acadians managed to maintain a sense of cultural identity by
valorizing the things they had in common-—faith, ancestors and
traditions--thereby overcoming the disjunction and diaspora forced on
them by the Deportation.

The question of cultural identity is crucial for a nationless people
such as the Acadians. And having a sense of cultural identity means
distinguishing the qualities that draw a community together as well as
those that set it apart from other communities. Raoul Boudreau
explains this paradox in his study "La Quéte de l'identité en poésie
acadienne,"7 explaining that identity distinguishes both what is similar,
or identical, and at the same time that which is different. "L'identité
collective. . . " he points out, "participe a la fois de cette ambivalence
puisqu'elle insiste sur les caractéres communs a tous les membres d'un
groupe (la ressemblance) et sur ce qui distingue ce groupe de tous les
autres (la difference)" (47). For the Acadians to maintain a sense of

cultural identity, then, they had to focus on both the attributes that gave

4

cohesion to their community, and those that distinguished them from
others both inside and outside of that community.

This distinction between "self" and "other" is natural at both the
individual and the societal level, because, according to Benveniste:

La conscience de soi n'est possible que si elle s'éprouve par

contraste. Je n'emploie je qu'en m'adressant a quelqu'un, qui sera

dans mon allocution un tu. C'est cette condition de dialogue qui
est constitutive de la personne, car elle implique en réciprocité que
je deviens tu dans l'allocution cle celui qui a son tour se désigne

par je. (260)

Individually, the Acadians in Maillet's novels may perceive themselves as
very different from others in their communities. However, as a
community they recognize a single culture that binds them together and
separates them from the rest of the world. And when confronted by
those "outsiders,"--generally representated by government officials--the
Acadian communities of Maillet's novels band together to protect their
own.

This defensive cohesion can be seen in Cent ans dans les bois,
Crache 61 Pic,8 and many other novels. The Acadians are building a
collective consciousness that necessitates a distinction between
themselves and those around them, the anglophone Canadians, the
Québécois and even other Acadians.9 This collective identity can also be
cultural identity, a sense of belonging to a community which shares
certain characteristics, traditions, values and a common history. As
Raoul Boudreau explains, a sense of cultural identity is based on the
concept of sharing ethnic origins, history, language, and geographic

space (48). Despite the Deportation, the Acadians still managed to share

 

 

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a history, language, even a geographical space, though not the same
space as before the Deportation.

When, a century after the Deportation, the Acadians came together
at a National Convention in 1881, they celebrated the culture that they
had rescued from the Deportation--their past, present and future. In the
roughly one hundred years between the Deportation and the first
National Acadian Convention, Acadians--living mostly in small isolated
communities--celebrated their traditions and their heritage in story and
song, and thus kept alive their ethnic identity. Antonine Maillet
maintains that:

Acadia has proved that it has an inner need to exist and an inner

quality of existence . . . There's a culture, in the most general sense

of culture, which is the expression of one's selfhood. There is a

tradition, a whole background of heritage, which comes from very

deep roots, and this means that you don't sing or pray or sneeze or
walk in the same way as your neighbours. For me, that's what

defines an ethnic group. (Smith 255-6)

The Acadian culture has very deep roots, (stretching across two
continents) that are grounded in their language, faith and traditions, and
reflected in their stories. But perhaps the most important element in
the maintenance of Acadian culture is their oral tradition, the stories and
legends passed from generation to generation which became the myths
which shaped their sense of identity. Maillet maintains that after the
"Grand Derangement," the Acadians "return to the land in order not to
forget--it's the phenomenon of collective memory, and thus culture. They
come back to Acadia because of culture" (Smith 262). Thus the stories of

their past, their legends, their history--their oral tradition--provide them

6

with a vehicle for culture, uniting the people as listeners, and as sharers
of a common heritage.10
The characters in Maillet's novels are part of this chain of oral
history. In fact the narrator often deliberately elaborates the chain that
connects her to the characters and the happenings in the novels:
l'Histoire11 continue . . . encore dans la bouche de mon cousin
Louis a Bélonie, qui la tient de son pere Bélonie a Louis, qui la
tenait de son grand-pere Bélonie . . . qui l'avait recue de pere en
fils de ce propre Bélonie, fils de Thadée, fils de Bélonie premier qui,
en 1770, fétait ses nonante ans, assis au fond de la charrette
méme de Pélagie, premiere du nom. (PLC 12)
And in another novel: "C'est 1e vieux Clovis qui a tout raconté a mon
pere. Et lui s'en souvenait..."12 Thus her novels are posited as a link in
the chain of stories which have joined generations of Acadians and
helped them to maintain their culture. And the characters in the novels
are therefore the characters that would populate Acadian oral tradition.
This oral tradition is Antonine Maillet's heritage. Born in 1929 in
the small town of Bouctouche, New Brunswick, Maillet grew up hearing
the stories of the legendary heroes, adventurers and rebels of Acadia. At
this time, people in town still gathered around the forge or the fire to
share the stories of the oral tradition. But as evidenced in Maillet's
novels, this world was coming to an end. Villages were no longer
isolated, fishing was no longer an adequate means of support, and
education and a new economy were beginning to change the Acadians’
way of life. This dawning of a new era in Acadia, which also marked the

transition from an oral culture to a written one would become a crucial

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moment in the development of the modern "Acadian" identity--and it is
this time which shaped Maillet's identity as a writer.

A prolific writer whose novels, plays and short stories traverse
more than two hundred years of Acadian life, Maillet's works testify to
the stories of her people's past, and to the birth of a new sense of
Acadian identity. Maillet is attempting to give her readers a glimpse of
what she calls the "petite histoire" of the Acadian people. In at least two
of her novels, Les Cordes-de-Bois and Les Confessions de Jeanne de
Valois,l3 Maillet's narrators refer to their subject matter as "la petite
histoire," and in the prologue of Cent ans dans les bois, the narrator sees
and narrates history "par les racines," from inside and down below.
Because, as she points out, "d'au dessus, vous n'y verriez pas plus clair
que dans un nid de fourrnis" (CA 11). Maillet is not trying to create a
history of the Acadian people, nor even to represent Acadia, but rather to
give voice to the people who made the history. She writes from the inside
of the anthill, as it were. Through her many characters, we begin to form
an image of a people, a people who are engaged in the process of
reclaiming and reestablishing the land, the language”, the traditions
and the stories threatened by the Deportation.

This study will examine the characters in Maillet's novels who are
trying to rebuild the mythical way of Acadia, and who will witness the
passage of their peOple from an oral culture to a written one. Though
Maillet's theater also offers an opportunity for her characters to voice
their stories, this study will focus on her novels, which offer a greater
depth of character development, and a broader range of characters. The
types of found in Maillet's works present to the reader an image of

Acadian identity, and at the same time contribute to the enhancement of

this Acadian identity, for Maillet's work is both representative of and
constitutive of a certain cultural identity. If Maillet's objective is to reveal
the "petite histoire" of her people--a more personal view than could be
afforded by History, or, as she states in Cent ans dans les bois, by any
annalists, journalists, ethnographers, mythographers, historiographers,
sociologists, archeologists or philosophers (337)--then her characters
embody the real experiences and concerns of the Acadian people, and in
studying them, we can understand--from the inside--what Hans Runte
terms "acadianitude."15 Maillet characterizes Acadian identity both by
portraying the characteristics of acadianitude and by creating characters
who embody this culture.

In examining Maillet's novels it becomes clear that not only are
there certain characters who appear in several novels, there are also
certain character types which occur again and again in her novels. Her
novels focus largely on small, isolated Acadian villages, at various epochs
during the life of the Acadian people. Central to the life of these villages
is the storyteller, who maintains his people's culture by telling the stories
of the epic and legendary heroes, as well as the outrageous and equally
legendary outlaws and rebels that color the "petite histoire" of the
Acadian people. The last generation of these storytellers will, like Maillet
herself, transition to the world of writing. These are the characters who
represent the stubborn, rebellious, faithful and indomitable spirit which
has kept the Acadian culture alive for more than two hundred years after
it ceased to exist as a nation. These are the characters who give life to

Maillet's "petite histoire."

Play [lit

Chapter 1

EPIC HERO(IN)ES, LEGENDARY FIGURES AND CULTURAL ICONS

Les légendes, chez nous, elles se vivent.
Antonine Maillet

The epic, a genre which: "unites a dispersed people under one
hero, one myth, one nation, and eventually, one language..." (Runte,
Romancing 143), can play a crucial role in the development of a people's
cultural identity. Maillet's works can be classified as epic not only
because of their heroic adventures, but also because they provide the
hero(in)es, stories and myths which can unite a people. Maillet's novels
celebrate the Acadian identity, which is brought to life with such color in
her characters. These characters depict the Acadian struggle to
construct and preserve a sense of community and common identity,
fighting for the continued existence of their community as a social entity.
Two such characters are Pélagie and Mademoiselle Cormier, who both
return from exile to their native Acadia, bringing others with them. They
like many of Maillet's heroes and heroines fight for a cause larger than
themselves; they represent a group or community; and their actions have
a lasting impact. "Pelagic, c'est 1e retour épique. Maria, Crache a Pic,
c'est la survivance face a l'exploitation; c'est toujours le refus de
soumission, devant l'histoire, devant 1e village ou devant les éléments"
(Le Blanc, Antonine Maillet 59). Even though her heroines may not all
play the same determining role in Acadian history that Pelagic-la-

Charrette does, the epic nature of their stories serves to unite Acadians

10

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by giving them their own heroes and myths. This chapter will examine
the epic, legendary and iconic characters created by Maillet, and the

images of Acadian culture and identity that they provide.

Epic Heroines

One of the most prominent of Maillet's heroines is Pélagie-la-
Charrette. The eponymous main character of this novel leads her people
from exile in Georgia where they have been working alongside the slaves
since the Deportation, back to their beloved Acadia, and in so doing, she
conveys symbolic status to the story of the Acadian people. She is a
true heroine, a savior of her people. Pélagie is thus the kind of character
who can serve as an icon for all Acadians.

Pélagie-la-Charrette is decidedly grounded in both the historical
and legendary past of Acadia. This is consistent with the traits that
constitute an epic, the first two of which are: "1) Elle cherche son objet
dans le passé épique nationale . . . 2) la source de l’épopée, c'est la
légende nationale (et non une experience individuelle et la libre invention
qui en découle)" (Bakhtine, 449)“). In creating Pélagie, Maillet draws on
the past. Pélagie not only represents all of the Acadians who fought to
regain their homeland, she also becomes an icon, a symbol of the rebirth
of Acadia. And there are other legendary and epic elements in Pélagie-la-
Charrette as well. Beausoleil-Broussard is "an historical character who
developed into a legend," Maillet says in an interview with Donald
Smith17 (266). And Maillet also incorporates two folktales "1a Baleine

blanche" and "la Dame géante de la nuit" into the novel, as well as other

11

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mythical traditions such as the "black cart" or "la charrette noir" of
death.

The story of Pélagie is not only firmly situated in the past, there are
also several layers of separation between the story of Pélagie and the
reader. We are told that the story has been handed down from
generation to generation: "Depuis cent ans déja qu'on se passait la
charrette, de Bélonie en Bélonie, comme un fief..." (PLC 11). Thus the
reader hears the story of Pélagie, as told to the narrator from

la bouche de mon cousin Louis a Bélonie, qui la tient de son pére

Bélonie a Louis, qui la tenait de son grand-pére Bélonie...qui l'avait

recue de pére en fils de ce propre Bélonie, fils de Thadée, fils de

Bélonie premier qui, en 177 0, fétait ses nonante ans, assis au fond

de la charrette méme de Pélagie, premiere du nom." (PLC 12)

The reader is then distanced from the actual events narrated. And this is
Bakhtine's third distinguishing characteristic of an epic: "3) Le monde
épique est coupe par la distance épique absolue du temps present: celui
de l'aede, de l'auteur et de ses auditeurs" (449). In the novel Pélagie-la-
Charrette, information is at times attributed solely to legend (as are the
exploits of Beausoleil-Broussard) and at times totally missing: "C'est
ainsi que ni moi, ni Pélagie-la-Gribouille, ni méme Pélagie-la-Charrette,
premiere du nom, n'aurons jamais connu 1e nombre des victimes de
l'ours ou du loup-cervier en forét." (PLC 322) Thus in both its form and
its content, in its oral aspect, and its legendary source of inspiration,
Pélagie-la-Charrette is an epic. It is "a return to an epic moment in the
Acadian past . . . the journey back to the kernel of national origins, by
laying claim to the past, is a means of reclaiming the foundation on

which identity will be (re)built" (Briére 7). Pélagie-la-Charrette thus

12

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functions as a myth that embodies and perpetuates an Acadian social
identity.

Moreover, just as the theme of an epic is not personal destiny, but
the destiny of a community (Lukacs 66), the theme of Pélagie-la-Charrette
is the destiny of not just Pélagie, but of her community. It is not the
story of one woman or even one family, but rather the story of the
Acadian people, fighting to reclaim their lives after the deportation. The
story begins with Pelagic and "les lambeaux de famille qu'elle avait réussi
a rescaper du Derangement" (PLC 17). But as the journey continues,
more and more families attach themselves to Pélagie's cart: "Elle avait
quitté l'Ile d'espoir avec sa seule famille, la mere pélage, plus une couple
de rejets de pays qu'on allait rapatn'er. Depuis lors, la Géorgie et la
Caroline du Sud lui garrochaient chaque jour d'autres bribes de lignées a
rentrer dans leurs terres" (PLC 73). And so the family that Pélagie left
with has become a people: "Quelle femme cette Pélagie! capable a elle
seule de ramener un peuple au pays. De le ramener a contre—courant."
(PLC 113) Pélagie, who "n’a point hésité a s'emparer a deux mains d'un
avenir absurde et chancelant..." (PLC 88), has become a leader for her
people.

As Pélagie's "people" grows, so does her task--she is no longer on a
personal journey, she has a mission: to bring her people back to Acadia,
to rebuild the life which was taken away from them at the time of "le
Grand Derangement". She is willing to sacrifice her personal life to this
end: with only a moment's hesitation, she accepts her son's decision to
stay with the Iroquois, as the price for their continued journey, and she
even sacrifices her own love for Beausoleil-Broussard when she chooses

not to follow him, but to continue her mission: "Elle était miserable a

13

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fendre l'ame, mais elle ne perdait pas le fil de la vie...Elle continuerait sa
marche vers le nord..." (PLC 135). She stands strong in her
determination to regain Acadia, sacrificing her feelings and desires for
her consuming devotion to Acadia. At one point she gives in to her
human desires and makes a small detour in order to keep a rendez-vous
with Beausoleil-Broussard, the legendary sea-captain who stole a ship
from the English who were deporting him and his people.18 Instead of
going straight north, she heads toward the coast: "Pélagie-la-Charrette,
en conduisant ses boeufs vers le nord en cette année 17 72-7 3, criait plus
souvent hue! que dia! Et ses boeufs tiraient vers la droite" (PLC 152).
However willing she may be to delay their journey to meet up with
Beausoleil, she will not abandon her quest.

Pélagie's commitment to this quest never waivers. She remains
consistently strong and sure of her ability to reach her goal. Never does
she doubt that she will once again see Grand Pré, the land she left.
When faced with drought, she reminds her people that without the
drought they would not have been able to move the oxen through the
marshes of Savannah (PLC 31). When one of the group points out that
she has a long journey before her, she refuses to be overwhelmed: "Il
vous reste un continent a franchir, Pélagie, je ne sais pas si tu 1e sais.
Elle le savait...Mais elle 1e saurait un jour a la fois" (PLC 35-6). Perhaps
the most telling moment of the journey is when the carts appear to be
helplessly trapped in the mud of the Salem marshes. Beausoleil, who
has miraculously appeared just in time, is trying to rescue the carts and
those inside, and he is on the verge of drowning. Pélagie stands rigidly
against the horizon fighting with her will the battle she cannot fight

physically. "Pélagie n'avait pas bougé durant toute la scéne...elle se

14

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tenait droite comme un peuplier, ta téte au vent" (PLC 292). She cries
out one thing only, "Ma vie!" (PLC 292). For Pelagic, this is the battle of
her life. Her quest for her homeland could vanish beneath the mud of
the marshes, and her lover along with it. But she stakes her life against
the forces which would confound her, and she emerges victorious.
Beausoleil and the carts survive.

And yet, she does have moments of weakness. After one rendez—
vous with Beausoleil, she is distracted, "...Depuis 1e départ de Charleston
qu'elle s'absentait durant de longues heures, Pélagie, comme une qui
aurait eu un mal a cacher" (PLC 143). And although Pélagie is a strong
woman, there were still some physical battles that she could not fight,
like that of the Salem marshes. But despite these weaknesses, Pélagie
remains a forceful heroine, a kind of anti-Evangeline. Not until the
moment when the group at last arrives at Grand Prée, only to find it in
uninhabitable ruins, does Pélagie realize that her people will not return
to their past life, but to the future. "l'Acadie, ca n'existait plus' ...il n'y
aurait plus désormais que des Acadiens" (PLC 342). Yet it is at this
moment that she dies! Like Moses, she has brought her people back
from exile, only to die at the doorstep of the Promised Land.

Pélagie's death is, like that of Moses, inevitable. An epic heroine,
defined by the need to accomplish a single mission, she was unable to
adapt to a new vision, a new mission. Once her vision is exhausted, so is
she. Like Moses, who never entered the Promised Land, her mission
completed, she no longer had a reason for being. The Deportation
robbed her of her 'normal' life and propelled her into the role of hero and
leader”. Thereafter, she could live neither for herself, nor for her

children, nor even for her love for Beausoleil, she lived only for her

15

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mission. On another level as well, her mission is over, for if Pélagie the
hero's mission was to bring her people back to Acadia, Pélagie the
character's mission was to acquaint the reader with the danger and
struggles faced by the Acadians following the Deportation. As René Le
Blanc writes, "Pélagie refait l'histoire au lieu de la subir" (Oralité, 39).
This role will now be taken up by Pélagie's daughter Madeleine, and by
many of Maillet's other characters. Pélagie has fulfilled her purpose, she
has passed the torch to a new generation.

While the life of Pélagie is situated in a specific moment in the
continuum of Acadian history, long after her death, her story will
continue as a cultural icon, a symbol for her people. The story and the
characters of Pélagie-la-Charrette take on legendary or mythical
proportions, as Marjorie Fitzpatrick explains:

both Bélonie and Beausoleil disappear at the end-Bélonie into the

forest, Beausoleil out to sea--and thus quickly pass into the

domain of legend. Pélagie herself is the source and inspiration of
that legend as she and her Cart of Life at last go to their final rest
in the soil of the new Acadia. Thus Acadia itself becomes the
heaven of the emerging myth, the medium of ultimate union
between Pélagie and the two men she loves. Pélagie is the
brightest star in the new constellation...she is the epic heroine
whose quest for life and freedom has given significance to the lives
of the others, and it is her womanhood that shapes that quest.

Her triumph is in defining the roles of others without limiting

them. (151)

Pélagie-la-Charrette, the epic, unites its people through identification

with a common legend, giving shape to a society by providing Acadians

16

with a myth, a hero, and ideals which form the basis of a cultural
identity. Maillet's epics "found her country, ground it in its fundamental
orality, and present of it for the first time an image in which all Acadians,
despite their diversity, dispersedness and isolation, can recognize
themselves and the distinct society they form." (Runte, Romancing 145)
Pélagie-la-Charrette is charged with the elements of Acadian tradition.
Pélagie is the representative heroine who is "veuve d'un homme, d'une
famille, d'un peuple. Veuve de toute l'Acadie qu'elle avait entreprise de
se ranimer et de rebatir," (PLC 132). Her return to Acadia is "entreprise
individuelle et collective qui marque le destin de l'Acadie" (Laroche 15).
And the tales and supernatural occurrences such as the sightings of
Blackbeard's ghost, the burning ship and the "charrette noir de la Mort"
have long been a part of Acadian folklore, the gathering and sharing of
Acadian traditions. The story itself, as a folktale, is a unifying force: it
unites narrator and listener as well as linking one generation to another.
As the folktales, such as that of Pelagic, are passed "de pere en fils," they
become more mythical than historical. And these myths helped shape
the oral Acadian society:
Ces récits de bouche a oreille, c'est tout ce qu'il faut pour donner a
la matiére les vertus merveilleuses propres a la transformer en
mythe. Rien d'étonnant, alors a ce que la pate humaine de
l'oeuvre soit transposée a un niveau d'interprétation ou l'humain
atteigne facilement aux dimensions du gigantesque, l'orientant
ainsi vers le caractére mythique, qui confére a ces personnages
une valeur dc type ethnique. (Le Blanc, Oralité 38-9)
Pélagie has taken on mythical proportions that, thanks to the oral

tradition, have allowed her to become an ethnic symbol.

17

In Pélagie-la-Charrette, one of the generations through which the
story is filtered is that of Pélagie's and Bélonie's descendents Pélagie-la-
Gribouille and Louis 21 Bélonie20. The novel Cent ans dans les bois takes
up the story of this generation, of Pélagie-la-Gribouille and her
contemporaries, as they struggle to maintain a sense of their community
and culture after "cent ans de silence." This epoch in which Pélagie-la-
Gribouille, Louis 21 Bélonie and the others live, ("sur l'empremier") is a
special time; the narrator finds it to be "le plus mystérieux, le plus
envoutant des mondes" (CA 9). La Gribouille and her contemporaries are
the generation that must bridge the gap between the Acadians who
returned from the Deportation to reclaim land and the Acadians of the
future, who will carry on an "Acadian" identity.

Like her ancestor Pélagie, La Gribouille is influenced by the
Acadian preoccupation with the combined myths of "paradis perdu" and
the "terre promise." She has a veritable passion for the land, which she
sees as essential to the survival of her small community of Acadians;
"j'ons laissé Grand-Pré aux Anglais et Memramcook a l'arpenteur Des
Barres, j'abandonnerons point 1e Fond-de-la-Baie aux vers ni aux bétes a
bon Dieu" (CA 44). Pélagie-la—Gribouille "n'avait cessé de défendre la
terre contre l'océan, depuis l'arrivée des ancétres sur la baie" (CA 17).
This land that she and her family have worked on for generations is an
integral part of her identity--it is not the promised land, nor paradise
regained, but it represents an effort to reestablish paradise and the
foundation on which the future will be built. For Pélagie, the land and
the respect for the land are something that is passed from mother to
daughter, since the time of Pélagie-la-Charrette and Madeleine. She

wishes to pass this heritage on to her only daughter, Babée, by keeping

18

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her away from the islands, and the sailor that she loves: "c'était
précisément pour l'éloigner de tout ce qui sentait 1e sel et les marées
qu'elle tenait a garder sa fille sur sa terre" (CA 163). The "Promised
Land" provides the stability that Pélagie deems necessary to assure the
future of their community. "sans la terre et la forét, 1e peuple du Fond-
de-la-Baie se réveillait bien au-dela de la vallée de Josaphat au bout du
siécle" (CA 17). Her ancestors went to great lengths to return from the
Deportation to reinstall themselves near Memramcook, only to find that
the land that they had cleared belonged to someone else, and they must
move on. The land that they ultimately settled and the community that
they founded at Fond-de-la-Baie is the basis for the rebirth of their
community, and it is the inheritance which they left to future
generations.

Pélagie la Gribouille finds her roots and grounds her sense of
identity not only in the land but also in her sense of connection to her
ancestors. As Rene Le Blanc argues, "1a mythification des personnages,
meme dans la révolte, se fait par l'enracinement dans la tradition
ancestrale" (41). Like many other "défricheteux de parenté:," Pelagic-la-
Gribouille, "haire et descendante en ligne directe de la plus solide et
authentique Acadie ancestrale" (CA 17) is very concerned with genealogy.
She laments that though she descends from Pélagie, she has only one
quarter of LeBlanc blood: "la Gribouille qui aurait pu naitre LeBlanc
légitime et de plein droit, s'était vue affublée d'un quartier de Léger, sorti
de nulle part, par nul autre que son propre engendreur Xavier qui avait
lui-meme raté son LeBlanc d'un seul lit" (CA 36). Her lineage connects

her to the story of the return from exile, to Pélagie the first who made it

19

possible for the future generations of Acadians (like la Gribouille) to call
themselves Acadians.

Already proud of descending from Pélagie-la-Charrette, Pélagie-la-
Gribouille becomes even more preoccupied with her ancestry when the
community finds out that Pélagie's son Jean left behind a LeBlanc
treasure. J éréme, the wandering storyteller, brings news that there is a
LeBlanc treasure buried in the vicinity (bringing with him a map),
provoking in 1a Gribouille and in the community a great desire for what
they feel is their legitimate inheritance. Jerome's news and map turns
the men of the town into "douze chevaliers...qui partaient a la quéte du
trésor des LeBlanc" (CA 61). The men take their mission seriously, even
going to confession to prepare, but the crusade ends in a less than
dignified manner when they find in the place of the treasure a barrel of
excellent white wine, the men end up drunk on the beach:

et l'Acadie a jeun et sans péché qui était venue creuser dans la

dune pour retrouver 1e trésor de la lignée et qui s'abreuvait

goulument a la source jaillie des veines ancestrales, crut entendre
frissoner les foins sous 1e rire du Lac-a-la-Mélasse, des Pointes et

de la butte-du-Moulin. (CA 65)

The chivalric quest for this treasure will continue throughout the novel,
until it is discovered that the "treasure" is, in fact, land in Philadelphia,
which is being used by "des Anglais"! The quest for treasure, and their
longing for their inheritance keeps Pelagic and her cohorts looking to the
past. And it is this past, after all, which has given them their greatest
1egacy--their history and their culture.

But as the people will learn at the end of their treasure hunt, and

as Pélagie-la-Gribouille learns, the moment has come to stop looking

20

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toward the past, and to start looking toward the future. Pélagie's
community, Fond-de-la-Baie, is no longer isolated, it is penetrated by a
string of outsiders. Jerome's presence is quickly followed by the
appearance of the cadaver of a black man unearthed in the dune,
Renaud--"un Francais de France"—- and their "neighbors" from the "ile
Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island). These outsiders force the
community, and Pélagie in particular, to confront change. Jéréme not
only brings with him stories from outside the small community, he is the
first outsider to hear their story: Jéréme-le-Menteux, un étrange, le
premier hors-les-cétes a l'entendre en cent ans" (CA 34). His appearance
at the beginning of the novel foreshadows the opening up of the isolated
community, and the dawn of a new epoch in their history. He also serves
as witness to the changes taking place. He realizes that when Renaud
teaches everyone to read and write, that their oral tradition is at risk.
"Jerome est le premier a comprendre. Il comprend surtout que le rejeton
des vieux pays a surgi sur leurs Cotes pour y semer 1e progres, les idées
neuves et la discorde. Qu'est-ce qu'un peuple qui sait conter et reciter a
besoin de savoir lire!" (CA 150). Jerome, an outsider to the small
community but an Acadian nonetheless, is also a storyteller, which puts
him in a privileged position. He is the keeper of their stories and their
culture, and he can recognize the significance of the intervention of
Renaud, who brings with him literacy.

Pélagie-la-Gribouille, like the others, does not easily adapt to the
changes taking place around her. Her commitment to the past and to
maintaining her lineage is so strong that she refuses to accept that
Babée loves Pierre, who is not only not descended from Pélagie-la-

Charrette, but is from "l'lle Saint-Jean," and thus no_t from "la terre

21

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ferme" (CA 172) or "solide" (CA 200). He does not fit into the image of
ancestral identity she clings to.21 Instead of accepting the alliance of
Babée and Pierre, she tries to force Babée to marry an older hunchback,
Léon LeBlanc, who would tie her more directly to the line of Pelagic-la-
Charrette. La Gribouille's understanding of her culture, her Acadian
heritage, is so centered on the myth of Pélagie's cart that she is, in fact,
unable to see the Acadians from the island as sharing in that Acadian
heritage. It is not until the convention, when Pierre so eloquently pleads
for the recognition of the islanders' share in the common plight of the
"Grand Derangement" and its aftermath, that Pélagie is able to expand
her vision of cultural identity to include Pierre, and others like him.
Pélagie's sense of community is as insular and restricted as her small
community itself was for nearly one hundred years. She distinguishes as
"other" all those who do not come from her community, or descend from
Pélagie-la-Charrette. La Gribouille needs to widen her vision to include
other Acadians who transgress the boundaries of family and village but
who nonetheless still share the common tragic history of the Deportation.
The first "convention nationale" gives la Gribouille this opportunity. She
recognizes, finally, that there are other Acadians outside her community
who share a culture and history. Recognizing that Pierre shares in her
heritage and is not completely different or "other" allows Pélagie to accept
his union with Babée without feeling that she is sacrificing her past.

The story of Pélagie-la-Gribouille letting go of the past, and opening
herself to new ways of seeing things is also the story of Acadia coming
out of the woods and out of their isolated communities to join others and
to move into a new epoch. Pélagie's growing pains are the growing pains

of the Acadians, secluded in small communities for a century. The

22

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convention allows them to see themselves as part of a larger whole. It
also forms a bridge between the past and the future. At the convention,
as La Gribouille and the others demonstrate, the Acadians realize that
they are in fact a "people," who share a common history and heritage,
and they are further united by the designation of the feast of the
Assumption as their national holiday. They need no longer cling to the
past and to the myths... as the only way of maintaining a sense of
identity. From this point on, they recognize the importance of the
present and even the future to their sense of cultural identity. And they
recognize that they play as important a role as that of their ancestors in
the creation and maintenance of this identity. At the beginning of the
novel, it is pointed out to Jerome that the Acadian people coming back
from the Deportation "n'avaient plus 1e gout du martyre: ils y avaient
déja assez gofité a Grand-Pré, puis en exil, et a Tintamarre. lls ne
demandaient plus qu'a vivre, vivre, survivre!" (CA 23). The Acadians of
the next century, however, realize that they desire and can have more
than mere survival. Pélagie-la-Gribouille is the heroine of this new
movement, passing on to her daughter not only the past, but the future
as well.

Pélagie-la—Gribouille serves as the icon of a new generation of
Acadians. Though La Gribouille's battle may not seem to have the epic
proportions of that of Pélagie-la-Charrette, its ramifications are every bit
as enduring. Like her ancestor, La Gribouille embodies the struggles of
her time. Thus Pélagie-la-Charrette is not the only folktale, nor the only
heroine who unites Acadians, and develops their sense of ethnic identity.

Both Pélagie-la-Charrette and Pélagie-la—Gribouille are the kind of epic

23

heroines who are responsible to varying degrees for the direction of their

people, ushering them into new lands and new epochs.

Legendary Figures

Maillet's more modern characters continue the work of Pelagic even
as her descendant Pélagie-la-Gribouille does. The eponymous heroines
of three other novels, Mariaagélas, Crache 61 Pie and Les Cordes-de-
Bots”, engage in adventures that easily take on legendary proportions,
and they, like Pélagie, provide modern Acadians with cultural myths and
icons. The exploits of these characters are characterized by heroism
tempered with mischievousness, and their daring deeds are the source of
many stories. These stories are modern folktales glorifying a new
generation of Acadian heroines.

Crache 21 Pic, part of this new generation, may be an outlaw and a
rebel23 who answers only to her own conscience, but she is at the same
time a heroine who is not afraid of a challenge and who acts selflessly.
Although she wanted to go to sea, Crache a Pic could not turn her back
on her family obligations, as her brothers did. So, sacrificing the
freedom and independence of her life sailing around the world, she
returns to her village to keep a promise that her mother would not die
alone and to take up the care of her younger, "innocent" brother Tobie.
Daughter of the infamous Chache a Pie and his uncommonly strong wife
Aglaé, Crache a Pic is not destined for an ordinary career. Rather, she
takes up bootlegging, flying in the face of convention, and also opposing
the town's powerful bootlegger, Dieudonné. The object of Crache a Pic's
Prohibition-era bootlegging is not merely financial gain, but also to

partake in the pursuit of the forbidden fruit--a joy which she seeks for

24

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herself and on behalf of those around her-~her brother, the neighbors
who form her crew, and the entire village. She had received this mission
when she gave up her life at sea to return to her mother's deathbed. Her
dying mother commissions her: "Mange [les fruits des champs] sans te
faire du souci, parce que le Dieudonné, ses champs, il les a volés lui itou
au pauvre monde" (CAP 46). From then on, Crache :1 Pic had to take
responsibility not only for her destiny and that of her helpless brother,
but in fact for all the helpless townspeople, struggling with the
Depression and with the economic usurpation of Dieudonné. "Ce jour-la,
Crache 21 Pic avait su qu'elle combattrait le bootlegger, David devant
Goliath, armée de son seul courage et de sa jarnigoine qui devait bientét
ébahir le pays" (CAP 245). The exploits of Crache :21 Pie and her
improvised crew serve not only to entertain the villagers and provide
them with bootleg liquor, but also to unite the village against Dieudonné-
-the rich encroacher--and the true outsiders—-the authorities.

Ironically Crache a Pic actually falls in love with "Vif-Argent" the
constable assigned to police the village and the sea after the former
constable "Martial" is killed by bootleggers. Crache a Pic is momentarily
placed in the position (not unlike that of Pélagie) of having to choose
between her personal feelings and desires, and her loyalty to the town
and its only sources of income, bootlegging and poaching. But in the
end, it is Vif-Argent who compromises his job for love, distracting Tobie's
bear and unearthing Crache a Pic’s cache of Caribbean rum to prove her
that she cannot outwit him, but leaving the rum for the villagers to enjoy.

Non pas victoire de l'homme sur la béte, mais de l'amour sur les

usages et coutumes. Le Vif—Argent qui abandonnait aux fétards du

pays de quoi se souvenir toute leur vie de cette glorieuse époque de

25

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la Prohibition, en realité invitait tout le pays a ce'lébrer les noces

défendues entre un connestable et une hors-la-loi. (CAP 263)

But this unconventional alliance is not destined for a smooth course nor
a happy ending. For a time, the two go their separate ways since their
chosen careers are irreconcilable (CAP 266). Quicksilver's love is doubly
forbidden for Crache a Pic, as the occupations of outlaw and constable
are irreconcilable, and as Crache 21 Pic is not living for herself alone.
Crache a Pic has a mission, but even more importantly, Crache a Pic
cannot deny her true self. In the end, Crache 21 Pic, like Pélagie, will not
compromise her mission, even for love.

Vif Argent, her lover, even sacrifices himself, dying in her place, in
order to bring down "Goliath," that is, Dieudonné. Cast in the role of
David she must triumph; she will do so by outwitting, not by
overpowering, Goliath. Her mission is not finished until she defeats
Dieudonné, the rich giant who has usurped the lands of the poor
defenseless villagers. In her triumph over Dieudonné, Crache a Pic
reestablishes the rights of the townspeople, maintaining and affirming
the community. And through her bootlegging, Crache a Pic not only
provides the town with liquor, she also provides them with much needed
entertainment, staging elaborate diversionary ruses to deflect attention
from her illegal activities.

Her final act is to orchestrate the culmination of the trial of
Dieudonné for the murder of Vif Argent, which unites the village against
the law of the outsiders. Crache a Pic becomes a hero for her people.
And the tales of her exploits, like those of Mariaagélas and others, depict
"la plus glorieuse et la plus tragique époque" of Acadia (MG 236). Crache
a Pic symbolizes the newfound thrill of freedom offered during

26

Prohibition, an epoch that transformed Acadia into a place of wonderfully
illicit adventures in bootlegging.

Like Crache a Pic, Maillet’s legendary heroine Mariaagélas also
exercises the forbidden profession of bootlegging. Mariaagélas's actions
may not have been as self-sacrificing as those of Pelagic, or even those of
Crache :21 Pic, but her exploits and adventures do contribute to the
cultural myths of the Prohibition generation. As the disbelief expressed
by the narrator would indicate, Maria's story might at first glance lack
the distance typical of an epic:

Vous me direz que c'est inutile, que vous ne pouvez pas croire a

une histoire comme celle-Ci, que vous avez trop vécu, que vous

n'étes pas si légers de croyance et que les c6tes d'Acadie, pour tout

dire, sont trop a l'abri pour avoir connu des aventures pareilles . . .

Je vous connais. Vous croirez aux sorciers, plutot, et a

l'Antéchrist, et au septieme du septieme, mais pas a l'existence de

Mariaagélas. Elle est trop proche et elle nous ressemble trop. C'a

quasiment trop l'allure de la vérité pour étre vrai. (MG 9)

In her introduction of Maria, the narrator simultaneously brings out her
resemblance and proximity to real people on the Acadian coasts, and her
unbelievable, mythic proportions. Her story, then, serves as more than a
mere adventure story. It defies belief and produces a hero who is of the
peOple, and nonetheless as mythical as the Antichrist. And the mythic
proportions of her story, as well as its thorough grounding in Acadian
time, language and space place Mariaagélas firmly in the cultural context
of the Acadian people.

That Mariaagélas is no ordinary girl is clear early in her life; at five,

she has figured out the best time to go out collecting returnable bottles,

27

"a huit ans, elle était le plus gros vendeur de bouteilles de tout le su du
pont" (MG 12). A girl this clever is not destined to end up in the
canneries in the states, nor cleaning other people's houses. And indeed,
having already refused to leave her village to work in the canneries, she
soon dooms her future as a servant as well, by delivering "le plus
formidable poing dans l'oeil de mémoire scolaire" (MG 14) to the
schoolteacher whom she feels has insulted her little sister. Having
disdained and forsaken the traditional paths of girls her age, Maria has
no choice but the extraordinary: "Mariaagélas comprit qu'elle n'avait
plus le choix, qu'il lui fallait se lancer a l'aventure" (MG 14).

It is through her career as a legendary adventurer that Maria
makes her contribution to Acadian culture, history, and ethnic identity,
becoming such a colorful piece in the tapestry of the Acadian story that
the narrator, on hearing her story, dreams of bringing it to life:

Je me rappelle avoir révé, a ce moment-la d'écrire un jour les belles

aventures de cette Mariaagélas qui s'est battue si joyeusement avec

la mer, les douaniers, les pécheurs, les cures, les commeres, et la
vie, pendant la plus glorieuse et la plus tragique époque de

l'histoire de mon pays. (MG 236)

Like Pélagie and Crache-a-Pic, Mariaagélas is one of the defining stories
of Acadia.

Although Mariaagélas and Crache (‘1 Pic resemble each other in
many ways, and even recount some of similar adventures, the novels and
the heroines still differ substantially. Crache a Pic has relationships and
is firmly rooted in her community, whereas Maria, who disappears at the
end of the novel, has mythical proportions from the beginning. Maria

seems to belong more to Bakhtine's "passe épique" and Crache a Pic to

28

the real
novels.
lost her
six-ere:
Pe'fagie-.
'i'arizshe
Pk.
link one
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0i La Gr
generat;
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the real world. Nowhere is this more apparent than at the end of the two
novels. Crache a Pic, who has finally triumphed over Dieudonné but has
lost her lover, remains in the village to preserve her victory. Maria,
however, disappears quietly at the end of the novel--rather like Bélonie in
Pélagie-la-Charrette—-and only vague rumors of her are left. She has
vanished into the domain of legend.

Pélagie-la-Charrette, Crache a Pie, and Mariaagélas are stories that
link one generation to another. The tradition of storytelling has given the
Acadians a sense of history and a sense of belonging. Just as the story
of La Gribouille must be understood in the light of the trials of the
generations that preceded her own, in Les Cordes de Bois the story of la
Piroune and her daughter la Bessoune (the Mercenaires, an almost
entirely female clan known as "les Cordes-de-Bois") begins generations
before their births. "Pour débrouiller les fils d'une histoire nouée par
tant de mépris, haine, colere, et chicanes épiques entre deux clans d'un
méme pays, i1 faudrait remonter quelques generations" (CdB l7). Maillet
has given the story of the Mercenaire women an historical context and
epic proportions. And yet the seeming oxymoron of "chicanes épiques"
evokes the paradox that is the Mercenaire clan.. They are not epic
heroines, or even heroines in the classic or traditional sense of the term.
Their actions may take on epic proportions, but they also remain
"chicanes."

Another contradiction of the Cordes-de-Bois women is that they
both reject and oppose all the mores and traditions of the parish and
community24 while at the same time they incarnate the very spirit of the
foundational values that inform these mores. While they prefer the

quays to church, and sexual freedom to the strictures of society, they

29

prove a‘
in gene:
panshie
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parish:
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prove at the auction of the poor that they surpass all other parishioners
in generosity and compassion for others. Putting the sanctimonious
parishioners, and even the cure in their places, the Mercenaire women
offer shelter to all the poor, crippled, orphaned "rejects" at no cost to the
parish: "C'est ben, je le prendrai pour rien, qu'elle fit" (CdB 301). They
prove themselves willing and able to give of themselves and their homes,
sacrificing even their most valued belongings to help those in need.
Their story includes such acts of heroism, and equally grand acts of
outlawry. Although unlike a traditional epic hero, they do not embody
(or even accept) the values of their society, they do represent the free-
spirited rejection of authority that allowed Acadian society to continue to
exist after the deportation. The adventures of the Mercenaire women
form part of the Acadian tradition: "et justement, les Cordes-de-Bois
allaient devenir la cause de cette lutte qui devait durer une couple de
generations et assaisonner la petite histoire d'un pays déja bien avancé
sur le chemin de la gloire" (CdB 27). La Piroune and La Bessoune have
joined Pelagic and the other heroines as icons of Acadian culture.

By the legendary quality of their lives, and the very fact of
springing as it were from unknown and unseen fathers (as if they had
self-generated), La Piroune and La Bessoune are separated from the
ordinary folk/community. Whereas characters in Maillet's works are
very often referred to in terms of familial relationships, (Maria :21 Gélas, la
Veuve a Calixte, Pierre a Tom, etc.) the Mercenaire women are most often
referred to by their names--Patience, la Piroune, la Bessoune25—-or in
terms of their land, "les Cordes-de-Bois26." The illegitimacy of la Piroune

and la Bessoune has freed them from the constraints of patriarchal

30

society”. Moreover, they are physically set apart from the village, living
on a butte which towers above the community.
Ce qui n'empéche pas ces cordes, du haut de leur butte, de
dominer la mer, 1e pont, et le village accroupi a leurs pieds. Et
C'est 1a 011 l'écharde s'enfonce dans la chair . . . chaque fois qu'un
homme respectable du Pont veut crier des noms a ces effrontés, il
doit dresser la téte pour les voir. (CdB 20)
They stand above the village, physically and morally, and it is from this
privileged position that they will add to the history of their country.
While the Cordes-de-Bois women have many admirable qualities,
including their generosity toward the poor, they are in fact, a divisive
force in the community. They divide it into two camps; the side of Ma-
Tante-la-Veuve and the side of the Cordes-de-Bois. They even manage to
turn the vicaire and the curé against each other; the vicaire having been,
in the eyes of the village, seduced by 1a Bessoune. While they have
ostensibly rejected all the values of family and society, they do in fact live
by certain standards that are admirable. They value freedom, and self-
expression, not conformity and they are not controlled by hypocrisy.
Their beliefs are deeply felt, and they are absolutely true to these beliefs.
These are the qualities that allowed Pélagie to fight back from
deportation, and which allowed generations of Acadians to continue to
think of themselves as Acadians. The Mercenaire women offer a new
paradigm of Acadian identity.
Like the Acadians, the pe0ple in Don l'On'gnal,28 the "Pucois," are
also engaged in a battle for land and for respect. The bourgeois
mainlanders feel threatened by the Pucois, whose island, "l'Ile-aux-

Puces," surged forth one day from the ocean, and want to put them in

31

their place (DO 14). Don l'Orignal tells the tale of the conflict between the
bourgeois and the "Pucois," as the two groups are engaged in a fight to
the death, the bourgeois trying to destroy the Pucois, who in turn, are
fighting to survive (Godin 29). Don l'Orignal has been called a fable, a
myth, an epic, an allegory, and a "Rabelaisian fantasy" (Fitzpatrick,
Search 5). The tale of the Pucois people has elements of all of these.
Marjorie Fitzpatrick maintains that "Maillet created in Don l'On'gnal an
Acadian myth" (Search, 5). The style and the characters in Don l'Orignal
are quite different from those novels such as Mariaagélas, Les Cordes-de-
Bois, or even Pélagie-la-Charrette. The story of the Pucois must be
interpreted as being mythical or allegorical. Melvin Gallant argues that
"en ce qui concerne Don l'Orignal, on n'a pas besoin d'avancer tres loin
dans la lecture du texte pour comprendre qu'il s'agit d'une fable" (Epopée
287). And Jean-Cleo Godin states that "C'est . . . avec Par dem’ére chez
mon pe‘re, Mariaagélas et, surtout, le merveilleux Don l’Orignal que ces
personnages révéleront leur pleine dimension légendaire" (26). As a
legend, Don l'On'gnal offers a moral to the Acadian people.

Like Crache a Pic, Don l'Orignal is the story of "David contre
Goliath," a significant myth for the Acadians, for they had nothing
compared to the "English," nothing but their wits and their will. The
situation of Don l'Orignal and his people can be compared to that of the
Acadians. "Le lecteur le moindrement conscient de la situation, de la
langue et de la mentalité des Acadiens est tenté de comparer ces derniers
aux Pucois et d'associer les continentaux aux Anglais. Si cette
hypothese n'est pas réellement de fondemont dans le texte, elle demeure
néanmoins vraisemblable" (Gallant, 293). As a fable, "destiné a illustrer

un précepte" (Petit Robert 745), Don l'Orignal illustrates the indomitable

32

spirit and inherent dignity of a seemingly insignificant people. Melvin
Gallant points out, "par dela la fable, c'est de l'Acadie qu'il s'agit, de la
grandeur de ce petit pays, de la réalité d'une nation qui refuse de mourir"
(Epopée 293). Don l'Orignal is an Acadian epic that lauds the
determination and ingenuity of a people.

The similarity between the Pucois and the Acadians becomes clear
in the epilogue, when the narrator's cousin visits the town, which offers
"1e curieux spectacle d'une ville endormie pendant cent ans" (DO 141).
Like the Acadian towns that regenerated after the Deportation, the town
in Don l'Orignal has shifted to a more remote location, keeping to itself.
The narrator, at the end, finds that the town in question "s'était
légerement déplacé; que la population se concentrait désormais la-bas,
au bord de l'eau; que cette population d'ailleurs se trouvait
renouvelée...completement renouvelée" (DO 142). The town is no longer
bourgeois, it belongs to the Pucois who have moved down, closer to the
water. They have won the battle and claimed their townuand renewed
themselves as a people.

The patriarch and leader of this people is Don l'Orignal, "un
colosse barbu, poilu et encorné" (DO 13). While he rules his people
benevolently and well, he is not the true hero of the tale. Michel-
Archange, the "écuyer du roi" (DO 19) is the quintessential hero,
predestined for great things (DO 36). He fights a battle with "un suppét
de Satan, le défunt Sam Amateur qui, au dela de sa tombe, était venu
déranger la tranquillité du pays" (DO 21). This battle of good and evil
(which precedes the battle of the Pucois and the bourgeois) begins over a

hunting quarrel, and is waged even beyond the grave, after the death of

33

and Cit:
the you:
Non' at
mainlan
falls in i
from [ll-1
”ererer (
qu'un h
.38 appe
(DO 78)
bi the a
marry it
La

 

through

SPF if C O :

 

 

Sam Amateur. Michel-Archange is the indomitable hero, who does not
fear even supernatural foes.

The younger generation of Pucois men is represented by Noume
and Citrouille, the sons of Don l'Orignal and Michel-Archange. Noume is
the young sailor who has taken off on his own, and has seen the world.
Now back home, he is the knight who leads his people against the
mainlanders. Citrouille, in contrast, is the pensive romantic hero who
falls in love with Adeline. It is Citrouille who-—after being resurrected
from the dead--pronounces his own version of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy:
"crever ou pas crever, c'est la la grosse affaire...autrement pourquoi c'est
qu'un homme des iles endurerait de se laisser voler, pis casser la gueule,
pis appeler des noms, pis siffler sa fille par le monde de la terre ferme?"
(DO 78). Citrouille epitomizes the dilemma of the Acadians, marginalized
by the anglophone community, yet nonetheless willing to work and even
marry into it.

La Sagouine (better known as the eponymous heroine of the one-
woman play writtten in 1971) is the cleaning woman and mother who
through her intelligence and wit becomes the Pucois most valuable
spy/combatant. "Sage interprete des deux 'villages', elle seule pouvait
étre le centre de l'un et de l'autre" (Godin 28). La Sagouine, with her
pail and mops, is at home in both communities:

Pour mieux camoufler son intention et faire oublier sa presence, la

Sagouine s'était efforcée de s'identifier aux murs, au plancher, a

ses seaux et torchons, et ainsi noyer son individualité et sa

mission dans le grand baquet universel de toutes les lavandieres

du monde. (DO 51)

the she

Tame-la

commu:
example
the com
the hon
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She has become invisible, her individuality lost in her wash bucket, but
this enables her to infiltrate the bourgeois village, the enemy territory.
La Sagouine's anonymity is that of all those Acadians who quietly went
about their business in a world that was not their own, all the while
maintaining their own culture and traditions.

Like la Sagouine, la Sainte is another character in Don l'Orignal
who shows up with slight variations in many of Maillet's novels. Like Ma
Tante-Ia-Veuve, La Veuve-a-Calixte, Marie-Pet, and la Sainte in other
novels, la Sainte is the woman who takes it upon herself to be the
community's moral voice. Besides her self-appointed guardian and
example of morality, la Sainte also finds herself in charge of maintaining
the community's history. She starts by saving the silk handkerchief that
the bourgeois milliner dropped while on a visit to the enemy island. She
suggests that it should be put in a museum, and thus "la Sainte fut
nommé par le ministre culturel des on ile, en ce lendemain de l'incursion
des bourgeois en pays ennemi, la premiere conservatrice du musée de
guerre de l'Ile-aux-Puces" (DO 81). La Sainte has been made responsible
for the relics of war.

Pamphile, like the storytellers Bélonie and Jerome, is also made
responsible for the cultivation of his community's history and traditions.
He is the chronicler, bard, and poet of the community, creating and
passing down their stories.29 It is Pamphile, "poete national" (DO 42)
who makes the stories of his people into epics: "Pamphile, en l'honneur
des plus belles oeuvres de ses confreres poetes de tous les temps, appela
son épopée la Puciade" (DO 42). The Pucois, like the Acadians were for
many years, an oral people. And they would have no myths, no legends,

no stories, if it weren't for the bards. "Ce qui se passa ensuite...n'a été

35

consigné ni dans les chroniques de l'Ile-aux-Puces, ni dans les archives
du continent. La littérature orale de l'ile se borne a rapporter..." (DO 92).
Without the storytellers, like Pamphile, the legend of Don l'Orignal, like so
many others would have vanished.

These characters in Don l'Orignal, who fight this epic battle for
renewal, are the archetypes of Maillet's novels, who appear again and
again in her works. "On peut dire que les personnages de Don l'On'gnal
s'insinuent un peu partout dans l'oeuvre d'Antonine Maillet, mais, tout
en gardant leurs noms et leur personnalité ils réapparaissent le plus
souvent a des époques et dans des situations différentes" (Gallant,
Epopée 287).30 These Pucois--Don l’Orignal, la Sagouine, la Sainte,
Citrouille and the others--are the stock characters of Maillet's novels,
characters who need no profound explanation, but who audiences can
recognize and identify with. Jean-Cleo Godin writes:

Les Pucois de Don l'Orignal constituent donc une société

autonome, insulaire, a demi légendaire. Et dans cet univers aussi

rigoureusement hierarchisé que la cité médiévale, il est
remarquable que chacun soit identifié par un surnom, tel un
patronyme totémique: Noume, Citrouille, la Sainte, Michel-

Archange, Boy a Polyte, Don l'Orignal lui-meme. Cela tient du

bestiaire et du petit catéchisme illustré, du livre de contes et de la

fable. Mais c'est a travers eux qu'Antonine Maillet se rapproche
d'une Acadie vivante et vraie. Seuls les Pucois, ne l'oublions pas,
forment 'un peuple,‘ alors que ceux du 'continent' et 'qu'on appelle

si scrupuleusement l'élite' ne sont que des 'gens de c1asse.‘ (DO 26)
These characters, who appear so regularly in Maillets' works, form a

people, a legendary people. Barbara Thompson Godard writes: "in Dan

36

turnbe
man;
lhistoi
role de
Sagoui
and la

destinir
Works ;
héroiqL

hlSisorj

 

 

l'Orignal folk traditions have the appearance of history and history gains
the heightened grandeur of legend" (52). And this legendary people will
be a symbol of and for the Acadians, fighting themselves for survival.

In Don l’Orignal as in all her novels, Maillet has created strong and
forceful characters, capable of surmounting the obstacles that surround
them. And the women in particular will emerge as significant figures--as
evidenced by the importance of 1a Sagouine in Don l'Orignal and by the
number of leading female characters in her novels. Melvin Gallant
maintains that Maillet "allait donner aux femmes un role a jouer que
l'histoire ne leur avait pas donné. L'écrivaine allait leur restituer leur
role de leadership dans la société" (Gallant, Mythe 79). And indeed, 1a
Sagouine and Pélagie, Maria and Crache a Pic, la Gribouille, 1a Piroune
and la Bessoune are anything but passive. They take charge of their
destinies and those of others. In fact, Le Blanc writes that Maillet's
works are "1e portrait sans cesse retouché de la femme acadienne,
héro’ique sans le savoir, chaque avatar fondé dans un moment
histsorique ou un milieu de lutte, résumant une reaction typique" (Le
Blanc, Oralité 40). In these novels, Maillet creates a new image of

Acadians, especially the women.

Cultural Icons

Without necessarily being epic heroes or heroines, or even
engaging in adventures, some of Maillet's characters function as symbols
or icons of the Acadian people. While the characters in all of Maillet's
novels, epic and otherwise offer symbols of / for the Acadian people, two
novels present a slightly different case. Pointe aux Coques and

Emmanuel 61 Joseph 61 Davit31, may lack the epic journeys and legendary

37

come fr
an Epoc
from 1!:
Connie:
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adventures found in other novels, they nonetheless offer (the reader) two
cultural icons. Pointe aux Coques is a modern journey back to a
forgotten world and an abandoned culture. Emmanuel 61 Joseph a deit
draws on Christian biblical symbolism to present the image of a savior
being born to Acadia. The characters in these two novels, though
perhaps not "heroic," still function as symbols of the Acadian people and
their struggle to maintain a sense of cultural identity.

Pointe-aux-Coques does not belong to the epic past, nor does it
come from the legends of Acadia. It is clearly situated in modern times,
an epoch of television and movies, and the story comes to us directly
from the narrator, who recounts her own experiences. Like Pélagie, Mlle
Cormier is on a quest. However, Mademoiselle Cormier is far less single
minded in her quest than is Pélagie. And unlike Maria, Crache a Pic, La
Piroune and La Bessoune, she does not engage in any adventures--epic
or otherwise. And most importantly, Mlle Cormier's quest is personal, a
journey to find her own place in the world. She is not bringing her
people back to Acadia, she brings only herself. And though she
eventually occasions her father's return as well, he has not come back
permanently. Indeed he returns only for the funeral of his uncle and
cousin, and the most he can promise is to come back once a year
"manger des coques et du homard" (PAC 221). Thus Mlle Cormier's story
would seem to differ from the legendary or epic milieu that characterises
the stories of characters such as Pelagic and Mariaagélas.

Moreover, lacking the self-confidence and determination of Pélagie,
Mlle Cormier cannot be the forceful heroine of an epic. Her resolve and
enthusiasm are, to say the least, dampened by her first encounters with

Nazarine, her hostess, and with her students: "Mais quand tout a coup je

38

me sentis en face de toute 1a realité-...-je compris que Pointe-aux-Coques
ne se résumerait pas a un lieu de villégiature ou d'exploration..." (PAC
41). Piqued by curiosity, Mlle Cormier has come to Acadia on what _s_lle
terms an "adventure." She has come to explore her father's world. But
she finds more than she has bargained for, and she discovers that she
must rethink her plans, and so when Jean asks her why she has come to
Acadia, she is incapable of responding. "Pourquoi étais-je venue a Pointe—
aux-Coques? ...Je restai muette. 11 me semblait que toutes mes réponses
auraient sonné faux. Etais-je venue par aventure, par instinct, par
impulsion? Etait-ce a cause de mon pére? ...Je ne savais plus." (PAC
287, emphasis added) The searching and confusion of Mlle Cormier's
experiences are not those of the hero of an epic, but rather those of a
person searching for themselves. So we can see that the young
schoolteacher is learning about the world, and trying to determine the
role she must play. Her story reflects the struggles of modern Acadians
to find a new place for themselves in a modern society, to go beyond the
myth of Pélagie and form new myths and new meanings.

Mlle Cormier's ideas and objectives evolve. This is the most
significant characteristic distinguishing her from some of Maillet's more
"epic" heroines such as Pélagie. She may arrive in Acadia, Pointe-aux-
Coques, seeing everything through poetic rose-colored glasses, but it is
not long before she experiences great disillusionment, sparked by the
return of a young Acadian girl from the "States." She can at this moment
see the village more realistically, as she explains:

Apres dix mois, je commencais a entrevoir le tout de Point-aux-

Coques, ou ne battait pas rien que le coeur des Muses. La vie des

pécheurs était une rude corvée dans son ensemble: le lever de nuit,

39

fitffi'

honey

decisix'
evolves
an expf
:0 surt':
Commu
filture s
Choiszt i
hundat

. I
reflt‘Wm
i

 

 

les vents impitoyables, les risques, les mauvaises fortunes, la

pauvreté sans espoir. En quoi les biens qu'offre la vie aisée

devenaient-ils des perils pour les moeurs et pour la foi? (PAC 185)

Here she sees the "pays" for the first time as it truly is, a land that
however beautiful, forces the inhabitants to lead a hard life. But unlike
Pélagie's moment of realization (occurring at the end of the novel and at
the end of her life), this is, for Mademoiselle Cormier, a turning point, a
decisive moment. It is at this moment that her quest changes, or rather
evolves, for it is at this moment that it becomes not an "adventure," not
an exploration, but a determined decision to join in the village's struggle
to survive. Thus instead of seeing a hero shape the destiny of his / her
community, in Pointe-aux-Coques, we see an individual shaping her own
future since, as her father tells Mlle Cormier "c'est a 20 ans que l'on
choisit [sa vie]..." (PAC 221).32 Mlle Cormier has drawn on the
foundational myth of Pélagie and recast it for herself, repeating and
renewing Pélagie's commitment to Acadia.

Pointe-aux-Coques is perhaps more clearly novelistic, and less an
adventure or epic than many of Maillet's other stories. The novel,
though, is the genre which, according to Bakhtine, "étant le seul genre en
devenir, réfléte plus profondément, plus substantiellement...l'évolution
de la réalité" (444). As such, modern Acadians can see in Pointe-aux-
Coques a reflection of their own struggles not to form or even to maintain
a community, but to reconcile the past and the present and future. As a
novel, Pointe—aux-Coques provides the readers with an opportunity for
identification with the characters, and not simply legends or ideals.
Pointe-aux-Coques reflects the harsh realities of life in modern Acadia, as

well as the poetic beauty of the land. Moreover, it is a novel, not a

40

folktale, and is therefore experienced alone, and in silence.” It is an
individual and not a community act. Therefore, whereas in Pélagie-la-
Charrette, the conscious emphasis on the multiple levels of narration is
essential because they serve to accentuate and validate the national and
legendary aspect of the story, in Pointe-aux-Coques, the story must be
told as directly as possible, narrowing the gap between "reality" and
"narration."34

In modern "Acadia" there are perhaps no "epic" journeys to be
made or battles to be fought. Rather, each person must choose for
herself how to cope with the "reality" of life in Acadia, where the old ways
of life become harder and harder to maintain. It is for these Acadians
that Maillet's novels are written--for those who no longer sit around a
forge fire to exchange tales. Pointe-aux-Coques is constructed on the
same personal battleground where the modern struggle to maintain an
Acadian cultural identity will be fought. Having returned from the
deportation, and come out of their "cent ans dans les bois" (100 years of
keeping to themselves so as not to "éveiller l'ours qui dort"), Acadians
must now face the even greater danger of economic dispersion, and
assimilation.

The characters in Emmanuel (‘1 Joseph a deit face this very
problem. In this story, due to the difficulties in maintaining small rural
towns whose entire economic structure was based on fishing, the
government is forcing the people to move to bigger towns where it can
provide them with access to schools and hospitals. An entire village
(Maisonnette) is being evacuated, its people forced to leave everything
they've ever known. Joseph and his wife Mary (who is expecting a baby)

hitchhike to town to ask the governor Harold for permission to stay in

41

ueflhf
hie pri
prexiu

a Dari

Paradi
uncha;
COPIES;
laung,

asnnnl

 

 

their village. Their request denied, and finding no room at the "auberge
de campagne," nor at the motel, they end up in an abandoned shack,
where Mary will deliver her baby in the attached woodshed of which la
Sainte declares: "ca ma tout l'air a moi d'étre rien de plusse qu’un étable,
c'te hangar-la" (EJD 114). They name their baby Emmanuel, and
because they can't return to their home in the north, they leave for the
south. The similarities to the story of the birth of Christ (as well as his
name) would suggest the role of savior for this baby. And at the end, la
vieille Anne, "tireuse des cartes," predicts that a new spring has begun:
"le printemps qui vient, ben c'en sera un vrai, c'ti-citte, coume si i' fut le
premier que j'arions jamais vu..." (EJD 142). Young Emmanuel a Joseph
a Davit's story brings hope and heralds the dawn of a new era for Acadia.
Another novel which confronts the challenge of creating new
paradigms of Acadian identity is L'Oursiade.35 In this novel, which
uncharacteristically features two male protagonists (and two
corresponding male bear protagonists), Maillet explores the difficulties
facing Acadians as they adapt to the modern world, and the dangers of
assimilation and loss of tradition. Like la Piroune and la Bessoune the
young hero of the novel is the illegitimate offspring of an unknown father,
and like them, he lives on the outskirts of the community, next to the
woods. As his position would indicate Tit-Jean, or Titoume, will not cling
to traditions, but will forge new paths. He has as his mentors Simon 1e
Métis and Ozite, an outlaw and a centenarian who will teach him to
respect the past / his ancestors while still adapting to modern times.
L'Oursiade is unusual in another aspect; its protagonists are not
only human, a clan of bears also functions as primary characters in the

novel. The trio of main characters (Simon le Métis, Titoume and Ozite) is

42

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C1116 lOL
DTESQUE
l2 forgi‘
3 DEV.” s
ll'Om [h

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l

 

enemic:
JOSEph

[hill 8:.

 

the beg

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l
[he hm

n"

 

mirrored in the bear world, where there are three corresponding bear
characters, Revenant-Noir, Nounours, and l'Oursagénaire. The
relationship of these pairs is the core of the novel. The bear, who,
according to the Dictionnaire des Symboles, "est considéré comme
l'ancétre de l'espece humaine" (Chevalier 717) also represents "une
expression de l'obscurité, des tenebres: en alchimie il correspond a la
noirceur du premier état de la matiere. L'obscurité, l'invisible étant liés a
l'interdit, cela renforce sa fonction d'initiateur” (Chevalier 717). The
bears in L'Oursiade, then, could be interpreted as symbols of the
Acadians' ancestors, or their past. "Quant aux ours...Ozite prétendait
que l'ours était l'héritage personnel de Simon le Métis, son protege, son
presque fils, par droit de naissance, droit acquis, droit tout court" (0 43).
In forging relationships with the bears, Simon, Titoume and Ozite create
a new strategy for maintaining Acadian identity, which differs greatly
from that of their village.

The other characters in the novel treat the bears as either
enemies, or objects of fascination. Zéphire, Grand-Galop and Loup-
Joseph, the hunters, see the bears as possible trophies, monuments to
their skill as hunters. The bears are in a precarious position, because at
the beginning of the novel a forest fire has destroyed their home, and
they no longer have food, nor adequate cover. They are forced to "invade"
the human world, and graze at the village dump.

Comment expliquer a la vieille l'étrangeté du spectacle des hommes

qui se rassemblent la-bas, au trécarré, a l'heure ou les ours vont

s'y rassasier, hommes, femmes et petits d'hommes, se bousculant

a qui s'approchera le plus des ours...comment expliquer le cirque

43

des homme a l’Oursagénaire qui ne les a jamais vus qu'en forét, a

la saison de la chasse? (O 69)

It is here that the dramatic clash of man and beast, present and past,
comes to a peak. A young girl, "une étudiante, apparence" (O 93),
provokes a crisis between humans and bears. "elle est sortie de sa petite
Ford rouge. Avant méme que les autres aient eu le temps de lui crier de
point s'approcher des ours, la 'la-t—i' pas qui ouvre un grand sac et en
sort une enregistreuse, t'as qu'a ouere! puis s'approche d'un petit ours. .
. et entreprend de le faire parler. Le plus curieux c'est que l'ourson a l'air
de répondre et de s'amuser comme un petit fou. Pas sa mere" (0 93-4).
Bears and humans are poised on the brink of attack, when Simon le
Métis intervenes. "C'est Simon qui saute dans la tranchee et ramasse 1a
folle par le chignon au peril de sa propre vie" (O 94). As this incident
shows, le Métis, as well as Titoume and Ozite serve as intermediaries
between the humans and the bears. When the village plows over the
dump, they feed the bears, thus keeping them alive for the winter. And
again at the end of the novel, Simon intervenes in a confrontation
between the bears and the villagers.

The continual tension between the bears and the villagers
represents the clash between Acadian traditions and the realities of
modern life. Revenant-Noir muses: "Chacun doit garder sa place. La
difficulté c'est de trouver la frontiere, de dénicher sous la feuillée la
barriere entre le sauvage et le domestique. Certaines brousailles sont
bien malaisées a défricher" (O 82). The frontier between past, present
and future may be difficult to determine. Even more difficult for modern
Acadians, is the question of what to do with the past—with culture,

myths, and traditions. Do these have a place in modern life or must

44

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they, like the bears in L'Oursiade be banished? The model proposed by
Simon and Titoume is peaceful coexistence and understanding. For
them, the bears are an important part of life, an opportunity for dialogue
and understanding of the circle of life, past, present, future.

In the end we realize that the bears (or at least Revenant Noir) are
reincarnations of people, a theory that the Church, ironically and
unintentionally, had inspired in le Métis early in the novel. When Simon
again attempts to mediate between the village and the bears, and stop
either side from killing, he receives a revelation:

dans un rite quasi sacré, en silence, durant les longues secondes

ou le Métis avait tout l'air de parler a l'ours, comme si soudain le

demi-sauvage avait recu le don des langues. Les deux
combattants [Simon and Revenant-Noir] se tenaient serrés l'un
contre l'autre, a la vue des hommes et des ours, l'instant que tous

comprennent qu'on ne se voulait aucun mal. (O 223)

Later, Simon shares the content of his revelation: '...en mourant, ton
pere s'est réincarné...la méme année dans les bois" (O 229) he explains to
Titoume. Thus the bears are in fact ancestors reincarnated into a
different form, attempting to find a place in the modern Acadian world.
The end of the novel finds the bears exiled "en forét profonde. Les ours
ne réapparaitront pas au pays de la Riviere avant la prochaine generation
de bouleaux blancs. Quand il retrouvera son ami, Titoume sera un
homme et Nounours un ours. Et Revenant-Noir, son pere, ne sera plus"
(0 229-230). The model of peaceful coexistence of past and present
offered by Simon, Titoume and Ozite is not possible at this particular

moment in history, but the novel ends with the hope that it will be some

day.

45

the to]
eofleet
des re;
dans 1
heroin

and t}

 

 

In creating the images and characters in these novels, Maillet has
furnished her own vision of the Acadian people and history. "Tout 1e
mystére est la. Antonine fera des simples de village, des personnages
hauts en couleur, des heroines de légende, des étres mythiques, portant
les vertus de la race. Elle refera un type d'Acadienne opposée a
l'Evangéline du poete" (René Le Blane, Maillet 58). The characters of Don
l’Orignal, like Pelagic, Bélonie, Maria, La Bessoune and the many others
are new types of Acadians, new icons of cultural identity. They offer a
different response to the hardships of deportation, exile, poverty and the
threat of cultural assimilation. They are not passive and romantic, like
Evangeline, rather, they are tough, competent and proactive. These are
the role models Maillet grew up with. "Maillet parle la langue de la
collectivité acadienne; elle traite aussi des personnages, de l'histoire et
des réalités sociales de l'Acadie. Et elle cherche a insérer son écriture
dans le devenir historique de son peuple" (DeFinney 17). Maillet's
heroines are truly Acadian, they come from Acadian history and legend,
and they give to the Acadian people a new generation of heroes.

That her characters can be such heroes, is due in large part to the
fact that these characters are larger than life. Maillet contends that "1e
créateur a le genie de créer des archetypes qui dépassent les gens de la
vie réelle" (Lamarche 29). And this in fact is what she herself has done.
Her characters are archetypes because they serve as models, not just for
their time, but for any time; models of courage, defiance, self-assertion
and cultural identity. Her novels are epics because they have as their
subject the rebirth and regeneration of a people. Maillet writes:

I realized I was writing a kind of epic poem in the Acadian fashion.

Pélagie is a reverse epic poem, and I love to do things upside down.

46

f’.

o
Maillet

to mair

 

 

 

The epic poem is the story of a people in the minute which
precedes its birth. The return of Pélagie represents the 10 years
during which it was going to be decided whether l'Acadie was going
to go on existing or not. The cart would decide . . . So Pélagie, in
spite of me, became an epic in the sense that it tells of the story of
the boat-people of that time, but it is a reverse one because it tells

of their return. (Jacquot, Story-Teller 95)

Maillet's stories of Acadia offer an epic view of a people and their struggle
to maintain an identity. Her works forge a new myth, the "mythe de
l'Acadie héro'ique" (Gallant, Mythe 78), and her characters are the giants
of these myths.

If Pelagic is the legendary folk hero who brings her people back
from exile, and Mlle Cormier represents the real plight of more modern
Acadians, driven from their homeland not by hostile British forces, but
by economic necessity and pride, then it could be argued that the two
novels are two incarnations of the same story. Perhaps the true heroine
of these, and indeed of all Maillet’s works is Acadia herself, who has
braved the many dangers and fortunes of history to continue, if not as a
nation, then as a people. And the moral for this society is perhaps, as
Maillet herself puts it, that "11 y a une culture, dans le sens le plus
general de culture, qui est l'expression de soi." (Smith, 256) The future
of Acadian culture lies in the continuing expression of 9% its myths

and legends and its experiences of modern life.

47

than nr
are our
dEport
Women
mm p1

refusa'i

 

Helene
CiXOUS
and Lb

Count.“

 

 

Chapter 2

BEFORE THE LAW: OUTLAWS AND REBELS

Ecrire, pour moi, c 'est rendre les impossibles, possibles.
Antonine Maillet

Antonine Maillet’s novels are filled with adventures, and more often
than not, the heroes of these adventures are women. Her protagonists
are outlaws: rumrunners during Prohibition, women who defy
deportation and brave revolution to return to their homeland, and rebels:
women who challenge tradition and social norms to find and define their
own place in the world. One characteristic all these women share is their
refusal to let outside influences control their lives. This is precisely what
Helene Cixous would term a "feminine response." In "Extreme Fidelity,"
Cixous differentiates between what she labels the "masculine response"
and the "feminine response," by likening the masculine response to the
countryman in Kaflra’s short story "Before the Law" and the feminine to
Eve in the Garden of Eden. When faced with "the law," Kaflca's
countryman "accept[s] its supremacy, interiorizing the threat of
castration to remain circumscribed within its shadow" (Sellers 1). Eve,
on the other hand, will "follow her desire and [refuse] to grant the law its
power" (Sellers 2). The heroines of Maillet's novels choose the path of
Eve, challenging the power of the "law" and reaching for the forbidden

fruit.

48

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er

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stands
represe
as WILI‘.
toward
ehaller.
ill-LII I“

(118163:

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people

 

In this paradigm, three principal forces form the story. There is
the unknowable law, the challenger, and the prohibiting word that
stands between them. The "law," nebulous entity that it is, is
represented by guardians, or gatekeepers, as in Kafka's fable. Although,
as with Kafka's story, there may be many guardians reaching back
toward the law, often there is one immediate gatekeeper whom the
challenger must face. The challenger, like Kafka's protagonist, comes
with his or her own aspirations to the law. And because the "law" is
distant and "unknowable," he must face not the law itself, but the
guardian(s). And between the guardian(s) and the challenger(s) stands
the prohibiting word, the interdiction that would keep the
countryman /challenger from penetrating the space of the law.

But what is the law? In his analysis of Kaflta's short story, Derrida
discovers that

one cannot be concerned with the law, or with the law of laws,

either at close range or at a distance, without asking where it has

its place and whence it comes. I say ‘the law of laws’ because in

Kaflta's story one does not know what kind of law is at issue--

moral, judicial, political, natural, etc. What remains concealed and

invisible in each law is thus presumably the law itself, that which

makes laws of these laws, the being-law of these laws. (Law 191)
In Maillet's novels the "law" comes from three main sources: the
government, the Church, and society. From each of these "institutions,"
reminiscent of Derrida's unknowable law, emanate the strictures,
prohibitions and regulations that direct and control the actions of the

people.

49

the pee
"forbid:
copra:
of resp
intern;
ftp-res:
as well

Maillet

Wot-d.
SII a:

 

But these institutions are nebulous entities, especially for the
people of the small coastal villages of Acadia. And so, just as in Kafka's
story, the law comes to the countryman through its representative, the
gatekeeper, in Maillet's novels, too, the distant, detached "law" comes to
the people only through intermediaries. According to Derrida, the law
"forbids itself and contradicts itself by placing the man in its own
contradiction: one cannot reach the law, and in order to have a rapport
of respect with it, one must not have a rapport with the law, one must
interrupt the relation. One must enter into relation only with the law's
representatives, its examples, its guardians. And these are interrupters
as well as messengers" (Law 203-4). The guardians of the law in
Maillet's novels are the police and customs officers, representing the
government, the clergy, representing morality, and the self-righteous old
women who take it upon themselves to uphold and defend the mores and
conventions of society (not to mention the Church).

These then, are the gatekeepers or intermediaries, whom the
Maillet's heroines must fight in their battle to subvert the power of the
law. And their weapon of choice for the assault is language, for, as
Cixous points out, "it is not the body that prevents the man from the
country from going through the door, but the word. The law is but a
word, not a real being..." (Readings, 14). This privileging of the word
situates the struggle for power on a linguistic level. Whoever controls the
word has power over others. We see this time and again in Maillet's
novels as not just the protagonists, but entire communities set out to
outwit and confound representatives of the law with linguistic contests.
From these scenes come a sense of the liberating joy/ pleasure derived

from linguistically outwitting a foe. In many of Maillet's novels, we

50

 

 

 

witness the struggle between these guardians of the law, and those
characters who dare to come before the law, ready to eat of the forbidden
fruit.

In Pélagie-la-Charrette, the journey past the law to the forbidden
fruit of paradise is inscribed on a physical level. Confronted by military
and governmental forces, deported and exiled, Pélagie does not remain
passive 'before' the law. Rather, she undertakes for herself, her family
and others, the literal and physical journey past many 'gates', to return
to the paradise from which she was torn. True, "elle est rentrée au pays
par la porte arriere et sur la pointe des pieds" (PLC 9), but she
nonetheless manages to survive drought, famine, and winter to return to
Acadia, "1e pays, le retour au paradis perdu" (PLC 17). Besides the many
roadblocks in nature, Pélagie must also deal with many people who
would keep her from her paradise. Defying "Lawrence, Winslow,
Monckton, et le roi George dans toute sa joyeuse majesté, des lambeaux
d'Acadie du Sud remontaient, téte entre les jambes, piaffant, suant, et
soufflant des deux narines, une Amérique qui n'entendit méme pas
grincer les essieux de la charrette..." (PLC 65). The authority and power
of heads of state is not enough to constrain Pelagic. They may try to
deny her her homeland, but she disregards their interdiction as she
disregarded her deportation. She, unlike Kaflra's countryman, will not
remain passive before the prohibition of the guardian of the Law. The
journey begins with Pélagie's cry: "Pas moi! je planterai aucun des miens
en terre étrangére" (PLC 15) and is supported along the way with the
refrain of a folk song to which the group joyfully adds "et merde au roi
d'Angleterre". There is a distancing irony about these recurring words

that reverse the power structure, reducing the king and elevating the

51

OPPOsi
and [h
{hemp}
perhal
their Qt
3113101
Stones

fad-16p

 

people. These words make the king seem ridiculous, and empower the
people, who are able to flaunt the king's authority. The king, whom they
have never met, has tried to impose his will on them, and they will have
none of it.

In Charleston and in Maryland, Pélagie and her group encounter
actual representatives of the law when they are thrown in jail for stealing
one of their own who was being sold as a slave, and the slave that was
chained to her. In escaping from the jail, the band makes use of their
skills from the forge to unchain themselves, of their knowledge of herbs
and potions to get the jailers drunk, but most importantly, of their gift of
language to make their way out of prison:

les geoliers, méme armés d'arquebuses et de mousquets, n'étaient

pas de taille a lutter contre le violon des Basques, l'élixir de Celina

et le conte fantastique de Bélonie. Et rendus a l'anneau d'or, [the
end of the story], ils ouvrirent toutes grandes les portes cocheres,
apres avoir fait passer 1e peuple de la charrette par les couloirs et

labyrinthes puants de la prison de Charleston. (PLC 83)

In this episode, we see that the metaphysical powers of the music, potion
and tale have overcome the physical restrictions of the law. The
opposition between the physical and the metaphysical is obliterated here,
and the verb "rendre," literally meaning a physical move, here takes on a
metaphysical sense. Thus it is the word which is triumphant. It is,
perhaps, not accidental that the Acadians choose storytelling as their
method of revolt, since "it could be said that all plots are plots against
authority, that authority creates the scene of its own destruction, that all
stories necessarily recount by their very existence the subversion of the

father, of the gods, of consciousness, of order, of expectations, or of

52

meaning" (Johnson 88). Stories, fiction, subversively challenge
traditional constructs or beliefs by offering alternate explanations,
different "realities". In this area, the characters in Maillet's novels--and
not just the women--excel.

Another character in Pélagie-la-Charrette who uses words to free
himself from authority is the other hero of the story, sea captain
Beausoleil Broussard. He risks his life and his stolen ship for deported
Acadians but he is caught by the British navy. Beausoleil, who is
"sorti...d'un peuple de chroniqueurs" (PLC 201), uses a story (and some
whisky) to escape the British navy, and the punishment that awaits him.
Like the "chroniqueurs," Beausoleil is writing history, but with the flavor
of his whisky, he provides a different version of "history." He convinces
the British captain that he and his men were the British crew of the boat
originally named Pembroke, who had been stranded in the Arctic so
suddenly that their words froze coming out of their mouths. And it was
not until years later that a warm wind unfroze their boat, and blew words
back into their mouths, unfortunately this wind had come from France,
so the words it brought were French! The captain, overcome by this
fantastic story, and by the shock of seeing a "phantom" vessel, lets
Beausoleil and his crew go free. Thus it is clear that the Acadian men as
well as the women of Maillet's novels are imbued with the desire to
subvert and challenge the law. It is also clear that law can easily be
subverted and that words are the tools to perform this subversion. The
law complies with the demands of stories, making the law ridiculous.

Like Beausoleil, Pélagie and her band manage to circumvent many
gatekeepers of the law. In fact, they even manage to pass unscathed

through the American revolutionary war on their journey back. The two

53

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of 2

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Sat-j

the ,

 

fest

Merv
OI if

30m

 

constants in their journey are Pélagie's steadfast refusal to bow to
anyone or anything that stands between her and the object of her quest
for life and freedom, and the echoing refrain of their improvised song, "et
merde au roi d'Angleterre."36

Unlike Pélagie, La Piroune and La Bessoune, the main characters
of Maillet's novel Les Cordes de Bois, undertake no physical journey or
quest, yet they nonetheless share her refusal to accept the prohibitions
of the "law". The "law" La Piroune and La Bessoune defy is both moral
and social, but the Mercenaire clan, the outlaw family of La Piroune and
her illegitimate daughter, La Bessoune prove themselves worthy
adversaries.37 "La nouvelle population des Cordes-de-Bois . . . était
composée exclusivement de hors-la-loi: de ces hors-la-loi des années de
la crise qui mangeaient dans les poubelles et dormaient dans les granges
ou les wagons de marchandises. Comment la loi pouvait-elle s'attaquer a
des hors-la-loi?" (CdB 125). Whether shockingly shortening their skirts,
taking first communion without permission, or refusing to be confirmed,
these women will bend to no laws or standards but their own. The new
priest in the parish, in fact, compares them to Eve, "renoncant au
paradis terrestre pour une pomme" (CdB 174). This is quite a negative
moral judgement, coming from a priest; in comparing them to Eve, he is
saying that not only are they "sinners," but they are also responsible for
the fall of others. Like Eve, and like Kafka's countryman, they will not
rest passively before the interdictions of the law.

Since the law that they confront is both moral and social, the
Mercenaires must confront more than one gatekeeper. The first guardian
of moral law is, of course, the Church, a powerful presence in Acadian

society:

54

C01
COI

hol

pot

law

WOI’

gua

of]:

 

 

 

on s'est toujours montré plus féru de justice religieuse que

civile au pays des c6tes. Sans doute parce qu'on payait plus

de dime que d'impots. Sfirement aussi parce que l'autorité

la plus proche, la plus visible, restait celle de l'Eglise. Et

puis la justice des hommes, on peut la contourner, la

déjouer, mais qui oserait se défiler devant l'oeil de Dieu?

---Les Cordes-de-Bois. (CdB 162)
The Mercenaires dare to challenge God himself, but they do it through a
constant battle with his intermediaries, the priests since, like Kaflca's
countryman, they must deal with the gatekeepers of the law. And they
confront these guardians despite the conventions of society that would
hold them apart: "Taise-toi. On ne parle pas des prétres, au pays. Et
pour étre sur qu'on n'en parlera pas en mal, on rien parle pas du tout.
C'est un sujet interdit" (CdB 202). As the eyes, or representatives of the
law, the priests are kept safe from assaults via language (the challenging
word), by societal convention that upholds the Church "law."

A more formidable opponent is Ma Tante-la-Veuve, a self-appointed
guardian of both moral and social law. Her name, in fact, grounds her
firmly in the patriarchal system of family and society. She has no name
of her own; she is defined in relation to others, especially in relation to
her (dead) husband. She is an aunt and a widow, and she defends with
all her resources the codes of the patriarchal society that defines her.
But although Ma Tante-la-Veuve exercises a strong influence on her
relatives, and the rest of the village, she cannot seem to touch Les
Cordes-de-Bois. These heroines act on the pleasure principle, and they
live in the here and now. They refuse to be constrained by external

standards of morality. "For Ma-Tante-la-Veuve, the sexual behavior of

55

the s
the d
SUar

the .\

more

 

Unti'
the 1

Pro;

 

 

the Mercenaires is a thing apart, a sin-in-itself, a violation of all the old
guilt-inducing strictures of Church and polite society. For la Piroune
and la Bessoune, however, sexual gratification is not an avenue into
which they are reluctantly channeled for want of freedom, but a perfectly
natural manifestation of the freedom they already joyously feel"
(Fitzpatrick, Epic 147). And each of these parties (the Mercenaires and
Ma Tante-la-Veuve) is absolutely incapable of submitting to the alien
codes of the other.

For Ma Tante-la-Veuve, les Cordes-de-Bois and the boat docks are
the sources of everything bad in the village. They represent, respectively,
the disrespect of the laws she makes and upholds, and the influence of
strangers who do not (necessarily) maintain these same priorities. When
the Mercenaires show themselves more charitable than anyone else in
the village by taking on all the poor outcasts without asking for any
money, Ma Tante-la-Veuve takes it as an affront to her morality, as is
everything the Cordes-de-Bois clan does. And yet they do not do this to
challenge Ma Tante-la-Veuve, or even the priests; it is their natural
instinct to have pity on the poor people being auctioned off. In fact, the
Mercenaires, being already "hors-la-loi," confront the representatives of
moral and social law only when these representatives attack them. And
until they are attacked, they blithely go on their way, not caring when
the vicar finds them on the docks soliciting sailors, and paying no heed
to Ma Tante-la-Veuve as they carry their bootleg liquor through her
property:

Ma Tante-la-Veuve les a vus enfiler son barachois, tous les deux,

les bras charges de tout ce qu'il y avait a l'époque de plus défendu

56

Ii‘ea

 

bur
[he .-

Poi:

par la loi, la religion, les convenances et la morale personnelle de

Ma Tante-la-Veuve elle-meme. (CdB 266)

The bootleg liquor takes on the epic proportions of Eve's apple, literally
"prohibited" by society and religion alike. And the guardian of these
prohibitions is Ma Tante-la-Veuve, whose personal moral code is even
more righteous than those she draws from (religion and society). Unlike
Kaflea's countryman, the Mercenaires have charged right past the
gatekeeper, without a moment's hesitation.

The battle between the Mercenaires and the priests and Ma-Tante-
la-Veuve will also be waged on a linguistic plane. "Les Cordes-de-Bois
auraient volontiers inventé des sons nouveaux et ajouté des lettres a
l'alphabet si cela avait pu envenimer d'avantage leurs relations avec le
Pont ou avec le pays" (CdB 16). Thus language will be one of the main
weapons of the Cordes-de-Bois clan. And it is quickly seen just what
type of language these characters control; from the very beginning of the
novel, swear words (two in particular) are posited as the domain, the
possessions or inheritance of the Mercenaires: "il est resté aux
Mercenaire deux mots, prononcés a l'original, transmis fidelement depuis
1830, et gardés comme des bijoux de famille: 'nenni' et 'tordieu'" (CdB
23). Thus it is not just language in general, or any average words that
the Cordes-de—Bois control. This language that they control is
subversive, "immoral," it runs counter to the moral conventions of the
Church, and it represents the freedom of the Mercenaires from societal
and religious restrictions. The parish priest tries in turn to control it,
but by prohibiting these words, he provokes a rebellion not because of
the prohibition, "les defenses du curé ne les avaient jamais touches a

point," but because by pronouncing these "sacred" words, he has stolen

57

what was theirs. La Piroune retaliates by sitting on the buoy in the bay,
making its bell ring in time with the church bells, and perverting a holy
sound with a very earthly one.

Moreover, one of the Mercenaires, Patience, attacks social order,
and even the church by sending "valentines", witty and cutting poems,
often accompanied by caricatures. Though ostensibly anonymous, (like
the Law), everyone knows their source; they are, contradictorily "les
lettres anonymes de Patience" (CdB 56). These poems subvert the
standards, facades and power structures on which morality is based, and
they will not be silenced. "Car les poemes anonymes que la pauvre
victime [Ma Tante-la-Veuve] se hatait de brfiler avec ses écopeaux,
Patience en affichait des copies sur les poteaux de telephone et jusque
dans le portique de l'église _e_nt_re les annonces paroissales" (CdB 56). By
mocking the so called (and self appointed) model citizens, unsettling the
guardians of the law, these poems upset social order--literally squeezing
into the rightful place of church announcements--and give the "people"
(especially in the forge) a chance to laugh at some of the faults and
inconsistencies of "moral" people, drawing them into complicity.

The linguistic power of the Mercenaires is such that the narrator
claims that "les heuh de la Bessoune m'en apprenaient autant sur la
petite histoire du pays que toutes les archives conservées dans les voutes
du Parlement de Halifax" (CdB 157).38 Thus simply by their laugh or a
single swear word, the Cordes-de-Bois women shake loose the
constraints of church and society--or in Kaflea's terms, the Law.

Mariaagélas and Crache-a-Pic, heroines of the novels which bear
their names, [though the English version of Crache-a—Pic is entitled The

Devil is Loose] incarnate very clearly the rebellious spirit of Eve. The

58

 

 

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conflict with the law culminates in these two characters who most openly
defy it on all levels. In their chosen profession of bootlegging, they not
only defy the law of the land (prohibition), they also defy societal norms
by breaking into a traditionally male occupation-—two traditionally male
occupations, in fact, sailing and bootlegging. "Mariaagélas éviterait les
shops et la prison. . . Elle se sentait 1a vocation d'un homme,
Mariaagélas, quelque chose comme un pirate" (MG 26). And both, in the
course of their adventures / adventurous lives, manage not only to
challenge moral interdictions, but to use them to their advantage against
others.

The moral, social and judicial laws that they cheerfully flaunt come
to them through many intermediaries. The laws governing their trade,
fishing (poaching) and bootlegging come from a distant government:

Les c6tes de l'Atlantique se sentaient tres loin du pays. . .

Mais les dunes et la baie, ou les Gélas avaient planté leur

cabane, étaient trop a l'écart pour vivre au rythme du pays. .

. D'ailleurs la plupart des lois étaient faites pour les gros, les

citadins ou les dirigeants du pays. Les Gélas et leurs voising

n'étant rien de tout ca, ils se passaient de lois... (MG 33)

In fact, the law comes to the villagers only through its representatives,
the constables (Martial and Quicksilver) and the 'customs' officers-
Ferdinand. Maria and Crache-a—Pic beat these (sometimes) worthy
adversaries, who either leave town, defeated, or die at the end of the
novels. Thus the clashes between Maria and Crache-a-Pic best exemplify
the conflict with the law, as in Kaflca's story of inevitable mediation. Like
the gatekeeper in Kafka's story, they are only the tip of the iceberg, the

first and most visible of a long line of keepers stretching back to the

59

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nebulous law. Yet as Maria and Crache-a-Pic discover, if they can get
past these primary guardians of the law, they have practically free rein.
So the "Law" seems to be only as strong as its intermediaries, or
gatekeepers.

The purveyors or gatekeepers of " social law" take the form of self-
righteous, "upstanding" citizens, in both cases, old widows. The fact that
these women are identified, even named as widows (a word that defines
them in relation to men) posits them as part of the traditional,
patriarchal system. And they are in fact, defenders of this system.
Marie-Pet and La Veuve a Calixte take it upon themselves if not to
control, at least to censure Maria and Crache-a-Pic. They act as the
voice of the law, expounding on what is proper and as the enforcers,
keeping (or attempting to keep) tabs on the illicit actions of their
adversaries: "la veuve a Calixte était une femme de métier. La garde des
vertus et la conservation des coutumes et bonnes moeurs a l'échelon
paroissial occupaient toute son ame et commandaient toutes ses actions.
Allez résister a ca!" (MG 37). Oddly enough, the established bootleggers,
outlaws themselves, also function as gatekeepers of traditional social
order, since Maria and Crache-a-Pic must outwit them to break into the
"male" domain of rum running. But this they do quite naturally.
Bootlegger Casse-cou feared the devil alone, "pourtant i1 aurait bien du
savoir que le diable lui-meme n'aurait pu rivaliser d'audace et
d'ingéniosité avec Mariaagélas; et qu'une femme qui a eu raison d'une
paroisse, et de la veuve a Calixte, ne saurait se trouver au dépourvu
devant des douaniers" (MG 138). The battles of these almost equals,

Marie-Pet v. Crache-a-Pic and Mariaagélas v. a Veuve-a-Calixte center on

60

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a struggle for knowledge, a battle to see who can interpret the signs, and
"read" the other, and become more powerful through the struggle.

In Crache—a-Pic the linguistic battle for power is particularly
evident. The battle for bootlegging business hinges on a system of codes.
Crache-a-Pic not only steals Dieudonné's39 code, (obviously the name
Dieudonné is not randomly chosen) she also makes up her own,
changing it whenever it is discovered. She defies both the church and
her rival bootleggers, stealing their idea, and disguising herself as a nun
by the ridiculous name of "Soeur Marie de la Sainte-Crache de l'Enfant—
Jesus," mocking both the institution of religion, and those who are silly
enough to believe her story. And in the culmination of all the power
struggles, at the trial of Dieudonné for killing the constable, (situated at
the end of the novel), it is she who exerts the supreme authority, holding
power over words, and thus over Dieudonné's life: "Elle a dit sa phrase.
Un sujet, un verbe, un complement. C'est toute la salle d'audience qui
est maintenant frappée de stupeur" (CAP 362). Crache-a-Pic instead
chooses to use her power to banish her last adversary from the land,
triumphing finally over the "law". The whole town does, in fact, come
together to baffle the poor English-speaking judge--"le seul unilingue de
la cour," (CAP 332)--and confound the law:

. . . la verité, toute la vérité, rien que la vérité, que Dieu me vienne

en aide pour une fois.

----- Silence! recommencez! la formule, rien de plus...

----- Jurez!“0

Et Melchior jura.

----- Jesus-Christ du bon Dieu!

61

 

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La salle vrombit sous un formidable éclat. Le juge comprit et se

carra dans son siege. (343)

The irony of this linguistic convolution of the law reaches its peak at the
end of the trial when the foreman announces its verdict, "Il est mort de la
main de quelqu'un" (CAP 368), and the judge is forced to call a mistrial.
But it is Crache-a-Pic who has the last word, and who exercises the final
power—-she holds the power of her word over Dieudonné, forcing him to
leave town, and if he ever dares to come back, she can defeat him again
by simply letting the true story be known:

Vous allez partir, quitter 1e pays, sans rien emporter. Que ca

seye bien clair, Dieudonné, vous faudra plus jamais remettre

les pieds au pays des cétes. Parce que ce jour-la, Ti-Louis le

Siffleux crierait par toutes les buttes et les dunes la phrase

qui est restée collée a son tympan d'oreille: Dieudonné, t'as

tue Vif-Argent! Dieudonné, t'as tué Vif-Argent! (CAP 369)
Crache-a-Pic is the arbiter of the word, her own and Ti-Louis,’ and thus
has the power over Dieudonné and his life.

The guardians of the "law" are also often the rich (or the more well-
off) or in the world of Acadian coastal villages "les gens d'en haut" who
attempt to keep the poorer "gens d'en bas" in their proper place. The
struggle between these purveyors of social "law" and the challengers, who
would disregard it, takes on epic proportions in the novel Don L'Orignal.
In this novel, the villagers, (respectable people like "the barber, the
milliner, the merchant, the schoolmaster, the banker..." and the
lighthouse keeper) led by the mayor (a woman), find their respectable
village threatened by the encroachment of the "Flea Islanders," the people

of the little hay island which

62

prit rapidement cles proportions importantes. Car rien ne se

peuple aussi vite qu'une terre isolée, ingrate et négligée de

tous, les bonnes terres demeurant de droit le lot des gens de

classe, de cette race rare et clairsemée qu'on appelle si

scrupuleusement l'élite. En moins de temps donc qu'il en

fallait pour édifier une famille honorable sur la terre ferme,

la terre molle de l'ile avait engendre un peuple. (DO 13)

These lower class islanders "n'avaient qu'une moitié de mer a franchir
pour débarquer sur la terre ferme. Aussi 1a terre ferme se sentait-elle
constamment menacée" (DO 13) The battle between the Flea Islanders
and the villagers will take on epic proportions.

Although the respectable villagers feel threatened when the Flea
Islanders want to e_nt§; their village end enter into / engage in commerce
with them (buy/take some molasses) the sharpest threat comes when a
lowly Flea Islander, Citrouille, falls in love with the respectable
merchant's daughter. The boundaries, the limits of respectability are
being threatened. The mainlanders will not gig: the islanders the
coveted barrel of molasses that would go against the social law of which
they must remain guardians. Yet when Citrouille suggests working for it
"travaillons pour manger. Et pis si le poisson vient a se tarir, allons
nous embaucher en face et gagnons-les, nos barils de mélasse" (DO 44),
the other Flea Islanders jump on him "pour lui expliquer
syllogistiquement que les gens de la terre ferme ne vendaient pas aux
gens des iles; que les iles pouvaient bien crever sans faire lever un
sourcil sur la terre ferme" (DO 45). They represent the interdictions of
law. Like Kaflca's and Derrida's "law" it is a nebulous, indeterminate law

which would keep people in their place. This particular law pertains to

63

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social order, or social conventions, class status, fashion trends, and
morality. The Flea Islanders are completely outside this "law" which is set
to keep them there (outside). This is not something they understand
they comprehend only that these things are forbidden them, a
prohibition that they cannot accept. Refusing to accept passively a law
that is not their own, they challenge both verbally and physically the
guardians of this law, the respectable villagers of the mainland.

Unlike Kaflca's gatekeeper, however, the mainlanders do not
remain passively verbal in their interdiction. Though it is in fact a battle
of wits (as with the countryman and the gatekeeper), the struggle
between the Flea Islanders and the Mainlanders is physical as well.
Rather than accept the interdiction of the guardians of the law, the Flea
Islanders, like so many of Maillet's characters challenge and even subvert
this "law."

The social "law" which the Flea Islanders confront is a rigid system
of conventions and mores which are controlled by the more respectable
citizens of the town:

L'organisation matérielle du plebiscite fut confiée au barbier et a la

chapeliere qui se partagerent le bourg: la rive gauche revenant a

l'habile homme, la droite a la digne et respectable dame du

magasin de chapeaux. On distribua a chaque domicile les
bulletins de vote accompagnes d'une abondante littérature sur les
démocraties modemes, la sauvegarde du foyer, la preparation au
mariage, 1a protection des animaux, les bienfaits de la sobriété,
l'art de parler en public,41 l'aide aux pays sous-développés. Tout
cela revu et augmenté par l'éloquence du barbier et l'exemple

vivant de la chapeliere. (DO 122)

54

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These respectable villagers are shocked by the Flea Islanders who lack all
these trappings of civilized social behavior, and yet want to mingle with
the "elite."

Nonetheless, as the irony of Maillet's words emphasizes, these
"guardians" of moral and social law are in fact people whose selfish petty
jealousies set them against each other and allow the Flea Islanders to
break into their ranks and kidnap Adeline. Because the milliner was
jealous of the Mayor's and of Adeline's hair, she deliberately set the
merchant and the Mayor against each other, thus dividing their forces.
The "uncivilized" Flea Islanders, however, manage to present a unified
front, remaining loyal to each other and to their island. The irony of
Maillet's words along with the irony of the actions of the mainlanders
show the guardians of the law and thus perhaps the law itself to be
essentially flawed and unworthy and, therefore, deserving to be
challenged.

On yet another level, Maillet is herself challenging the "law" with
the words of her novel. In her humorously satiric "epic" Don l'Orignal,
she portrays the challenge of the countryman (or the Flea Islander)
before the law as a holy war, and as usual in Maillet's works, the law is
not a worthy opponent, and "peasants" of Flea Island end up victorious.
When the holy war is over, and more than a quarter of a century has
passed, the "Flea Islanders" have in fact taken over the town that once
symbolized the social order which ostracized them. "1e bourg s'était
légerement déplacé. . . la population se concentrait désormais la-bas, au
bord de l'eau. . . toute cette elite avait fait place a une race de poilus et
de barbus, crachant dru et jurant par tous les diables" (DO 142). And

not only have the "Flea Islanders" (who have now become mainlanders)

65

penetrated the physical space of the law, they have also taken possession
of the "spirit of the law" for we find at the end that roles are completely
reversed and the "les barbares penetrerent dans les mysteres de la
civilisation: ils découvrirent le bridge, le corset, le plum-pudding, la
sauce aux champignons, l'étiquette de table, 1e protocole d'église, la
hiérarchie sociale, le jeu des forces diplomatiques et ministérielles"(DO
143).42 They have taken over the town and its social customs. And the
civilized mainlanders in turn have been relegated to the island where
they built beach homes, and where "le temps effaca pen a pen de leur
mémoire le souvenir des années grasses et de la civilisation" (DO 143).

At the end of the story we find that "lentement, le monde se
transforrnait, renversait les classes, policant les barbares et barbarisant
les peuples polices. Tout cela, par la faute d'une petite ile de foin et de
puces qui un jour avait surgi de la mer" (DO 144). Thus the story of Don
l'Orignal and his people the Flea Islanders shows clearly the result of
challenging "the law". It is to maintain order, class structure,
"civilization" that the strictures of the law exist, and once challenged, all
this is at risk. In Don l'Orignal, we see the far-reaching conclusions of a
people who would not remain passively before the law, but who instead
chose to challenge the prohibitions which confined them and to make
their own rules.

Simon 1e Métis, in the novel L'Oursiade, is yet another character
who makes his own rules and lives by his own code. Though
uncharacteristically male, this protagonist is, like La Piroune and La
Bessoune born outside of patriarchal law:

Enfant nature] de pere inconnu et de mere indigne, orphelin de

naissance, élevé a l'écart de la paroisse et a l'orée du bois, il avait

66

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grandi en marge. En marge meme des quatre ou cinq villages qui

jalonnent la Riviére. Il logeait--quoique ce mot-la résonnat faux

aux oreilles d'un sans-logis--tout en haut, presque a la source, ou
la riviere s'appelle encore un ruisseau, 1e Ruisseau-de-la-Riviere,

en l'occurrence. (O 12)

From the moment of his birth, Simon le Métis is set apart from society,
marginalized. Not only does he lack a father to instruct him in the "laws"
of society, he lacks even the n_arr;e of a father to legitimize him and give
him a place in this society. "La loi du sang, ce hors-la-loi l'a misc au
rang de toutes les autres. Une loi c'est une loi. Simon est né dehors" (O
12). Like Kafka's countryman, he finds himself outside the law. But
unlike the countryman, he seeks no admittance. He lives by his own
law.

As his name suggests, Simon le Métis is a hybrid, someone who
straddles two groups, and his dwelling place symbolizes this, perched as
it were on the border between the woods (or nature) and civilization
(society) yet not truly inhabiting either. More completely outside the law
than any other character, le Métis does not experience the same
confrontations with representatives of the law that we see in other
novels. He has no clashes with the clergy, though his protege Tit-Jean
(Titoume) refuses to be confirmed. When his friend and protector Ozite
dies, he and Titoume quietly bury her by the woods, next to the old bear
she had befriended, supplanting the religious ceremony for which they
substitute a coffin and a block of wood, so that people will think she had
a proper burial "pour forme, et pour faire taire les mauvaises langues qui
plus tard seraient capables de s'en prendre a Tit-Jean" (O 231).

Similarly, though he contests the traditional religious view of life and

67

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death by embracing a belief in reincarnation“, he does so without
disturbing or confronting anyone, though he does communicate it to
Titoume. He acknowledges the law of others, and for the sake of Titoume
does not openly flaunt it, but he does defy it quietly and confidently, just
as he acknowledges that there are laws which would imprison him for
killing Marguerite's "suborneur" but would do it anyway if he could.

The way in which he circumvents the "proper" burial of Ozite is
representative of his relationship with the law. Unlike that of some other
characters, le Métis' relationship with the law is not situated on a
linguistic plane; he wages no battles of words. Instead, the conflicts in
L'Oursiade are physical rather than verbal. Simon le Métis' actions
reveal his struggles far more eloquently than do his words. The principal
action of the novel centers on his fight to keep the bears alive, a cause
that contradicts his originally posited status as an unparalleled hunter,
"l'homme est un chasseur...pas n'importe quel chasseur. C'est 1e Métis.
L'Ours l'a reconnu. Et le Métis sait braquer, viser et tirer dans moins de
temps que ne peut frapper Revenant-Noir" (O 29). Yet this "hunter"
contests the primacy of man's position of power over bears, offering
instead the hypothesis that the men have no right to simply kill the
starving bears when they come into the open; rather hunting should be a
fair fight between two worthy adversaries. And Simon and his
companions, Ozite and Titoume work all through the autumn following
the forest fire to transport food into the woods so the bears will not
starve, especially after the village burns over the dump to keep the bears
from grazing there. They go agaist society, and against the laws of nature

to provide the bears with the sustenance they need to survive the winter.

68

Like the rebels Mariaagélas and Crache a Pic, he even defies
gender laws, eschewing the traditional role of the male in society. It
must be noted, however, that his maleness does endow him with a
freedom that would most likely not be available to a woman. Though he
is known as an unparalleled hunter, unlike Loup-Joseph, Grand-Galop
and the other men of the village, he sees animals as equals. He hunts in
his own way, following his own philosophy of hunting. Rather than
following the "beaten paths" like the other hunters, Simon 1e Métis makes
his own way:

1e Métis surgira comme d'accoutoume a l'improviste, en dehors des

sentiers battus par une douzaine des chasseurs respectueux des

lois. Mais le Métis ne s'est jamais soumis a une loi trop petite pour
lui. Rien ne 1e detournera de l'ours qu'il chasse depuis qu'il est au
monde, depuis une douzaine de saisons avec encore davantage de
rage et de ruse, comme s'il avait trouvé chez l'ours, l'ours seul, un

combat digne de lui. (O 52)

As his name and his fatherless status would suggest, he goes against the
traditional patriarchal society, challenging the view that man is superior
to animals and can therefore do whatever he wants, just as he challenges
the need to live in society. He shuns traditional schooling as he does
religion. In fact, in the end he finds he can more closely identify with the
bears than with the townspeople.

Simon le Métis not only resists the traditional patriarchal order, he
trains his protégé Tit-Jean to do the same. In fact, he deliberately
refuses to talk to Titoume about his origins, thus keeping him in the
dark, perpetuating the lack of roots, which frees him from

societal /patriarchal laws. Rather, he teaches Titoume to be marginal

69

and to make his own laws, rather than abiding by those of "civilized"
society. Unlike the other villagers who fear and hunt the bears, Titoume,
Simon and Ozite respect and befriend them. Titoume is learning how to
be part of the natural world and to not be governed by the rules of
others. He nonetheless wants to understand where he comes from, he
seeks knowledge of his parents, and of his place in the world. And in the
end, when Simon has come to understand what happened, and his
words have been loosed by alcohol, Tit-Jean finally learns what became
of his father. Instead of confirming his place in society, however, this
knowledge pulls him even further from mainstream society; his father,
who died before his birth, was reincarnated as a bear, Revenant Noir,
transgressing laws of religion, science, even life and death. Like 1e Métis,
Titoume belongs to two worlds. Thanks to his parents as well as to those
who raised him, Tit-Jean is truly an "hors-la-loi."

Another of Maillet’s characters, Radi, is also an "hors-la-loi." Two
novels, On a mangé la dune and Le Chemin Saint-Jacques44 both feature
the young heroine Radi. Although Radi is born into a respectable family
from the right side of town, she rebels against all the forces that would
limit her. Le Chemin Saint-Jacques takes up essentially the same story
as On a mangé la dune, but whereas the latter tells only the story of part
of Radi's childhood, the former spans almost her whole life. In le Chemin
Saint-Jacques, (as well as in On a mange la dune,) both young Radi‘“5 and
the more mature Radegonde encounter many guardians of the law.

The "law" which Radi confronts in Le Chemin Saint-Jacques and On
a mangé la dune is a paternal one--both literally and figuratively, since it
comes not only from her father, but also from a patriarchal society--

stemming from the societal norms or conventions which denied many

70

opportunities to girls. Radi felt this keenly, and raged /balked at the
'powers' that bestowed all the privileges on the boys. The guardians of
the social and paternal law which Radi must confront are society as a
whole, and in particular her teachers and her own family. Her teachers,
parents and even her brothers and sisters enforce the strictures that
would confine Radi to girls’ roles. She can't throw stones, can't join the
scouts and go camping, and when Arbor Day comes each year she must
stay inside with the other girls cleaning the school while the boys are free
to go outside and plant trees. And as she finds out, the society in which
she lives is doubly restrictive; it restricts her both as a female and as a
francophone.

In a patriarchal society that limits the options given to women, the
people who provide Radi with the means of challenging and overcoming
these boundaries are women; the aunt and mere Jeanne de Valois offer
her an education without which she cannot get ahead; mademoiselle
Paris tells her about her ancestors who built Notre Dame, introduces her
to Madame Primeau, and helps open to her the libraries of Paris; Aliénor
encourages her to dig into the mysteries of oral history; and even before
that it is Sophie who first encourages Radi, "T'en fais pas, toi, t'es nee
juste a temps. Puis la guerre ne va pas durer toujours et va sfirement
changer beaucoup de choses... beaucoup de mentalités" (CSJ 174),
assuring her sister that life will offer her more opportunities than Sophie
had. And in the end, it is Sophie who, continually asking to hear the
story of Radegonde's travels, incites her to bring it all together. And
Radegonde, the adult, profits from the struggles of the young and
adolescent Radi, who has challenged the guardians of paternal law and

has broken free.

71

It is not insignificant that Radegonde's struggle should culminate
by her writing a novel, since from childhood Radi had fought to be able to
express herself in her own language, and had found comfort and hope in
the words of other writers. Although Radi glimpses this "country of
words" when she is but a child listening to stories, it is Radegonde who,
after losing her mother and father, and who ancestrally has been
deprived of her country truly enters the "country of words" in the novels
she writes.46 While still very young, Radi realizes that her key to
escaping or circumventing the doubly restrictive society in which she
lives, is education. Words, stories, and writing will be her escape, and to
achieve this she must have an education, something usually denied to
girls. But thanks to women Radi does finally receive this education. Her
mother's death "liberates" both Radi and Celine from the household, and
two nuns, one named Mere Jeanne de Valois, (with the possible
intervention of Radi's sister Genevieve) offer these two young girls the
opportunity to go study "un cours classique" in Memramcook.

If it is her mother's death that affords Radi the opportunity to leave
home and get an education, it is her sister Sophie's impending death that
spurs the creation of her novel. Thus death is a positive, creative force in
the novel. "My voice repels death; my death; your death; my voice is my
other. I write and you are not dead. The other is safe if I write."

(Cixous, Coming 4). It is in just this way that Radegonde pushes back
Sophie's death, she, like Scheherezade spins out the tale of her journeys,
postponing the tale Sophie continually asks for until the last possible
moment, until her time is up and the story must yield to a greater power,
death. But while Radegonde's voice / story can in the end do nothing to

stop Sophie's death, it does successfully keep in abeyance the death of

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two significant "others", Radi, and Acadia. "Radegonde" is writing for the
child Radi who stood before her teacher and proclaimed "J'écrirai, en
francais!" (CSJ 212) and is also the voice of Acadia and her people, not
quite silenced, even after more than a hundred years without an actual
"country", a hundred years of being forced to use words which were not
their own.

"We move away from and approach Death, our double mother,
through writing, because writing is always first a way of not being able to
go through with mourning for death. And I say: you must have been
loved by death to be born and move on to writing. The condition on
which beginning to write becomes necessary--(and)--possible: losing
everything, having once lost everything" (Cixous, Coming 38). Young
Radi may cry "Je veux écrire en francais!" but it is not until she has truly
lost almost everything that she can come to writing. She must lose her
family, her home, leave her friends and her familiar places, leave even
her non-existent country before she can find her writing voice, for
"writing begins without you, without 1, without law, without knowing,
without light, without hope, without bonds, without anyone close to you"
(Cixous, Coming 38). Thus it takes Radi some time before she can admit
and accept her vocation:

C'est ainsi que plutét que d'avouer ouvertement mes

ambitions d'écriture--comme j'avais su le faire si

spontanément a douze ans devant une classe ébarrouie et

une maitresse scandalisée--je justifiai mes fouilles sous 1e

lache et couteux prétexte d'une these de doctorat en

lettres...les géants me servaient de couverture... (CSJ 260)

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It is only when Radegonde connects with Radi, the young rebel, "mon
double, ma muse, ma guide intrepide" (CSJ 286), that she can find her
power over the written word, the same power that defiant Radi had over
the spoken word as a child.

As a young woman, Radi faces many challenges from society, for as
Helene Cixous maintains:

'woman,’ well imprinted with the sociocultural heritage, has

been inculcated with the spirit of 'restraint.’ She is in fact

"restraint" itself, socially. (Or, if you wish, the repressed, the

controlled one.) She restrains herself, and is restrained, by a

thousand bonds, hitched, conjugated, strings, chains, nets,

leash, feeding dish, network of servile, reassuring

dependencies. She is defined by her connections, wife of, as

she was daughter of, from hand to hand, from bed to niche,

from niche to household, woman as the complement-of-

name has much to do to cut free. (Coming 40)
But like many of Maillet's heroines, Radi cut the bonds, strings chains
that would define her socially. She will not be forced into one of the
three roles her sister Céline tells her she has to choose. Céline is so
young she does not even know the words she mispronounces, but she
has already figured out the restrictions society places on women: "T'as
trois choix, qu'elle fit...Trois, répéte Céline: mere de famille, willy-gieuse,
vieille fille" (CSJ 33). At a very young age, Céline already realizes what
Radi does not realize, and refuses to accept: that society offers very few
options to women. But Radi will not be content with these choices: "Je
choisis le quatrieme, qu'elle fait...Ca exisse" (CSJ 33). Like Mariaagélas,

Crache-a-Pic, La Piroune and La Bessoune, she will make her own way in

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the world, choosing her own profession, not conforming to society's
choices. But unlike some of Maillet's characters, including Mariaagélas
and her "mentor," la Vieille Lamant, Radi is not defined (nominally at
least) in relationship to a man, husband or father. Mariaagélas's name
links her inextricably with her father, Gélas, and since she will never
marry, she will always be "daughter of' in society's eyes. Likewise la
Veuve a Calixte and la Vieille Lamant are defined forever by their dead
husbands-~the midwife, friend and mentor to Radi is the "veuve en
demier veuvage d'un dénommé Lamant Cormier qui n'avait laissé a sa
femme pour tout heritage qu'un prénom qui la définissait de la téte au
pieds" (CSJ 42). This is what Radi, or perhaps more accurately
Radegonde rejects, she refuses to be defined, chooses her own way "le
quatriéme". And like so many of Maillet's characters, it is through
stories, writing that she circumvents the "law."

For Radi, the guardians of the law are largely teachers, her parents
(to some extent) and society as a whole. Interestingly enough, it is Radi's
mother more even than her father who represents the strictures of
tradition. Her mother, then, has internalized the law and it is she who
ultimately keeps Sophie from leaving with Gerry, an anglophone
Protestant, to join the army nursing corps. And it is after the mother's
death that Radi is liberated from her household, and given an education,
the key to further flights. Her father, terminally ill early on in the novel,
is not a strong opponent. In fact, Radegonde gets a blessing from him
before she leaves for Europe to embark on her literary journey.

Rather than repressing her the Church offers her two important
opportunities--one disappointing and one fruitful. Young Radi is excited

when the parish priest comes to school and asks for all the girls to be let

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out to join a special "crusade," traditionally a man's undertaking. For
the first time, the girls, and not the boys are the beneficiaries of special
opportunities. But Radi's excitement is short-lived, not only because she
realizes that this crusade will not truly measure up to the excitement
and adventure of a boy scout camping trip, but also because she comes
face to face with the other side of exclusivity--Helen cannot take part,
because she is Protestant. But as this disappointment fades away,
another opportunity takes its place--the opportunity to continue her
education, once again offered through the Church. This time, perhaps
because it comes at the hands of women, the experiment is successful
and Radi finds not only an education, but also her life.

Unlike Kafka's countryman, Radi has many guides on her journey
past the law. One of Radi's first teachers is la vieille Lamant, the old
midwife who delivered her. La vieille Lamant teaches Radi to "lire entre
les lignes"/ "lire a l'envers," in other words, to see things as they could be
not as they are. Thus it is from a woman that Radi first learns to
challenge, to question. And it is reality itself which she is questioning.
How then can she passively accept the dicta of a society that would deny
her choices, deny her self-expression? Thus at a very early age, Radi
chooses the path of Eve. She cannot be content with the outside--of the
law or the apple--she wants to taste the inside. The role models
bequeathed to her in the books her brother gives her are Joan of Arc and
Evangeline. In Evangeline she finds an expression of the beauty and
pride of being Acadian, but Evangeline is an unsatisfying heroine; she is
passive and plaintive, and she does not fight back as Radi's mother
would have: "sa mere ne se serait pas laissé déporter ni brfiler par

personne, elle se serais défendue a coups de hache, a coups de gueule..."

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(CSJ 232). In Joan of Arc, however, she sees a heroine who is willing to
fight for words, for the right to speak her own language. "Radi,
métamorphosée pour la premiere fois en Jeanne d'Arc, avait l'intention
de les bouter tous, du premier au demier, libérant sa race et sa langue a
jamais" (CSJ 76). Like Joan of Arc, she fights successfully for the
maintenance of her language, but unlike Joan of Arc, Radi does not end
up burned at the stake. Thus Radi has overturned another legend,
another law, reversed history in a way, a history which was made and
written by men.

Along the way, she chooses / seeks companions who also challenge
the order of things, who help and encourage her quest to see the other
side. Young Radi finds a friend in Katchou, a girl from the wrong side of
the tracks:

Radi, a l'insu de sa famille et de l'école, se lia d'amitié avec la fille

d'en bas...Et malgré l'interdit, elles franchirent allegrement la

frontiére entre le monde qui faisait sécher ses mouchoirs sur la
corde, au milieu des draps et des taies d'oreiller, et celui qui se

mouchait a ses manches. (CSJ 89-90)

Radi is drawn to Katchou because she seems to go quite naturally
against the grain, to "lire a l'envers." "Une fille d'en has," she does not
conform to all the social and moral obligations Radi faces. And having
taken Katchou as her friend, "Radi avait 1e chemin libre. Elle marchait
sur des oeufs, mais elle marchait toute seule" (CSJ 90). Like la Vieille
Lamant, Katchou will encourage Radi along the path of resistance and
questioning, away from the passivity encouraged by society.

But Radi needs very little encouraging. She quite naturally rebels

against the choices given her by society. As a child, she is driven by a

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desire to regain paradise; something which is out of her reach. But she
can and she does use her imagination to overcome the boundaries of the
world around her:

Ca faisait longtemps assez qu'elle payait pour étre fille...Pas

le choix: la pire des calamités! Avant tout Radi voulait des

choix. Depuis qu'elle a l'age de se souvenir, elle refait le

monde au gré de son plaisir. (CSJ 41)
In On a mangé la dune, Radi standing on a rock pile announces "C'est
moi, Dieu, je vas créer le monde" (OMD 115). It is this same Radi who (in
Le Chemin Saint-Jacques) refuses to play with a baby carriage because
she realizes the sad fact that it represents the wife and mother role
forced on women by society. And it is this same Radi who defies her
schoolteacher at the age of twelve and stands before the class to declare
her choice of the fourth or "other" option: "J'écrirai, en francaisl" (CSJ
2 12). She will not accept the assignment to write about her own funeral,
but in English. But Radi refuses. "Les mots sont la matiere méme avec
laquelle Radi s'est fabriqué une vie, une vie unique, non interchangeable.
Elle n'a pas de vie de rechange et ne saurait donc renoncer a rien de ce
qui la constitue essentiellement" (CSJ 213). It is at this moment that the
seed of her career as a storyteller and writer takes root.

As her rebellious choice of careers would indicate, the way that
Radi will challenge the "law" is with language. Radi, who as a child
learned words "par osmose," (CSJ 18), uses these words and the images
they conjure, to make her own world. "Radi préfére l'imaginaire a la
raison. En s'appropriant les mots, elle les a déja transformés en images
qui s'allument comme des bougies pour éclairer sa vie de l'intérieur..."

(CSJ 27). She knows well the power of stories to take her into another

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world, when she brings home a story she hears at the forge, she realizes
that she too can possess the power to narrate. Unfortunately, despite its
success, the story scandalizes her parents who decide that the forge is
not an appropriate place for a young girl. "Elle perdait la forge, mais
aquérait la conviction qu'elle serait un jour conteuse" (CSJ 111). She
continues to revel in the joy of narrative, regardless of the familial and
societal conventions that would keep her from associating with the men
of the forge, or the lower-class Prudence and Katchou. And in the end
she realizes that if she is to fight against the Anglophones, and keep
Acadia alive, it will be with her writing: "Je soupconnais que si jamais je
devais lire mes noms familiers, je devrais les écrire moi-meme, d'ou le cri
spontané arraché a ma gorge de douze ans: 'Je veux étre écrivain, en
francais!"' (CSJ 276). In writing, then, she finds her ultimate defiance.

The heroines, and heroes, of Maillet's novels constantly challenge
and subvert authority, and therefore the law, in order to redistribute
power. These rebel characters incarnate the exact attitudes that allowed
Acadia to survive and rebuild after the deportation: a refusal to accept
defeat and a firm belief that each person has the right to choose his /her
own way of life. And Maillet gives her readers the same opportunities as
her protagonists to challenge the law, and to take an active role. The
reader of Maillet's text need not sit passively before it, waiting for it to
divulge all; there are many points of entry. Her stories are often told by
not one but several narrators, who interrupt and challenge each other's
versions of the "truth," leaving it to the reader to decide what to believe.
Often these interruptions are ambiguous remarks like "heuh!" "hi!" or
even "come si!" which challenge the story without offering any

alternative explanation. Sometimes Maillet projects the questions of the

79

listener/ reader into the text: "--Vous voulez dire?..." and sometimes she
uses ellipses, or ellipses followed by a question mark physically to mark
the gaps in the story where the reader must jump in. Thus Maillet gives
the same freedom to her characters and to her readers: the freedom to

challenge authority and to defy the law.

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Chapter 3

Storytellers, Conteurs, Menteurs, Menteux, and Défricheteux de
parenté: Maintaining the Oral Tradition

Contons, mais cantons bien; c'est le point principal, c'est tout.
-La Fontaine

Vous apprendriez bien des chases,

avec ces conteux-colporteux—rabouteux-arréteux-de-sang-
et défricheteux de parenté. Tant pis pour vous

si vous avez choisi de vous instruire dans les livres.
-Antonine Maillet

Reading Antonine Maillet's novels, it becomes clear that the
character of the storyteller is of prime importance. The storyteller
(conteur, jongleur, menteux), has traditionally played an important role in
Acadian society, and the society portrayed in her novels is no exception.
And although most of the characters in Maillet's novels tell stories at
some point, there is usually one character--like Jéréme in Cent ans dans
les bois, or Bélonie in Pélagie-la-Charrette—who does nothing but tell
stories. This person is never the main character of the novel yet he / she
plays an important social role, for he is not only an entertainer, but also
the guardian and transmitter of local news, history and tradition.“ Such
a storyteller was essential to the oral tradition in which the Acadian
people were situated for many years. Maillet herself states that: "Acadia
exists because of its storytellers. . . they were the ones who literally made

the history. The oral tradition is really that important" (Smith 262-3).

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The stories bring the Acadian people together by keeping their culture
alive:

a travers les contes s’élaborait, sans doute, tout un monde, dréle et

mystérieux, fabricateur de héros et de légendes, inventeur de

farces; inévitablement, l’identité y était liee au sens de la terre,
d’une patrie qui n’était pas celle des livres, des états-nations ou
des ideologies, mais un sens d’appartenance profond qui
perrnettait d’identifier 1e paysage, de s’y retrouver, de le nommer.

(Paratte 295)

The storytellers have maintained for the Acadians a sense of their past, of
their culture, and a sense of belonging.

Storytellers such as Bélonie kept the history of an oral people alive,
and this role is clear in Maillet's novels, especially Pélagie-la-Charrette.
She "impresses upon the reader that the storyteller is no mere
entertainer. He can also be the one great link between a people and its
past" (Fitzpatrick, Search 9). This is an important function of the
traditional storyteller, who flourished in past epochs when these stories
drew people together into a community.48 But this does not mean that
the storyteller is a mere archivist, who simply repeats historical
messages. On the contrary, storytellers, especially those in Maillet's
novels, are artists who create worlds with their words. In an essay
entitled "Mon pays, c'est un conte," Maillet insists that the traditional
storyteller does more than recite history: "Je m'insurge tout de suite
contre la definition du conteur oral traditionnel qui aurait pour seule
fonction de répéter, transmettre fidelement un récit recu en droite ligne
de l'homme de la caverne" (79). This definition neglects an important

aspect of the storyteller's craft, the artistry:

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Et tout l'ame qu'il y déverse, et l'intonation, et l'interprétation, et
les transformations, et les sourires en coin, et les ajouts, et le style
enfin, ce n'est pas de la littérature ca? Non, justement, ce n'est
pas de la littérature, comme nous l'entendons; c'est de la
littérature orale, celle qui s'inspire de la vie et de ses rites, et qui se

situe aux racines memes de l'autre. (79-80)

The traditional storyteller, then, is the precursor of the modern author.
And the oral tradition, the body of narratives belonging to the Acadians--
or to any other culture-~both finds its inspiration in the life and rituals of
the community, and enriches its life and rituals.

The many levels of storytellers in Maillet's novels prove that they
are firmly established in this oral tradition. The stories are passed down
from generation to generation "comme un fief' (PLC 11). In some novels,
like Pélagie-la-Charrette, this heritage is evidenced by the embedding of
each layer of storytelling inside another. The stories that Bélonie tells are
part of the story that the generation of Pélagie-la-Gribouille tells, and
glosses, which in turn the narrator tells and glosses. In all her novels,
however, there are multiple storytellers, apart from the narrator who
frames the work. Storytelling, then, is an important part of Acadian
community life in which everyone can participate, listening, commenting,
even telling their own stories.

Although storytelling is something that everyone can share, there
still remains a distinction between the casual storytelling that many of
Maillet's characters do, and the serious or professional activity of
storytellers such as Bélonie or Jér6me. These are the traditional
storytellers who kept the Acadian stories and traditions alive through the

Deportation and during the century of isolation that followed. Without

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Jéréme, the narrator of Cent ans dans les bois says, "ne me demandez
pas comment l'histoire serait sortie du bois, en 1880, et nous serait
parvenue aussi fiere et gaillarde" (CA 13). Bélonie and Jéréme preserve
and pass on the history of their people. Without storytellers like these,
an oral and isolated people like the Acadians would have no history.
When the narrator of Pélagie-la-Charrette says "apres ca, venez me dire a
moi, qui fourbis chaque matin mes seize quartiers de charrette, qu'un
peuple qui ne sait pas lire ne saurait avoir d'Histoire" (PLC 12), the true
significance of storytellers like Bélonie and Jerome becomes evident.
History is not just what is written in books or stored in archives. It is the
traditions and culture of a people, the stories that link their past, present
and future.

Community participation is an integral part of the act of
storytelling, just as community participation is essential in perpetuating a
cultural identity. In the communities portrayed in Maillet's novels,
storytelling involves a give and take between the storytellers and the
listeners, especially when the subject matter directly concerns them and
their history. The interruptions, embellishments, and personal
testimonials make of the story not the work of one mere person, but the
work of a community. And everyone, not just the "professional"
storytellers gets a chance to tell their stories. Thus the cultural identity
perpetuated by the stories is the work of everyone involved. And although
one person is often designated as the " storyteller" or keeper of stories and
traditions, everyone participates in building and maintaining the Acadian
culture.

But why is storytelling so important to the Acadians? According to

J. Hillis Miller, "the human capacity to tell stories is one way men and

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women collectively build a significant and orderly world around
themselves. With fictions, we investigate, perhaps invent, the meaning of
life" (69). Through their stories, the Acadians of Maillet's novels attempt
to order the chaotic world around them, make sense of life and of their
"history." Radi, the storyteller who actually becomes an author, says she
wants to "créer le monde."49 She can sense, then, even as a child, that
the ability to narrate is a very powerful one indeed. The narrator of Le
Huitiéme Jour,50 too, knows the power of a creative imagination in an
"unfinished world" (HJ 3). As she says: "the only hope lies in the eighth
day" (HJ 3) (of creation), the day when storytellers can remake the world.
As Maillet maintains:
Les plus grands poetes acadiens furent les chroniqueurs, les
composeux de complaintes, les défricheteux de parenté:, les
conteux de contes et de légendes. Ceux—la savaient vraiment
rebatir le monde pour qu'il se mette a ressembler a leurs souvenirs
et a leurs réves. (Major 23)
Though the stories in Maillet's novels do entertain, and do preserve a
rich oral tradition, they in fact serve an even larger purpose, and that is
to give voice to the Acadians' struggle to understand and maintain a
collective / social identity. As this is a task that must be shared by the
entire community, past, present and future, is it any wonder that this
struggle is not voiced by a single narrator? Maillet's works echo with the
polyphony of voices that compose the Acadian story. The voices of the
various storytellers in Maillet's works perpetuate Acadian cultural

identity by keeping the myths, stories, and "History" alive.

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Professional Storytellers

Pamphile is the official poet of Don l’Orignal’s Pucois kingdom. He
is called the "poete du royaume" (DO 36), or the "poete national" (DO 40).
As the poet of his people, his role is both to chronicle their history in
story and verse, and to entertain the public by telling these stories and
epics. He is also present at important occasions such as the
inauguration of the stolen barrel of molasses. Unlike other storytellers,
Pamphile has an officially recognized position of "national poet." Like
those of the official court poets of ages past, his stories have purpose and
distinction. The stories or epics he recounts will also become an official
part of the people’s history and culture. And though the people are
familiar with these stories of their past, they never tire of hearing them;
Pamphile recounts the great epics, such as the "Iliade de l’Ile-aux-Puces"
to mark momentous occasions. Through repetition, the stories become
part of the people's collective identity.

One of the stories that he tells is the epic of Don l’Orignal’s island,
a story that recounts the battle of the forces of good and evil, featuring
the hero of the island Michel-Archange. Camped out the night before a
battle,51 the Pucois soldiers are regaled with Pamphile’s epic:

Ainsi se termina la célébre épopée de l’Ile-aux-Puces, telle que

chantee par son poete national aux troupes bivouaquant du

chevalier Noume, 1e soir qu’apparut aux gens du continent le

mystérieux bateau fantome. Pamphile, en l’honneur des plus

belles oeuvres de ses confreres poetes de tous les temps, appela

son épopée la Puciade. (DO 42)

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This title which he has given his work, (to honor the greatest of his fellow
poets) establishes Pamphile in the tradition of the ancient Greek epic
poets. The nature of the battle (good versus evil) and the tradition in
which it is placed elevate the story of Michel-Archange to the status of an
epic.

The Pucois people show Pamphile the honor and respect due a
national poet. His stories are not interrupted or embellished by his
listeners, as are those of his compatriots Bélonie or J érome, for example.
His storytelling, nonetheless, does follow certain conventions of
interaction with the audience. His epic follows a certain rhythm, with
appropriate pauses for Pamphile to refresh himself and for the audience
to encourage him to continue:

Pamphile ici fit une longue pause. Voyant qu’il ne reprenait pas,

ses auditeurs alléchés crierent tous ensemble:

--La suite, raconte la suite! (DO 40).

The audience’s encouragement is an important element in Pamphile’s
storytelling, as it shows him that he and his stories are respected and
appreciated.

As a respected poet of the kingdom, Pamphile is not only
responsible for storytelling, but also has the honor of speaking--and even
prophesying-on important occasions, as does Bélonie. The return of the
Pucois warriors with a stolen barrel of molasses is just such an occasion.
He pronounces a beautiful oration, inaugurating the barrel, but is
unfortunately interrupted by a more prosaic villager: "Il allait
entreprendre la péroraison a l’adresse des vaillants soldats, quand ses
vers furent étouffés sous la prose dramatique de la Sainte qui venait de

constater l’absence de Citrouille" (DO 58). Though he may be

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interrupted by the dramatic course of events, the versification of
Pamphile will not soon be forgotten. His creations, having represented a
people at their most significant moments, will be part of the oral tradition
of the people for generations to come.

But though his stories live on, Pamphile is not immortal. The
narrator points out toward the end of Don l’Orignal that though the
subject matter was worthy of an epic, she has not presented it as such,
since the epic poet Pamphile was no longer available to create one.

Ce qui se passa ce jour-la dans mon pays, sur la terre ferme et

dans l’ile, mériterait bien les honneurs d’une nouvelle épopée,

digne de la plume du grand poete épique de l’Ile-aux-Puces,

Pamphile. Mais les poetes vivent ce que vivent les roses, et

Pamphile comme la plupart des grands héros de ce drame, n’est

plus. (DO 72)

Pamphile has not only been given the honors due to a "grand poete
épique" here, he has also been elevated to the status of a hero, equal to
the other heroes, Michel-Archange, Citrouille and Noume, though
Pamphile never engaged in battle. Like the other storytellers in Maillet’s
novels, Pamphile merits the title of hero because of his creative genius,
and his service to his community. He is more honored than Don
l’Orignal, and at the official inauguration, it is he who presides, not Don
l’Orignal. In a society that is attempting to preserve its culture and
history, and yet has no written history, the storyteller is someone to be
honored and venerated.

Le vieux Bélonie, "conteur et chroniqueur de son metier" (PLC 10),
is one of the main characters in the novel Pélagie-la-Charrette. Bélonie is

a traditional storyteller; one who practices storytelling as a profession

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and a way of life, who keeps the stories of his people alive. "Sans ces
conteux et défricheteux de Bélonie, fils de Bélonie, fils de Bélonie,
l'Histoire aurait trépassé a chaque tournant de siecle" (PLC 11). The
history that Bélonie keeps even precedes the settling of Acadia.

Il pouvait tout vous raconter, dans un seul souffle, les ancétres

comme les descendants, vous dérouler tout un lignage sans rater

une maille, et vous crocheter l'histoire d'un peuple qui allait de

France en Acadie, en passant par l'exil, durant une petite

generation... (PLC 69)

Bélonie's stories remind his people of where they came from, and what
they have endured.

While Pélagie is the heroine, literally bringing her people back from
exile, Bélonie wages the same battle on a figurative plane. While Pélagie
fights hunger, mud, delays, and even the American revolutionary war,
Bélonie is engaged in an ongoing battle of wills against the "charrette
noir" or death. While Pélagie brings her people back to Acadia, giving
them a future, Bélonie brings his stories back, and in doing so gives
them the gift of their past. This mission is so important that Bélonie
cannot die until he has passed on his stories--which he does after
miraculously finding a grandson whom he thought was dead. "Si jamais
un homme depuis le debut des temps, a éprouvé l'ombre d'une douleur
de l'enfantement, c'est le Bélonie de la charrette. A cent ans, ou presque,
il venait de mettre au monde sa lignee" (PLC 278). Bélonie had thought
that he was the last of his family and that his stories would die with him.
When he finds his grandson, he knows that his family and his stories will

survive. In finding someone to whom he can leave his lore, he finds a

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key to the future, and he knows that the history and traditions he has
preserved will not die with him.

Not only does Bélonie keep the history of his people, the folktales
and traditions that he has preserved reach all the way back to France.
They are not only the stories of the Acadians and their experiences, but
also the legends and histories that they inherited from their French
ancestors. In the novel, for example, Bélonie tells the tale of the Baleine
Blanche, an old tale which Maillet has changed: "the story of the White
Whale is based on an actual tale--the man who runs after the hen, who
runs after the fox, etc.--but I doctored it up to my own taste" (Smith 268).
And the Acadians themselves "doctor" the story to suit their own
purposes so that in the end, they have created their own story and their
own history: "Et c'est comme ca que je sons encore en vie, nous autres
les exilés, par rapport que j'ons consenti a sortir d'exil et rentrer au pays
par le cul d'une baleine!" (PLC 84).52 And the last story that Bélonie tells,
la Dame géante de la Nuit, is a story which Maillet points out is a
conglomeration of several old tales (Smith 268). These tales entertain the
people, but also keep their folk history alive. When he tells his stories,
Bélonie establishes himself in a rich literary tradition.

As the "conteur," Bélonie enjoys a privileged position in the refugee
community. He is not only the entertainer, and keeper of their history, he
is also the patriarch and as such is put in charge of baptisms, funerals
and weddings, in the absence of a priest. He brings peace when the small
community is fighting. But he is also a "voyant", one favored by visions.
He is the one who sees / recognizes the "vaisseau fantome" of
Beausoleil-Broussard (PLC 88), and he alone can see (or rather hear) the

presence of the "charrette noire" of death. And he can predict the future:

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"Bélonie sourit en froncant le crane: la terre tournait a l'envers du cadran
solaire, en ce jour de septembre de fin de siecle, et risquait fort de
basculer au premier faux pas. Tenez-vous bien, tout le monde!" (PLC
133). Even in a society as superstitious as that of the Acadians, this
power is not given to everyone. Thus Bélonie is not only capable of
preserving the past but also of seeing the future. As a storyteller and as a
visionary, Bélonie has managed to transcend the boundaries of time that
restrict most people to the here and now.

In fact, Bélonie even manages to fight and triumph over death, the
ultimate transcendence of time. He tricks "La Mort," "1a vieille garce"
into letting Beausoleil-Broussard live by distracting her for just a second.
"J ’ai réussi a te distraire une seconde, une petite seconde, c'est tout ce
que ca prend pour se glisser entre le temps et l'éternité...hi, hi!" (PLC
29 1). The laws of nature don't seem to constrain Bélonie, he exists on
another plane not bound by time or even death. "11 était present partout,
1e Bélonie...Hi! hi! hi! partout! La nature était envahie du Bélonie" (PLC
314). He and his stories have slipped between time and eternity. Even
after he dies, or rather disappears, he lives on in his stories.

Like Pamphile and Bélonie, Jerome, of Cent ans dans les bois,
makes a point of placing himself in a long line of other storytellers.
Unlike Pamphile, however, he does not attribute his stories to himself:
"car ce menteux qui a si bien su transmettre les mots des autres, en les
agencant, juxtaposant, les triturant pour en extraire tout le jus, ne s’est
jamais attribué a lui-meme une seule idée primitive" (CA 14). Jerome is
not a national poet or a composer of epics. But he is a master storyteller
who knows how to transmit the words of others, extracting from them

every bit of meaning. He is the keeper of the words, the stories of his

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people, and as the narrator points out, "sans lui, ne me demandez pas
comment l’histoire serait sortie du bois, en 1880, et nous serait parvenue
aussi fiere et gaillarde" (CA 13). Jéréme is perpetuating his people’s
culture and history, not by inventing stories, but by passing on the
stories that others have lived and composed.

This is not to say, however, that Jerome the conteur or the
menteux does not play an important role, or exercise creative genius. The
words and stories of others, and even time, are the material with which a
storyteller such as Jéréme creates his masterpieces, in which anything is
possible. "Un menteux a tout son temps. 11 en vit. Le temps est au
menteux ce qu’est le bois au menuisier: avec du temps, un menteux
professionnel vous rebatit le monde" (CA 25). The storytellers, conteurs
and menteux of Maillet’s novels are not simply spokesmen. Although
they often do not attribute their stories to themselves, carefully situating
them in the context of a long line of history, they nonetheless add their
own creative touch to every narrative. And skilled storytellers have no
end of material with which to create. For Jér6me, "trop d’événements
naissent chaque jour de par le monde pour qu’un colporteur du calibre
de Jerome s’amuse a raccommoder les pieces usées" (CA 138). The world
he lives in, as well as his creative talents, provide Jeréme with a limitless
supply of stories. And with these stories, storytellers like Jéréme are
capable of changing the world itself. The storyteller, then, plays a crucial
role in the perpetuation of and shaping of a sense of an Acadian identity.
They will be the ones who recreate the Acadian world with their stories.

There are many skilled techniques involved in recreating the world
through stories. A professional storyteller such as Jerome53 does not

simply sit down and tell a story. The stories, and indeed the trade, are

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much too important. Each storyteller, and especially the professionals
must follow certain rituals, as described in Cent ans dans les bois: "a lui
maintenant de s’emparer du tabouret, de saluer bien bas la compagnie,
de huiler sa langue de salive, et d’amener petit a petit son monde a le
suivre, loin sur l’empremier, au-dela de leurs peres et grands-peres" (CA
27). In addition to these, a good storyteller must pay careful attention to
"les mises en garde, les étapes, les péripéties, les clins d’oeil, les
digressions, les commentaires" (CA 27). These techniques are well
known to their audiences, who are collaborating in the whole process,
like the Pucois encouraging Pamphile to continue. The listeners are
willing participants who know that they, too, have their role to play, and
will have their turn for input. The ritual act of storytelling is a
community activity, with conventions that must be respected.

Jér6me is a traveling storyteller who brings news from many of the
surrounding communities, thus linking the isolated Acadian villages. He
brings them news of the LeBlanc treasure (and even a map), news of a
discovery of a branch of LeBlancs related to Borteloc (a townsman) one of
whom is a schoolteacher, and the news of the first Acadian national
convention. He also tells stories which the Acadians of Fond-de-la-Baie
know as their own. Although Jéréme is Acadian, the people of Fond-de-
la-Baie see his as an outsider; at first Jéréme is "un étrange, " and the
first one "hors-les-cétes" (outside their village, that is) to hear their
stories in a hundred years (CA 34). Yet when he tries to tell the villagers
a story, they immediately take over the telling of it, since their own
ancestors lived it.54 In the end, characters such as Pélagie-la-Gribouille
will realize that these stories are shared among the Acadian

communities. Jéréme is the keeper of the true Acadian treasure, the

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stories that hold the key to their culture, and that tie them together as a
people.

Such preservation is the most important function of Jéréme or any
other storyteller; he is the person who above all others is responsible for
the preservation of Acadian culture. He holds the stories that will give
them a sense of their history, and of their identity as a people. And when
Jerome is faced with problems he confronts them with his stories. For
him,

conter ne voulait point dire brailler et pleumicher en regardant

dérouler devant ses yeux les dix plaies d’Egypte. Il était grand

temps qu’il reprenne le tabouret et le crachoir, 1e Jerome, et
détourne 1e cours de l’histoire; grand temps qu’il largue au mitan
de la place une autre de ses bombes qui relancerait 1e pays a la

recherche de son avenir et de son identité. (CA 297)

It is obvious here that storytellers are not merely archivists, or keepers of
the past in Acadia, they also play an active role in the development of
their people's identity. They may show up at dull moments to entertain
but they also have a more proactive function that is to function as a
catalyst of thought and change.55

At the end of the novel the importance of Jér6me—le-Menteux
becomes clear, when the narrator contrasts him to all the annalists,
journalists, ethnographers, mythographers, historiographers,
sociologists, archeologists, and even philosophers (CA 337) who have
written about that first Acadian national convention. She, however, is
the only one to date who has allowed Jerome to tell his story: "Mais
personne encore n’avait donné la parole a Jerome-le-Menteux. Pourtant

lui seul, de tous ces conteurs, rapporteurs et chroniqueurs, fut témoin,

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de ses yeux vu, de la convention de Memramcook telle qu’apercue des
gens du Fond-de-la-Baie" (CA 337). Jéréme was a witness to the
convention and to the lives of the Acadians of his time--another
important function of the storyteller. Through their stories, they observe
and testify to the realities of Acadian life. And the narrator of Cent ans
dans les bois, establishing herself in the tradition of Acadian storytellers,
offers the testimony of Jerome as her contribution. The stories of the
convention in Cent ans dans les bois are told "an dire de Jerome" (CA
342); he is given the opportunity to give his own testimony. This
testimony has become part of the Acadian oral tradition, through which
it reached the narrator and then the reader.

The Acadian oral tradition has endured for centuries, although, like
the society itself, it has evolved over the years. Le vieux Clovis, the
storyteller in Crache a Pic, is a traditional storyteller similar to J érome
and Bélonie, but living in more modern times. Though respected for his
storytelling talents, and endowed with the nickname "Clovis le conteur"
(CAP 23), Clovis is not the respected patriarch that Bélonie is, nor the
national poet that Pamphile is. Clovis does, however, live during the
epoch of bootlegging, a glorious time for the adventurers and the
storytellers along the Acadian coasts. And, operating from the forge, he
chooses storytelling rather than blacksmithing as his profession:

Parce que ce pays-la était plus bavard que laborieux, au toumant

du siecle, parce qu'il révélait moins de genie pour gagner sa vie que

pour raconter, Clovis, fils de Clovis 1e forgeron, apprit de la forge le

métier de conteur et non la forgerie. (CAP 82)

Although the Acadian society of Clovis' time has some modern

conveniences at their disposal, and is less isolated than the people of

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Cent ans dans les bois, the storyteller is nonetheless still an important
part of their community.

Like the other "professional" storytellers, Clovis also follows certain
techniques and conventions: "le vieux Clovis se spécialisait dans les
feintes, les provocations, les je-sais-tout-mais-ne-vous-dirai-rien, et
aurait trouvé en-dessous de sa condition de se mettre a conter de A a Z"
(CAP 208). As the town storyteller, Clovis possesses a certain amount of
power. The narrator explains that everything, stories, legends, even
gossip passed through Clovis: "Mon pere a bien connu la forge et le
vieux Clovis, et aurait pu vous en parler. J amais une légende ne
circulait librement dans le pays sans la sanction préalable de la forge. Ni
légende, ni proverbe, ni ou'i-dire, ni fable, ni commentaire, ni commérage,
rien, pas un mot" (CAP 82). Clovis is portrayed as the keeper of the
word, such that every piece of information or (entertainment) is
sanctioned by him. And at the end of the novel, Clovis is made the
foreman of the jury at Dieudonné's trial, and in this role he is also keeper
of the word, or in this case the verdict: "Il est mort de la main de
quelqu'un" (CAP 386). As foreman of the jury, he has the responsibility
of pronouncing the statement that summarizes and concludes the trial,
and of pronouncing the fate of Dieudonné. His role as storyteller also
posits him as keeper of the word. He is the source of the story itself,
since it comes to the narrator from her father who got it from old Clovis
himself. In the last chapter, the narrator passes control of the story over
to Clovis, and the trial is recounted from his perspective, in the first
person. So in the end it is the storyteller Clovis who has control over the

story of the trial as well as of the verdict.

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Non-professional] Amateur Storytellers

Besides the "professional" storytellers, like Clovis, Bélonie, or
Jér6me, there are many other, less traditional storytellers in Maillet's
novels. Many of the characters in her novels are "conteurs," "menteurs,"

"menteux, colporteurs," "défricheteux de parenté" and "composeurs de
complaintes." In Crache a Pic, for example, several other characters tell
stories within the larger context of the story that Clovis is telling (through
the narrator). At Clovis' New Year's party, Crache 21 Pic tells a story of her
ancestors, and Vif Argent tells the story of evolution and the dawn of
time. These narratives serve to entertain the other characters, but also to
provide background on Crache a Pie and to advance the plot. Vif Argent
and especially Crache 21 Pic are drawn more closely to each other because
of the stories.

Crache a Pic has long been fascinated by creative power. At the
age of three, she would create worlds from the pebbles in her yard,
naming them, grouping them, creating villages and exercising her power
over them, "distribuant des taches et des titres, sans souci de droits et de
justice mais selon son bon vouloir, comme Dieu accordant dons et
faveurs a ses favoris. Elle réparait la creation. . . a sa mesure" (CAP 36).
Young Crache a Pic, or "la petite Girouette" as she was known then, has
already discovered the power of storytelling to create.56 Like Clovis, she
holds the power of the word. A more mature Crache 21 Pic finds herself
drawn to Vif Argent, as he tells of the "fin mot du mystere cache de l'autre
coté de l'horizon" (CAP 252). Vif Argent, for his part, has found the words
that have captured Crache a Pic's heart.

Another story within the novel Crache 01 Pic --itself an "epopée de la
contrebande" (CAP 107)--is the story told by the vagabond Barrabas.

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Barrabas tells Black Willy (and the readers) about Crache a Pic's
adventure as a nun, smuggling bootleg liquor across the American
border, "l'odyssée toute fraiche et pas encore touchée par la légende"
(CAP 185). This story both advances the plot and completes the story of
Crache a Pic's adventures for the reader; it puts the story in the voice of
a direct witness, Barrabas. Though not a storyteller by profession, he
holds court as if he were, knowing that his knowledge, his story give him
power over Black Willy who is anxiously waiting to hear the end.
Storytelling is not just for those who have made it a career.

The presence of a professional storyteller such as Jerome does
not stop a local storyteller like Bélonie-le-Gicleux or even a villager like
Pélagie-la-Gribouille from telling their own stories. In Cent ans dans les
bois, there are even two rival "composeurs de complaintes"--
Moustachette, who is from the mainland, and la vieille Lamant, from the
island. These two rivals compete to create the most striking ballads,
fighting for the subjects like Adelaide’s death on her wedding day. It is
believed that these "composeurs" have special powers just as the
storytellers do: "le pays a toujours cru que les conteurs et composeurs de
complaintes communiquaient entre eux par l’esprit. C’est ainsi qu’ils se
passent leurs chansons et leurs contes" (CA 217). The ballads of
Moustachette and la vieille Lamant, set off from the prose narration of
the other storytellers, form a sort of musical refrain to Cent ans dans les
bois, expressing in verse the most poetic and poignant moments in the
novel, the deaths of Adelaide and Capitain Poirier, and the petit ponchon,
for example. Their ballads repeat in song the stories familiar to everyone.

Another storyteller in Cent ans dans les bois, who also appears in

Pélagie-la-Charrette, is Bélonie-le-Gicleux. He is a descendent 'of Bélonie-

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le-Vieux, the storyteller in Pélagie-la-Charrette, and a contemporary of
Jéréme and la Gribouille. Bélonie—le-Gicleux, though overshadowed
somewhat by Jéréme, still manages to assert himself, and to drop his
own bomb, the news that some LeBlancs from other villages were
sending representatives to the United States to search for the LeBlanc
treasure. He also plays an important role in the handing down of the
story of Pelagic, adding, embellishing, and adjusting the story as he tells
it. The stories that are handed down from generation to generation bear
the marks and influences of the various storytellers who have handled
them along the way. Each storyteller leaves his or her own mark, and
makes a personal contribution. The narrator of Maillet’s novels is always
careful to emphasize this line through which her stories pass and in
doing so she situates them; it becomes clear that the stories told in
Maillet’s novels are not the work of one author or storyteller, but the
work of generations of Acadians, whose voices can all be hard in the
stories she tells.

Although there are no "traditional" storytellers in Mariaagélas,
there are several characters, including Maria herself, who tell stories.
And the stories are a valuable source of entertainment for the villagers: a
traveling peddler, "the little Syrian, " was always a welcome sight since
he told great stories. Some of the stories, like those of the Syrian, or Boy
a Polyte’s hunting story, are told for entertainment, but more often the
stories are told to explain something to the listener/ reader or to give a
moral. The story of the phantom ship, for example, which the sea
captain tells, is a tragic story, which also explains a common Acadian

legend, the sighting of a burning ship before a storm or trouble. And the

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story that Sarah Bidoche, the card reader, tells is meant to give Maria a
lesson.

But the story that Maria tells is meant not merely to entertain but
to mislead. When she returns from her bootlegging adventure in the
States, she has to account for her three-day absence. Maria goes about
this skillfully, knowing how to tell a story that was fantastic and
entertaining but that would not be immediately dismissed as purely
fictional. "Allez trouver comme ca une explication qui tranquillise en
méme temps le désespoir de la mere Gélas, l'inquiétude de la vieille
Crochu, les doutes de la veuve a Calixte et la curiosité du reste de la
paroisse" (MG 133). Maria keeps her story brief so that it will be more
believable (MG 134), yet incredible enough to explain her complete
disappearance for three days. Although some doubt remains as to the
veracity of her tale, Maria’s story does satisfy the villagers and keep them
from guessing how she had spent her days. Maria uses of her
storytelling talents to deceive and to conceal. For Maria, storytelling
holds the power to make people believe.

Maillet posits storytelling as an essential characteristic of the
Acadian people, and thus a trait shared by all. So it is not surprising to
find that Bélonie may be the main "conteur" in Pélagie-la-Charrette, but
he is not the narrator, nor even the only storyteller. The stories Bélonie
tells are contrasted with those of Pierre a Pitre, whose stories "étaient de
pures inventions, tout le monde le savait, et on ne les écoutait que pour
se divertir" (PLC 304). And even members of the group who are not
"storytellers" use stories for their own purposes. In a Charleston prison,
the group combines its storytelling talents to literally story their way free,

and another character, legendary sea-captain Beausoleil-Broussard

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creates his own fantastic story to escape the justice of the British navy.
These are the storytellers who are the actual focus of the story, which is
"framed" by a 'contemporary' narrator who got her story from her cousin,
a descendant of Bélonie. But there is yet another set of narrators,
situated in time about halfway between the story of the first Pelagic and
the time of the narration. These ancestral intermediaries have their say
as well: "Et laissez mon cousin Louis-le-Jeune vous dire qu'aucune
generation de Belonie ne laissa passer une si belle occasion de dire son
fait a la generation suivante" (PLC 191). Thus the story of
Pélagie-la-Charrette as presented to the reader is not a simple story but
rather an intricately woven multi-dimensional narrative that boasts a
direct line of ancestry but that has, at the same time, several layers of
interlocutors. Like the medieval bards, all Maillet's storytellers, even the

narrators, are careful to place themselves in a well-established tradition.

NARRATORS

One of the most important storytellers in each of these novels, and
yet the storyteller who remains the least clearly presented, is the
narrator herself. The narrators in Maillet's novels are almost never
characters in the stories, instead, they tell the stories which have been
handed down to them. Like Bélonie, Jerome, and the others, the
narrator in Maillet’s novels is careful to place herself in the context of a
long line of storytellers. Maillet’s narratives are punctuated with "an dire
de," "selon mon cousin," and many other sayings which indicate to the
reader that the stories are not mere inventions of the narrator. Just as
the narrator of Cent ans dans les bois makes use of Jerome’s experience

at the first national convention, the narrators in Maillet’s other novels

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use the stories they have heard from their ancestors, and the stories that
have been handed down from generation to generation. And like the
storytellers in the novels, the narrators put a little of themselves into the
stories they tell, adding their own twists and offering interpretations.

The narrators occasionally recount stories for which they openly admit
there is no oral account, as does the narrator of Don l’Orignal:

Le récit de l’ultime bataille qui fut livrée sur l’Ile-aux-Puces ne

parait dans aucune chronique, aucunes archives, ni aucune parti

des mémoires pamphiliennes. Et, fait curieux, on ne trouve nulle
page déchirée clans les annales nationales du continent a la date
du x . . . of: se déroulerent, selon toutes conjectures, ces
déplorables évenements. C’est donc qu’on a tout simplement
enveloppé de silence cette campagne historique pour des raisons

dont je n’arrive pas a percer le mystere. (DO 129)

In order to recount an event shrouded in silence, the narrator is forced to
rely on what she terms secondary sources; "telles l'archéologie, la
numismatique, l'héraldique, l'épigraphie et la sigillographie" (DO 129) as
well as her own creative talents. So even the narrator is a part of the
tradition of storytelling which is such an integral part of the Acadian
culture.

Although the stories that the narrators tell are written, and not
declairned before an audience like those of Jéréme or Bélonie, the
narrator nonetheless follows some of the same conventions that these
storytellers do, giving Maillet’s novels a decidedly oral aspect. Like
Jerome, Maillet’s narrators often start out by addressing the audience,
and leading them, "petit a petit" into the story. Occasionally anticipating

the disbelief of their readers, they reassure them that the stories they tell

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are true. And during the course of their narrative, they allow for
interruptions by other auditors to whom they pass the narrative, and
even by the readers, for whom the narrator voices anticipated objections
(and subsequently responds). These techniques give Maillet’s novels an
open, dialogic aspect, in keeping with the Acadian storytelling tradition.

In each instance the narrator is, in fact, the last storyteller, and an
important link between the oral and written traditions. As the last
person to give the stories voice, (as opposed to written form), the narrator
in Maillet's novels is the ultimate storyteller, and the voice speaking most
directly to the reader. Though the author's hand is giving form to the
story, it is the narrator's voice that the reader "hears."57 As the last
"voice," or the last storyteller, the narrator figure is an important link in
the Acadian oral tradition. Maillet maintains that "1e conte appartient a
une tradition," and this is no different for the stories her narrators tell.
Though they may take different forms and approaches, the narrators of
Maillet's novels share a function: passing on the stories of old, "de sur
l'empremier," entertaining the reader and passing on the traditions and
stories of Acadia.

Maillet's works reflect a variety of narrative voices or styles. In
some of her novels—such as Pointe-aux-Coques, and l'Oursiade—the
stories are told by one narrator, who is also a character. In others, the
stories are presented by narrators who do not themselves take part in the
action. (Don l'Orignal, Emmanuel a Joseph a deit) and in still others,
there are both narrators who are characters (like Jerome and Bélonie)
and narrators who are not characters, but who frame the stories of
others. There is, usually, however, one narrator who provides a unifying

voice to these novels--at the same time both a base story/ voice to which

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the others can add and build from, and a voice that ties together the
multiplicity of narrative voices which constitute Maillet's novels; these in
turn represent the multiplicity of voices and the diversity in the Acadian
experience.

Several of Maillet's novels represent the voice, or consciousness, of
only one individual Acadian. Pointe-aux-Coques, one of the few instances
of first-person narration in Maillet’s work, is the story of a young woman
who returns to Acadia to discover for herself the land and traditions her
father chose to leave.58 The story that she tells represents a personal
journey59 and search for meaning. The storyteller narrates her own
story. On a mangé la dune and l'Oursiade are also told only from the
perspective of the main character--Radi and Titoume, respectively. But
these stories are told in the third person, so despite the stories being told
from their perspective, the reader is distanced somewhat from the hero.
In fact, the narrators of Pointe-aux—Coques, On a mangé la dune,
l'Oursiade, and Emmanuel a Jospeh a deit are progressively more
distanced from the reader. On a mangé la dune is told from Radi's
perspective, but in the third person, by someone who has privileged
access to her thoughts and feelings but who does not formally identify
herself with Radi. The story of l’Oursiade is told by a omniscient narrator
who only at the end claims the identity of the young protagonist,
Titoume“). And the story of Emmanuel a Jospeh a deit is told by one
narrator, not a character, who remains outside the story inasmuch as he
is not an actant therein, but who is nevertheless culturally connected to
the events. Though the narrators of Pointe-aux—Coques and l'Oursiade do

not clearly situate themselves in the Acadian oral tradition, as some of

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Maillet's other narrators do, they nonetheless represent a fundamental
aspect of that oral tradition, which is the telling of one's own story.

In other novels such as Mariaagélas, Le Huitiéme jour, and Don
l'Orignal, the narrator, like that of l'Oursiade, carefully blends the stories
of others into her own, so that it seems almost as if there were only one
narrative voice, when in reality the stories come from other sources as
well as the narrator. In these novels we find what Marjorie Fitzpatrick
terms a "secondary narrator" (Search 7), which Maillet will use in several
other novels. In Mariaagélas, Le Huitiéme jour, and Don l'Orignal,
however, the presence of the secondary narrator is barely discernible. As
Fitzpatrick notes, "the character that fills that role in Mariaagélas--
Soldat Bidoche's elderly fortuneteller mother--is so unobtrusive and
appears so infrequently that we often forget her existence" (Search 7).
The narrator of Mariaagélas gives way to the stories of Sarah Bidoche so
subtly that they almost become one. The same is true of the novels Le
Huitiéme jour and Don l'Orignal, the narrators of these works subtly cede
their place to that of a secondary narrator from whom the story
originates. In Le Huitie‘me jour, this shift is marked by subtle,
unobtrusive statements at the very end of the prologue and at the very
beginning of the epilogue: "'Are you coming in or aren't you?‘ croaks a
flayed voice that reminds me of that of an old servant of ours, whose
stories always began with the words: Once upon a time..." (HJ 6) and
"...and so our two heroes lived with their mother and father ever after, and
had many children. The old servant's dry voice fell silent" (HJ 272). This
last line is the only indication that the story does not originate with the
narrator. Through the secondary narrator--the old servant--the narrator

of le Huitiéme Jour is able not only to pass along a story of the type that

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informed her childhood but also to call attention to the importance and
power of storytelling to create new worlds. The narrator, in the prologue
and epilogue, can stand back and comment on the story of the secondary
narrator, the old servant.

One last example of such mediated narration appears in Don
l'Orignal. Although only one person seemingly narrates the story, we
discover in the end that the narrator has received the story from other
sources, her cousin and her cousin's ancestor. In these works, it would
seem that the narrator has so completely absorbed the stories she has
heard that they in fact become her own. Like Jéréme (or even Bélonie)
these narrators are passing on stories which they have not invented, but
which thanks to the oral tradition nonetheless belong to them. The
narrator is part of Acadian oral tradition; as part of this tradition, the
stories of the past are her stories. She is part of a whole, a continuum, a
community and a tradition that consists of the past, present and future.
The narrator of Cent ans dans les bois discovers that she was there, "sur
l'empremier" long before she was born: "C'est ainsi qu'avant l'age de
raison, j'avais vu déja, par les racines, l'histoire qu'un jour je vous
raconterais" (CA 10). She was there in her ancestors, her "grand-grand-
mére." And just as the stories of Titoume's mother, father, or the people
who raised him are part of Titoume himself, the stories that constitute
the narrator’s culture are an integral part of her as well. That is an
essential feature of the oral tradition--and over the years it has given the

Acadians their own legacy.

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Multiple levels of narration

A further development of this technique of "secondary narrators"
appears in the novels Les Cordes-de-Bois, Pélagie-la-Charrette, and Cent
ans dans les bois. In these novels, there are several narrators or levels of
narration, and many voices each tell their own stories, while the
"narrator" frames and orchestrates the stories, giving them cohesion.
Marjorie Fitzpatrick finds this to be Maillet's best narrative technique
"for satisfying the two narrative needs concurrently: she appears as a
first-person narrator, but the story is recounted to her in the voices of
two secondary narrators who are more closely tied than she to the times,
the events, and above all to the people of the novel" (Search 6). Thus the
"story" in these novels comes to the reader in the same way that it is
passed down through the oral tradition: told by those who were closest to
it, though narrated by someone who is closer to the listener. "Acadia
thus speaks to us at a variety of levels at once" (Search 6).

One novel in which it is clear that Acadia is speaking at more than
one level is Cent ans dans les bois. Although there is a primary narrator,
the story is often told in the words of Jerome, the travelling storyteller of
the novel. Nowhere is this more evident than at the end of the novel
when the narrator "allows" Jerome to recount the convention in his own
words:

personne encore n'avait donné la parole a Jerome-le-Menteux.

Pourtant lui seul, de tous ces conteurs, rapporteurs et

chroniqueurs, fut témoin, de ses yeux vu, de la convention de

Memramcook telle qu'apercue par les gens du Fond-de-la-Baie.

Jerome vous dirait . . . (CA 337)

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The narrator cedes her place to an eyewitness, allowing him to "speak"
directly to the reader. Jéréme's perspective brings the reader closer to
the events recounted and helps readers to understand the personal, not
just the historical aspect of the first Acadian national convention.
Ainsi, le récit non seulement emprunte-t-il souvent la forme de
conte, mais il se reclame de lui sur le plan génétique. . . En
donnant la parole a Jéréme-le-Menteux, la narratrice confronte
deux versions de l’histoire acadienne, celle du conteur populaire
qui renouvelle et réinvente sans cesse son récit, 1e seul aussi a
avoir été témoin oculaire des événements, et la version, figée par
l’écriture, que présentent "les historiens..." (CA 86-7)
The narrator tries to present as complete a perspective as possible, using
both the testimony of an eyewitness, and including actual fragments of
speeches from the convention, as well as linguistic and cultural
explanations. In this way, the narrator offers the reader an inside view of
Acadia seen "par les racines" (CA 10). She tells a story which "les plus
savants des historiens n'ont jamais vue que d'en haut" (CA 10), but she
tells it from below, where all the action happens. The reader is thus
privileged to hear the story from the epicenter, and not from far away.
The narrator of Les Cordes-de-Bois is also aided by witnesses to the
action described--Pierre a Tom and Ozite. The narrator does not hide the
fact that she gets her story from different sources, often having to search
for her information, and occasionally choose between two sources of
information. "La suite me fut rapportée a la fois par la forge, Pierre a
Tom, et exceptionnellement par la conteuse Ozite qui daignait s'arracher
a ses souvenirs centenaires pour descendre cette fois jusqu'aux années

30" (CdB 130). Ozite's and Pierre a Tom's stories are related directly to

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the narrator (who turns narration over to them, thus giving the story
directly to the reader). The narrator here is presenting the stories of
figures who have become legendary thanks to the oral tradition. Once
again the narrator is channeling other Acadian voices; gathering stories,
or pieces of stories to pull together and present to the reader. Ozite and
Pierre a Tom each present the narrator with one perspective that the
narrator then forges into a cohesive story. The two witness / storytellers
do not interact, however, as do the various narrators of Pélagie-la-
Charrette, the narrator is the sole arbiter of the stories.

In Pélagie-la-Charrette, however, there are several levels of
storytellers involved, which more clearly shows the functioning of the
oral tradition over generations. Bélonie is the main storyteller in the
novel, but the main narrator gets her story from her cousin Louis a
Bélonie who in turn has received it from his father:

l'Histoire continue . . . Elle continue encore dans la bouche de mon

cousin Louis :21 Bélonie, qui la tient de son pere Bélonie 21 Louis, qui

la tenait de son grand-pere Bélonie--contemporain et adversaire de
la Gribouille-~qui l'avait recue de pere en fils de ce propre Bélonie,
fils de Thadée, fils de Bélonie premier qui, en 1770, fétait ses
nonante ans, assis au fond de la charrette méme de Pelagic,

premiere du nom. (PLC 12)

The story has become a legacy, passed from one generation to another.
The version presented to the reader is, in fact, the product of three
generations, and three sets of narrators, Bélonie, the original storyteller,
his descendent Bélonie, and the modern narrator. As Eloise Briere
points out, these three versions are woven together as the various

narrator-storytellers interact.

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Les trois versions de l’histoire de la charrette--17 80, 1880, 1979--
ne sont ni consécutives ni chronologiques, mais plutét tissées dans
une tapisserie; elles s’interrompent mutuellement lorsqu’elles
passent au point central de la narration qui est le "je" de
l’écrivaine/narratrice de 1979. (Briere 105)
The stories of Bélonie-le-Vieux are interrupted by the commentaries and
glosses of la Gribouille and Bélonie, whose stories are again glossed by
the cousin of the narrator. Each set of "narrators" offers his or her own
interpretation of events. And yet the events of the novel give the
impression of being narrated by the characters involved: "on a toujours
l'impression d'entendre le fait comme par la bouche de ce personnage,
qui semble nous 1e dire lui-meme" (LeBlanc, Maillet 60). Though there
are in fact several levels of narrators passing on the stories of Pélagie and
Bélonie, the stories themselves shine through all their interpretations
and glosses. Maillet's narrative technique allows the reader to
experience the stories as part of the oral tradition, coming from not one
omniscient narrator, but from various eyewitnesses, and passing through
other levels of storytellers. In Pélagie-la-Charrette it becomes clear how
the oral tradition functions as a conduit for the stories that bind the
Acadians together as a community.

The use of such secondary narrators brings the story more directly
to the reader and allows the primary narrator to search for the "whole"
story, not just one perspective. As she does her "research," she
assembles the stories of more than one "conteur," often going from
relatives, to the forge, to the old fortuneteller. Though the narrator
allows others to tell their stories, she does retain control over these

stories, editing them together into a coherent totality. And as Marjorie

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Fitzpatrick points out, the narrator can also assume another role when
secondary narrators are present, that of the questioning reader. "she
acts as our surrogate, asking leading questions, challenging
inconsistencies, and setting the secondary narrators off on their chains
of reminiscence" (Search 6). The primary narrator, then, does what the
reader cannot, delve into the matter, seeking the best possible
representation of the story. She also frequently supplies background
information that a non-Acadian reader might not possess. The primary
narrator orchestrates the many voices of the Acadian past, providing the
reader not only with the stories of Acadian culture but also with some
understanding of the workings of the Acadian oral tradition so essential
to this cultural identity.

Even though the storytellers and narrators in Maillet's novels often
turn their stories over to others, they still maintain some control over the
narratives. Each storyteller, and ultimately the narrator frames the story
for the listeners. Thus the narrator provides a unifying voic; at the same
time both a base that the others can add to and build from, and a force
that integrates the multiplicity of narrative voices in the novel. The
presence of multiple storytellers accentuates the difficulty in identifying a
uniform narrative voice. While traditionally the narrator has an
authoritative voice, here that authority is shared with other storytellers.
The narrator gathers the stories of old and passes them on to the reader,
much as the traditional storytellers passed their stories on to their
listeners. In so doing, the narrator sacrifices a certain amount of
ostensible control, dividing the narrative authority among the storytellers.

However, as this multiplicity of storytelling voices shows, total

control on part of the narrator is a misrepresentation, as the reader can

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ultimately read, not read, interpret, misinterpret, even burn the text. In
her own thesis Rableais et les tradition populaires en Acadie, Maillet notes
how the storyteller can allow for this: "Le conteur. . . laisse toute grande
ouverte la porte du conte pour que d'autres, un jour dans l'avenir, y
mettent aussi leur nez. Et ainsi se continuera 1a tradititon..." (184). The
stories are meant to be interactive. An essential aspect of the oral
tradition is that it is a living tradition. It is not merely history, but rather
a cultural exchange from one generation to another. Each generation has
the opportunity to "stick their noses into" the stories of others,
interpreting them, commenting on them, and thus making them their
own as well. And Maillet's novels, as part of this oral tradition, have not
only incorporated the interventions of different generations of storytellers,
they also leave the door open for the reader to intervene, by asking
questions, doubting, or deciding for himself which version he believes.
Her narrators always leave room for interpretation.

In fact, just as the storytelling in her novels is meant to be an
interaction between storytellers and listeners, so, too, are her novels an
opportunity for interaction between reader and narrator and author.
Maillet has stated that:

Le public est un complice dont mes personnages ne peuvent se

passer. C'est a lui qu'ils s'addressent, qu'ils se confient, qu'ils

prennent a témoin de leurs réflexions, de leurs agissements, de

leurs souffrances et de leurs joies. (Lamarche 30)

The public--Maillet's readers-—are necessary accessories to her
characters' testimonies. Jonathan Culler, in his book Framing the Sign,
has maintained that "the fiction of a reader is absolutely central to the

reading of fiction"61 (204). This claim could be made for storytelling as

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well, because the practice of storytelling depends on the existence of an
audience. Often the "fiction of a reader" is posited by the author or
narrator alone. But Maillet has created characters who are also aware of
the existence of an audience. The Acadians in Maillet's novels seek
witnesses to their life, their sufferings, their stories, their traditions, their
culture. The reader functions as such a witness, privy to the thoughts
and actions of the characters.

However, as Phyllis Wrenn points out, storytellers like Jerome and
Bélonie have a different audience than do narrators: "Le conteux dessert
un public informé et engage, sa performance l'emporte donc souvent sur
la narration et la transmission cohérente de l'information. Le narrateur
dessert, par contre, un public extérieur (nous, 1e lecteur non-initié)" (8).
The narrator, unlike the traditional storyteller, is not speaking to an
audience who knows and feels connected to the stories she tells. There
is, therefore, a greater burden on both the narrator and the reader. The
narrator must provide more information to the reader, "initiating" him
into the ways of the culture she presents. And the reader must
necessarily take a more active role in coming to understand the stories
related. It is for this reason that Maillet posits dialogue or interaction
between the reader and narrator/ story. It is through the questions and
the other openings in her text that the reader can actively participate, as
would the audience of a conteux.

When Maillet maintains that "Acadia exists because of its
storytellers" (Smith 262-3), it becomes clear that one important aspect of
both the oral tradition and Maillet's novels is cultural survival. Through
the oral tradition, through storytellers like Bélonie, Jerome and the

others the Acadians maintained a sense of cultural identity long after

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Acadia ceased to exist geographically. And Maillet's works perpetuate
this oral tradition. "Au coeur de la preoccupation centrale de Maillet est
l'oralité, dans la mesure ou l'oralité reflete la nature et l'identité de la
culture acadienne” (Wrenn 8). Orality and the oral tradition are a
decided focus of Maillet's works because she feels that orality is integral
to Acadian culture. If there is a rapport between the oral tradition and
cultural survival, then there must be a link between cultural survival
and the stories told by Maillet's narrators. The narrator must not only
pass on the stories, but ensure that the reader understands the role of
the oral tradition: "la voix narrative que nous entendons tout au long du
récit, l’interrompt afin de résumer, d’appuyer sur un point, de s’assurer
que le lecteur a bien saisi 1e rapport entre la tradition orale et la survie
culturelle" (Briere 105). The modern narrator of Maillet's novels
intervenes to assure the comprehension of the reader. The reader must
understand not only that the Acadians survived as a people and a
culture, but also how they survived, through their oral tradition. And
Maillet’s novels are the modern vestiges of that oral tradition

These stories, this oral tradition which has kept the Acadians
connected to their past, in fact creates a forum for a dialogue between
past, present and even future. For storytellers of all generations seem to
share some of Bélonie's ability to conquer time--they tell stories, and
attribute meanings and feelings, to characters / people as if they had been
there themselves. Perhaps it is the stories themselves that confer this
transcendent power. After all, these stories have surmounted the
boundaries of time. The stories Bélonie tells, like that of Tit-Jean
Quatorze or the Dame Géante de la nuit, were told by his ancestors since

before they came to Acadia. "Il n'avait rien perdu de son vieux fonds

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gaulois, 1e Bélonie, sorti de Jacques, sorti d'Antoine, sorti de Paris au
temps des chansons et contes drélatiques" (PLC 83). The Acadian stories
are built on a rich tradition, which is not limited to one time or place.
Maillet's stories combine the rich history and the fascinating
legends of the past with modern considerations, and an eye to the future.
Her stories, like those of the storytellers of old, create new worlds, worlds
that transcend the boundaries of reality. As the narrator of Cant ans
dans les bois says,
J ’ai compris tres t6t que les menteux seuls gardaient au fond de
leur besace assez de paroles entiéres ou fractionnées pour
reconstituer 1e vitrail 01) se vire le monde. A la condition de le
regarder a la lumiére du Ievant. Heureusement pour mon pays qui
se réveille a l’est. (CA 14)
It is the storytellers who have the vision and the words to create a new
Acadia. And for Maillet, Acadia is a story: "We are a story, almost a
legend. . . sometimes and epic...partly a comedy, but never a farce, no
never...we have been a little bit of a tragedy but we never took things so
tragically" (Maillet, From Oral to Written Literature). The storytellers of

Acadia have kept, and will continue to keep the Acadian story alive.

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Chapter 4

FROM ORAL TO WRITTEN LITERATURE

Ecrire, C’est une certaine facon de vouloir la liberté.
Jean-Paul Sartre

For many generations, it was the storytellers who kept Acadia
alive. But as Acadia moves into the modern world, as their small
communities dwindle in number and their way of life changes, the
storytellers give way to writers, who have adapted to this new age, and to
the new societal demands made by it. These writers have the same
mission as the storytellers of old: to reflect and transmit the stories of
Acadian culture. The concept of a collective Acadian culture, as Henry-
Dominique Paratte points out, would hardly be possible if it were not for
the storytellers: "dans la constitution d'une identité collective,
l'expression artistique--création ou interprétation--occupe
indiscutablement une place importante" (300).

Writing, it turns out, will prove just as important as the oral
tradition in the shaping of Acadian culture. The writers portrayed in
Maillet's novels represent more than simply a new generation of
storytellers; their experiences reflect the new challenges and dangers of
modern times, as well as the high price of freedom or of social
recognition. With their words, Acadian rebels like Jeanne de Valois and

Radegonde will try to change their worlds, and they will make history by

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writing about themselves. The first generation of Acadian writers--like
Maillet herself52--will combine the oral and written traditions.

Because of their geographical isolation and their lack of schooling,
the Acadians remained an oral people for centuries. In Cent ans dans les
bois, which takes place at the end of the nineteenth century, the oral
tradition and the written word first come into conflict. Jerome-le-
Menteux, the professional storyteller in this novel feels threatened by
Renaud, the "Francais de France" who not only knows how to read and
write, he teaches others to do so as well. Jér6me is perhaps the first of
the Acadians to understand the change that Renaud brings with him,
and he is not comfortable with it. After all, Jér6me’s life and profession
revolve around the oral tradition, so he naturally feels threatened by the
advent of writing. There is, between Jéréme and Renaud, a certain
competition for respect and authority. When Jéréme brings news of the
Acadian convention, Renaud tries to enlighten the villagers about what
will really happen, but Jerome insists on his own version of the story,
calling the convention a "frolique" and insisting on the lighter aspect of
the gathering. Denis Bourque points out that "la dichotomie intrinseque
entre discours populaire et discours consacré est soulignée par le fait
que [J érome], en annoncant au pays ce rassemblement, refuse
obstinément de lui reconnaitre un caractere officiel" (92). Jerome, who
represents the popular or oral discourse, sees things differently from
Renaud, who can read and write, and who thus represents official or
formal discourse. Jerome also feels somewhat displaced by the honor
and attention given to Renaud, who is not even Acadian:

Jéréme s’arrache les cheveux. Pas assez qu’on 1e déshérite de son

trésor, qu’on lui rafle sa plus belle légende, qu’on sabote son

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honneur de premier conteur et chroniqueur du pays, mais on

s’attaque a sa transmission orale a coups de liasses d’écritures.

(CA 303)

Jerome is concerned about the preservation of his way of life, an oral
culture.

For his part, Renaud is fascinated by the oral people he has found
on the coasts, and is trying to observe and record his findings, which is
his way of preserving the culture that he sees. He discovers quickly that,
"ce n’est pas la mémoire qui manque au pays des c6tes" (CA 22 1), but he
can find no written record of the songs, stories, grammar, or facial
expressions of the Acadians whom he finds so fascinating. The
Acadians, however, are not comfortable with his attentions. They find
themselves self-conscious and tongue-tied when he starts to write down
their expressions, and analyze their grammar:

les gens du pays, qui en avaient plein la goule de la syntaxe,

prirent peur devant la dissection de leur propre pensée et se

bouclerent les levres. Ils s’étaient tres bien fait comprendre durant

trois siécles, sans se soucier de l’accord des participes. Mais tout a

coup chacun sentit sa langue coller a son palais. (CA 299)

Renaud tries to explain that "i1 n’avait d’autre but que la sauvegarde du
francais ancien, cette merveilleuse langue conservée au chaud sur leurs
Cotes durant leur long isolement" (CA 299) but Jerome merely laughs at
him. And when he tries to draw Jerome’s face to record his expressions,
Jéréme becomes angry: "Renaud changea de crayon et esquissa sur son
papier les multiples expressions qui couraient sur la figure du Menteux

qui, a son insu, fournissait au Francais les plus éloquents échantillons

d’indignation acadienne" (CA 300). Renaud may feel he is honoring the

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Acadians, their language and culture, but they understand little and
distrust his motives.

The Acadians of Jéréme and Pelagic la Gribouille’s generation must
endure many growing pains, including the introduction of literacy into
their culture. Though Renaud teaches them to read and write, when
they have a chance to communicate with their neighbors on "l'ile Saint-
Jean," (Prince Edward Island), they find themselves at a loss.

Les Acadiens qui avaient trois siecles de mémoire collective, en

1880, n’auraient pas su, méme en apprenant a lire, écrire en

colére, écrire souriant, écrire surpris, écrire fort, écrire hébété,

écrire moqueur, écrire tendre, écrire tout bas. Ils ne savaient point

faire passer leur genie de la gorge aux doigts. (CA 234)

The people of Cent ans dans les bois are not quite ready to pass from an
oral to a written culture. In the end, Jéréme leaves for more northern
territories, Madawaska, "un terrain vierge pour un colporteur d'histoires
et de menteries. Et 1231, au moins, 1e Renaud ne 1e précéderait pas" (CA
353). But the Acadians of Fond-de-la-Baie and other villages will remain
an essentially oral people for generations to come.

It was not, in fact, until the latter half of the twentieth century (a
century after the action of Cent ans dans les bois) that Acadia moves into
the realm of written literature. And even then, the transition was not an
easy one. As Hans Runte points out: "against formidable odds, great
strides have been made on the road to Acadian literary identification.
Materially, Acadian writing had to be created ex nihilo" (Literary Topos
28). Maillet's first writer character, the Acadian nun Mere Jeanne de
Valois, travels this road when she writes about herself and the century in

which she has lived in Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois.63 In writing

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her story, Mere Jeanne is not only writing herself, she is also writing
Acadia. As Runte maintains: "il fut un temps ou la littérature créait
l'Acadie et l'Acadie était sa littérature, ou écrire équivalait a écrire
l'Acadie, et ou l'indéfinissable Acadie se concretisait enfin, et pent-étre
pour la premiere fois, dans la litteréalité de ses textes" (l'Ultime
Déportation 109). Like the many Acadian authors whose work helped to
give solid shape to Acadian culture, Mere Jeanne's Confessions manifest
the realities of Acadian life. She, like Radegonde in Le Chemin Saint-
Jacques, represents the new generation of Acadian storytellers--writers,
who have adapted to a new age, and to new societal demands made by it.
These writers have the same mission as the storytellers of old, to reflect
and transmit the stories of Acadian culture (as well as to entertain). The
fact that they are writing is both a reflection of and a product of a
changing Acadian society.
Mere Jeanne de Valois, the protagonist writing her own story64 in
Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois, is part of this new generation of
Acadian writers. Born in 1899, Mere Jeanne sets out to tell the story of
the century in which she has lived.
Je n'ai pas l'intention avec mes gribouillages de rédiger un traite de
morale ou de philosophie. Meme pas de raconter l'histoire d'une
vie. Non. Tout juste de confiner sur mes larges feuilles détachées
la mémoire, telle que je la porte, d'événements qui emergent de
mon siecle comme des ilots ou des basses en bordure d'océan.
(CJV 9)
Like Jerome and Bélonie, she is testifying to the events she has
witnessed during her lifetime, events that have dramatically shaped

Acadian society. Mere Jeanne writes, tells her story, because she feels

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that she is the only one who could tell it: "une vie, ca colle tellement a
lame que pour la connaitre a l'envers comme a l'endroit, il faut avoir
habité cette ame-la" (CJV 11). She is the only one who can tell her story,
which coincides so well with that of her century, because she has lived it.
Her story, her life, and the transformations she goes through are
representative of Acadian society as a whole. As a child, she points out,
she was lucky to be from a good family, "ce qui dans l'Acadie au debut
du siecle se résumait a une saine alimentation, des vétements chauds en
hiver, l'école a six ans, une vie familiale sans scandales et sans heurts"
(CJV 11). This helped her survive the many childhood diseases prevalent
at the time, a time in which one child out of two or three never reached
the age of five (CJV 11). Yet as long as she can remember, Mere Jeanne
felt that she, like Acadia herself, was driven by a "determination de vivre"
(1CJV 2).

Moreover, Mere Jeanne feels that her life reflects not only the
difficulties of her people, but also the history of the Catholic Church in
Acadia65. For example, when she decides to become a nun, she does not
have the option of joining an Acadian community, as they did not exist at
the time. She must choose between two congregations, an Irish one, in
which she would forsake her native language, or an order from Quebec
which, though French-speaking, would most likely require her to leave
Acadia. She chooses the Irish congregation, because she cannot ignore
the call of her country: "j'avais entendu l'appel du pays avant celui de
Dieu" (CJV 46). For Mere Jeanne, becoming a nun means more than
devoting her life to God, it means devoting her life to the betterment of
her people through teaching and nursing. Later, she leaves with a group

of Acadian nuns to found the first Acadian francophone convent of her

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order. As she helps to found this convent, and the first francophone
Acadian school for girls, and as she negotiates the changes brought by
the second Vatican council, Mere J eanne's story parallels that of the
Catholic Church in Acadia. As she writes, she wonders how she can
separate the two:

par quel biais aborder cette page de ma vie qui se confond a ce

point a l'histoire de l'Eglise acadienne, j'ose dire de l’Acadie tout

entiére, qu'en l'écrivant, j'ai 1e sentiment d'apercevoir ma propre
figure dans le coin d'une verriere représentant l'épopée d'un

peuple? (CJV 64)

She realizes that her life is so entwined with the life of the Church and of
Acadia, that they can't be separated.

Mere Jeanne, in fact, sees herself as part of an epic, the epic of her
people. She has lived through an extraordinary time in Acadia, and she
realizes that in telling her story, she is telling the story of her people.
Further, as she points out to another nun, "nous avons construit jour
apres jour notre propre épopée, cette page de vie qui decide ou non de la
naissance et de la survie d'un peuple" (CJV 321). In her view, an epic is
something active, and the epic of her people is one that they have created
for themselves. She even sees her Confessions as turning toward the
epic: "peut-étre me faudra-t-il prendre quelques jours de réflexion et de
consultation avant de poursuivre des Confessions qui ont l'air de vouloir
tourner au récit épique" (CJV 203). The story she tells, then, is not
insignificant. She may have started out simply recounting the events of
her century, but she soon realizes how important these events have been

in the shaping of Acadian society and culture.

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Despite their epic tendencies, Mere Jeanne's mémoires, or
"Confessions," more closely resemble diary, or even epistolary fiction.
Like a diary, the Confessions are a first-person narration of her
experience of the twentieth century and include many of her own
thoughts, reflections and feelings. Unlike a diary, however, she posits
readers other than herself, fully intending her confessions to speak to a
public audience. In this respect, the Confessions resemble epistolary
fiction; they posit a reader and acknowledge the absence of this
addressee but try nonetheless to overcome it. Mere Jeanne's
acknowledgement of a reader and the dialogue she creates with that
reader contaminates the one-sided aspect of a "memoir," while keeping
intact the idea of a confessor, someone to receive the confessions. Mere
Jeanne often refers to her writings as memoirs; she seems to make little
distinction between memoirs and confessions. She nonetheless calls
them her "Confessions." She may not reveal anything terribly sinful or
shocking, but she is revealing herself, her soul, which is the very essence
of a confession. And since the transformations she goes through are
representative of Acadian society, she is also, it could be argued,
discovering the soul of Acadia.

Like many diary/ journal writers, Mere Jeanne is committed both
to being frank, and to telling the complete story, as best she can: "j'ai
juré de tout vous dire" (CJV 318). And she maintains not only that she
wants to tell all, but also that she plans to remain objective. Moreover,
she decides to limit her reflections to those events which have directly
touched her: "je veux demeurer a l'intérieur du cadre de mes
confesssions personnelles, de mes souvenirs directs, je ne dois pas sortir

de mon siecle" (CJV 51). In limiting herself to personal confessions and

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direct memories, she reinforces her privileged position as an eyewitness
testifying to the events that have shaped her generation; she legitimizes
her authority. Moreover, Mere Jeanne feels that it is important for
someone who actually remembers these "grands événements" (CJV 22) to
testify, "pour ne pas les laisser sombrer dans l'oubli, et, par le fait méme,
les réduire au rang des vétilles et futilités de l'histoire (CJV 22). By
telling her story, the story of Acadia, she is keeping it from being
forgotten.

For whom is her testimony meant? As her memoirs progress, it
becomes clear that her concept of the project is evolving as well. Toward
the beginning of her project, she finds herself wondering exactly whom
she is addressing, concluding that it must be herself, or God:

Je m'adresse a qui qu juste? A qui est-ce que je parle? Il faudrait

le préciser une fois pour puisque je m'éloigne sciemment de mes

contemporains en reculant délibérément la date d'échéance de la
parution de mes Confessions: je dois conclure que je ne parle plus

qu'a moi-meme... on a Dieu. (CJV 16)

Here she is attempting to define her project, a struggle that is evident
throughout the Confessions. She begins by simply writing down her
memories of the century in which she has lived, which she originally sees
as a rather private act, like keeping a diary, or praying.

As her work progresses, however, Mere Jeanne's project seems to
evolve in a different direction, as she begins to direct her memoirs to an
outside audience, positing readers from the year 2000, engaging them in
her ideas on life and society, and anticipating their reactions to her
writing. And though it becomes clear that she writes for outside readers,

she maintains that she has no literary aspirations:

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De toute maniere, je repete depuis le debut que mes Confessions
n'ont aucune prétention littéraire, méme pas de but précis, sauf de
permettre a celle qui aspire a planter son nez dans trois siecles de
dévoiler aux plus curieux d'entre vous l'odeur particuliere d'un
temps qu'ils n'ont pas connu. (CJV 306)
Again, she insists that she is witnessing only one particular moment in
time. She nonetheless fully realizes that her work will be read by her
fellow nuns after she is dead, or after she has published it--two events
which might coincide--and she also posits an outside audience, outside
her convent, and perhaps even outside Acadia. She is careful to explain
things that an outside reader would not understand, and she does not
censor her reflections to suit the tastes or inhibitions of her fellow nuns.
Tant pis pour les prunelles indiscretes qui plongeront dans mes
écrits sans y étre invitees. Ce n'est pas a ces oies-la que je
m'adresse. Mais aux autres qui viendront apres, les curieux de la
petite histoire d'une époque qui pourrait se révéler plus capitale
que l'on pense. (CJV 13)66
During mere Jeanne's lifetime, Acadian society emerged from its
isolation, offering educational and economic opportunities heretofore
unknown. As a child, Mere Jeanne felt that she, and Acadia were
"menacée de disparition" (CJV 39). Yet in her lifetime, "Acadia" has come
to be recognized as a legitimate space, facing new dangers, perhaps, but
no longer in danger of disappearing. Like the storytellers who came
before her, she is offering her testimony, the story of her life and her
experiences. For those who are curious, and who wish to understand the
history of a crucial time in Acadian history, as one person experienced it,

Mere Jeanne offers her memories of her life and times.

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This is very much in keeping with the Acadian oral tradition, even
if Mere Jeanne is Mg, and not telling her story. For the oral tradition
offered generations of Acadians the personal accounts of those who
experienced important, even epic, moments in Acadian history, as Mere
Jeanne does in her Confessions. Choosing herself as a worthwhile
subject represents a recognition of the value of the present-day struggles
and a break with the traditional focus on the past. But Mere Jeanne
does not completely break with the oral tradition; her story retains many
traditional characteristics of folktale. Not only does she posit interaction
with her audience, her work also becomes a dialogue between her
"narrated" self and her "narrating" self (Genette 217). At first, she sees
herself as both the child that she was, and the adult that she is: "11
m'arrive méme...de me dédoubler au point d'engager un dialogue entre
elle et moi, sans plus savoir qui des deux je suis" (CJV 22). She realizes,
then, that there is another part of herself that is accessible only through
her story. The Jeanne de Valois of the memoires has become, in fact, her
alter ego: "je me suis laisser apprivoiser par mon alter ego, cette Jeanne
de Valois en encre et papier, qui me donne chaque matin la réplique et
me montre mon propre visage sous un angle qu'aucun miroir, analyse ni
introspection n'auraient pu révéler" (CJV 155). In writing her story, Mere
Jeanne textualizes herself, and the end result is that she becomes two
people, Jeanne de Valois, and the author of the Confessions. Since she
acknowledges that she has now become two--Mere Jeanne and the
author of the confessions--the act of reading, and even ripping, becomes
a dialectic between these two selves, the narrated and the narrating.
When the author of the Confessions forces Jeanne de Valois in a certain

direction, she is, in a sense, trying to shape history, just as Jeanne de

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Valois did during her lifetime. To create her own epic, she must use
force.

As with the stories of the oral tradition, then, Mere Jeanne's story
posits interaction with the audience. The stories that she narrates offer
the reader the opportunity to penetrate the text, and enter into her
world. She is not, however, presenting readers with the objective truth,
but rather with a forced, self-censored picture. Like the storytellers of
old, she has the power to choose what she presents and how she
presents it. But unlike these storytellers, she does not have a
knowledgeable, interactive audience“. And her story is not a product of
the community, but of herself alone.

Moreover, unlike the stories told by Jerome, Bélonie and the
others, Jeanne de Valois' story (and any interaction with her readers)
takes place in silence, lacking the immediacy of the oral stOry. Since it is
silent, and she is originally unsure of her audience, Mere Jeanne thinks
at first that her writing might function as a sort of prayer, a conversation
between herself and God, she soon realizes this is not the case: "apres
huit mois d'exercice, je me figure encore qu'écrire est un acte la'ique qui
ne saurait au méme titre que la priere ou la meditation rendre gloire a
Dieu" (CJV 103). While both prayer and writing are generally silent
activities, as Mere Jeanne comes to see, the two have very different ends.
And though she has spent her life praying and meditiating, it is writing
that she chooses as the method she will use to look at her life:

mon projet de Confessions est tout recent, et ne precede que de

quelques jours son execution. Mais au debut des années 1970,

alors que je m'efforcais par tous les moyens de digérer une réalité

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qui m'e'tait restee au travers de la gorge, j'avais songé a exorciser

mes peurs et mes doutes par l'écriture. (CJV 258)

Writing is something that Mere Jeanne will do alone, in silence. Unlike
the storytelling of generations past, which was a communal activity,
emphasizing belonging, Mere J eanne's writing will separate, even alienate
her from those around her at the same time as it links her to future
readers.

If Mere Jeanne is alienated from her contemporaries, it is because
in choosing to write / textualize herself, she sets herself off from others.
Writing, after all, according to Derridian theory, is based on difference—-
the difference of black letters on a white page or the difference between
letters, words, and blanks, for example. Through writing, Jeanne de
Valois can assert her uniqueness. This might seem contrary to the
religious life she has chosen, as religion places value on conformity.
However, Mere Jeanne comes to see her writing as secular, separate from
religion, a liberty she feels is possible due to the relaxing of rules brought
on by the Second Vatican Council. "Je n'ai pas l'intention de soumettre
ma prose a l'imprimatur on a la censure. On ne demande plus a Rome la
permission de raccourcir son jupon" (CJV l4). Mere Jeanne has
liberated her text-self from religious conformity in order to assert herself,
to bring out her story from the epic of her people. Her writing does,
however, conform to the pulse of her religious life; like everything else
she does, it is regulated by the bells that call her to prayer, meals, and
the many other aspects of religious life. Though religion may determine
the rhythm of her writing, it does not however restrain the content. In
textualizing herself, mere Jeanne asserts her difference from herself and

from others. The dialogue between herself as subject and herself as

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narrator, as well as the dialogue between Jeanne de Valois and her
reader(s) would not be possible without this difference.

The presence of dialogue, however, does not obviate the question of
power in and over the text. Mere Jeanne has given herself authority over
her text/creation and this brings with it a good deal of power. In fact,
the author of the Confessions chooses to exercise both her creative and
her editorial power over the text / her narrated self, sometimes without
bothering with dialogue, as seen above when she rips out pages without
re-reading them. She has not limited her role or authority, rather she
has elevated herself to an extremely powerful position: "je vais donc
m'efforcer dans les pages qui suivent de reconstituer les événements
comme si je les vivais a mesure, comme si je les regardais d'en haut, d'en
dessous, d'en dedans. Me donner en quelque sorte la position de Dieu 1e
Pere" (CJV 65). As Radi will do in On a mangé la dune and Le Chemin
Saint-Jacques, mere Jeanne has chosen the role of creator. She is
putting herself in the place of God, having control over the creation and
shaping of her text. Just as Jeanne de Valois has created her own epic
through her life's work educating Acadian women, the "author of the
Confessions" is now creating her own epic, the Confessions themselves.

But her power over her text (and over herself as text) will last only
as long as she continues to write. After her writing project is finished,
after her death-—both her physical death, and her death as subject-—all
that will be left is the text, which will then be subject to the
interpretation of others. The text thus becomes an object of mediation,
between writer and reader. It is a physical presence that evokes the
absence of the storyteller. The written text of the Confessions is that part

of Jeanne de Valois which the reader can access. It both allows her

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readers to come in contact with her and at the same time keeps them
from knowing her, as they can only know/ access the image of her in the
text. As Derrida points out, "we are dispossessed of the longed-for
presence in the gesture of language by which we attempt to seize it"
(Supplement 78). In "seizing" the text of the Confessions, we are
attempting to create a presence, that of Jeanne de Valois, but the text
perforce distances us from her, only serves to make us more aware of her
absence. Mere Jeanne's text functions, here, much as would Derrida's
"supplement." According to his theory, "the supplement adds itself, it is
a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of
presence. It cumulates and accumulates presence" (83). Likewise, the
Confessions represent the presence of Jeanne de Valois. But they also
represent her absence: "but the supplement supplements. It adds only
to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of, if it fills, it is
as one fills a void. If it represents and makes an image, it is by the
anterior default of a presence" (83). Mere Jeanne's text is filling a void, it
is making it possible for her to tell her story, and the story of the
Acadians to many people, cutting across barriers of time and place.

Mere Jeanne's work also cuts across barriers of time, as her story
represents a new epic, one focused not on the distant past, but rather on
the present and the future of Acadia.

It is not insignificant that Maillet's first "writer" character chooses
to express herself through the means of "Confessions," a very personal
medium. While Mere Jeanne's style retains some characteristics of the
traditional oral style--the aspect of personal testimony, the insertion of
stories, etc.--it also breaks with these traditions to provide the reader a

much more profound, intimate look at the life of one individual. As she

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states, she is not writing History, but her own "petite histoire." The
difference between these is a question of distance; the "petite histoire" of
Mere Jeanne is a much more intimate work. The diary or "Confessions"
is an easy medium for such a personal narrative. Moreover, it is also the
logical choice for a writer who has no definite plans for publication. The
journal /memoir form is accessible even to non-professional writers.

Mere Jeanne de Valois' transition into the world of writing is a subtle one
that neither truly challenges her, nor breaks down the barriers between
oral and written literature. But she is, nonetheless, the first of Maillet's
characters to make the transition to written literature.

This is true for Radegonde, in Le Chemin Saint-Jacques as well.
Through her writing, she saves the stories she has grown up with, and
allows others--like Mimo--access to them. But for Acadians like
Radegonde and Mere Jeanne, writing has yet another important function,
as a mediator between the real and the ideal. "We view narration and
narrativity as the instruments by which the conflicting claims of the
imaginary and the real are mediated, arbitrated, or resolved in a
discourse" (White 4). Radegonde and Jeanne de Valois are both
witnessing and testifying to the stories and events which have shaped
Acadia's collective consciousness and attempting to create a new world,
(re)creating themselves, and those around them. It is through their
narration that they bring together their dreams and their realities. Like
the storytellers, Jerome and Bélonie, and the rebels Crache 51 Pic,
Mariaagélas and the Mercenaire women, Radegonde and Jeanne de
Valois are using their words and their stories to rebel against the history
that would have been forced on them by the Deportation and to create

their own history, "their own epic" as Mere Jeanne says. This new

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generation of Acadian storytellers is once again using their narrative
talents to create alternate realities for themselves, fusing together real
and ideal.

It is only in Maillet's most recent novel, Le Chemin Saint-Jacques,
that the main character--a young girl named Radi--actually grows up to
be a writer. Le Chemin Saint-Jacques takes up the story begun in On a
mangé la dune, the story of Radi's childhood and her beginnings as a
storyteller. On a mangé la dune is narrated in the third person from
Radi's perspective, and the almost stream of conscious style allows the
reader to slip easily from 'reality' to the world of Radi's imagination and
back again. The Radi of On a mangé la dune is a nascent storyteller, who
prefers the world of her own imagination: "elle rentre en elle pour y
chercher de quoi jeter les fondements d'un univers nouveau" (115). The
Radi of Le Chemin Saint-Jacques, also a storyteller, is more complex. The
first half of Le Chemin Saint-Jacques is the story of Radi, told in the third
person. The second half of the novel however, is narrated in the first
person by Radegonde-—Radi who has become an adult and a writer. The
differences between the two novels reflect the transition of both Radi and
Acadia from an oral culture to a written one, from the world of a child's
imagination to the carefully narrated world of an adult consciousness.

The most significant difference between these two novels is the
addition of the adult narrator Radegonde in Le Chemin Saint-Jacques.
Most of Maillet's novels follow the same model of multiple storytellers and
narrators that shows the interplay of stories over generations. Le Chemin
Saint-Jacques, however, presents a slightly different narrative model--one
that more closely resembles what Derrida calls an "internal polylogue"

(Attridge 34)“. Unlike Pélagie-la-Charrette and other novels that have

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been passed down from generation to generation, the story of Radi
passes only through her adult consciousness before it is narrated or
written. Although there are other storytellers in Le Chemin
Saint-JacquesuTilmon, Thadée, Zélica, 81. Evangeline—-Radi and
Radegonde are the only narrators through whom the stories are filtered.
But each storyteller, like Bélonie, takes the stories as part of himself and
makes them his own. Thus in telling the stories of the past they are in
fact telling the story of themselves, just as the story of Radi is part of
Radegonde and their stories cannot be separated. As she says, "au fond
de moi restait enfoui ce personnage qui ne m'avait jamais quittée tout a
fait et qui s'appelait Radi. Mon double, ma muse, mon guide intrépide"
(CSJ 286). When Radi the storyteller becomes Radegonde the author,
she, like Mere Jeanne, has effectively doubled herself. She has become
the two heroes Genette speaks of, the one narrated and the other
narrating (217). The "character" of Radi, and all her stories, become a
part of the Radegonde, who can write these stories.

Like the accomplished storyteller Bélonie, Radi the apprentice
storyteller is somewhat clairvoyant--she has the power to neutralize time.
She predicts or rather sees two deaths before they happen, and knows
that another person presumed dead has not in fact drowned. From her
privileged position, Radi (like Bélonie) can make connections that others
cannot. And, later, Radegonde will make the connections between
Acadia and Normandy (CSJ 301). She travels to France and connects
her family name to the name of three brothers who worked on the
cathedral Notre Dame, "les descendants des trois freres chefs de la guilde
des macons qui en 1250 sculptaient la facade de Notre-Dame et qui ont

recu cette année-la le nom de leur outil, 1e maillet" (CSJ 266).

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Radegonde makes the connection between the "Old World" (France) and
the "New World" of Acadia, as well as the connection between the oral
and written worlds. Radegonde also has the power to connect and
narrate the events of Radi's (and her own) life together into a coherent
whole. This is the same power that the narrators of Pélagie-la-Charrette
and other novels have--the ability to see what happened in the past, to
see the importance and the meaning of the stories around them.

It is not surprising to note, then, that the defining moments in
Radi's (and Radegonde's) life all revolve around narration. In On a mange
la dune, the father's illness forces economic changes on the family, and
they must let their servant Josephine go. This is a calamity for the
children, especially Radi, since Josephine told the best stories, one even
lasted a whole hour! After the departure of Josephine, Radi is forced to
invent her own stories. In Le Chemin Saint-Jacques, Radi is introduced
to the power of stories at the young age of three when a neighbor tells her
the story of the three bears and she discovers another world. Radi cannot
get enough of these stories.69 "Le plus grand jour de ses trois ans fut
celui ou elle comprit qu'elle pouvait méme se passer d'Alice, puisqu'elle
avait trouvé la clef des combinaisons qui introduit Cendrillon chez le chat
botté, le Chaperon rouge chez la Belle au bois dormant..." (CSJ 29).

Radi can now create her own stories. She has found in imagination the
key that will allow her to create, to entertain, to narrate.

Avidly seeking more and more stories, Radi ends up in the forge”,
listening to the old men spin their tales. And it is through the forge that
she learns that she too has the power to narrate. Radi begins to tell a
story she has heard at the forge to her family; it is an immediate success

and Radi revels in the joy of narration. Unfortunately, her family is not

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pleased with the story's less than proper ending, and they move to
censure Radi.71 "Elle perdait la forge, mais acquerait la conviction qu'elle
serait un jour conteuse" (CSJ 11). This realization of the power of
narration will shape Radi/Radegonde's life. And it is not insignificant
that this transformation happens in a forge, for to fprgg is to form and
fabricate, which is after all the epitome of poetic action.72

Having already learned the value of storytelling, Radi will learn
another crucial lesson when her teacher reads the class Daudet's story
"La Derniere Classe." As Radi enters the world of "le petit Franz," she
enters also into the world of literature. "Elle avait recu La Demie‘re
Classe d'Alphonse Daudet comme la foudre, mais une foudre qui l'avait
soulée, non pas anéantie. Elle entrait en littérature comme a trois ans
dans les contes, téte premiere" (CSJ 134). And as she listens to Franz's
teacher announcing the end of classes in French, and watches her
Acadian teacher crying the same tears as the old Alsatian, Radi discovers
that stories and storytelling are inextricably linked with another integral
part of identity: language. Radi sympathizes with Franz, who will be
forced to speak a language not his own. A seed has been planted in
Radi: "cette histoire-la lui avait révélé 1e plaisir de la chose écrite" (CSJ
134). Although Radi has grown up a francophone in an English-
speaking world, her reaction to Daudet's story marks an important
moment in her development--a dawning awareness of the crucial role
language plays in identity.

As an adult, Radegonde will master the linguistic codes that gain
her recognition as an accomplished author. But even as she is becoming
an apprentice storyteller, young Radi learns a sort of code that permits

her to see the world from a different angle. Her neighbor, la vieille

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Lamant, midwife and mentor for Radi, teaches her how to "read between
the lines". This is, perhaps, for Radi, the beginning of a critical
relationship with language, a relation that Helene Cixous maintains is
necessary for a writer: "they must invent new beginnings, remove
themselves from the fixed categories and identities they have inhabited,
explore the 'third body': which is neither the inside nor the outside, but
the space between" (Shiach 26). This is exactly what Radi wants to do:
liberate herself from the categories fixed by family and society and have
more choices. She starts doing this by reading between the lines,
adopting a divergent point of view which becomes a sort of code between
Radi and her young friends, a code that older people, like her sister
Celine cannot understand. But as she grows older, what began as a
game becomes the key to Radi's success. She will take a critical look at
the world, and free herself from the limitations forced on her as a woman
and as a francophone.

It is Radi's critical approach to the world, as well as her refusal to
accept limitations that will inevitably spur her to announce to her
teacher that she wants to be a writer, in French. This is a crucial
moment in Radi's development as a writer. When Radi's composition
class is asked to write the story of their own funeral, Radi is excited,
already imagining the tragic scene. But when the teacher furnishes the
title "My Own Funeral," Radi chokes: "mourir en anglais? Soudain sa
mort l'étouffe. Elle veut raconter ses funérailles dans ses mots, ses
propres mots, les premiers a s'étre logés sous son crane" (CSJ 21 1). At
the age of twelve, Radi is confronted with the reality of being a
francophone in an anglophone world as the teacher denigrates the

French language, saying it will only close the doors to success. Radi

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cannot and will not accept that the language of her ancestors, of
Charlemagne, of Joan of Arc, of Daudet could hold her back. Suddenly
the importance of language becomes clear to Radi, and she realizes that
to turn her back on her own language, as the teacher has done, would be
to deny her very self:

Car si elle épouse la langue des autres, elle risque de perdre la

sienne. . . Elle peut renoncer a tout, elle sait maintenant qu'elle

devra apprendre petit a petit a renoncer a presque tout, mais pas a

ca. Les mots sont la matiere méme avec laquelle Radi s'est

fabriqué une vie, une vie unique, non interchangeable. Elle n'a

pas de vie de rechange et ne saurait donc renoncer a rien de ce qui

la constitue essentiellement. (CSJ 212-13)

Radi now senses how critical her language is, to her identity and to her
story. It is this newfound knowledge--and the feeling that if she doesn't
take a stand for her language now she will be forever silenced-~that
forces Radi to stand up to her teacher and profess her intention to make
a career for herself: "J'écrirai, en francais" (CSJ 213). In rebelling against
her teacher and against the obligatory use of English, Radi has found the
first stirrings of an ambition to make a life for herself with her words.
But not until she is an adult does she realize that she can be responsible
for the written expression of the story/ history of her people.

Writing is the destiny to which Radi is born, coming into the world
at the moment when the church bells are chiming the Angelus73: "Et
Verbum caro factum est, hurlait l'angélus. Le Verbe s'était fait chair. Le
verbe, le sujet, le complement, toute la phrase. Car Radi n'allait pas en
rester la. . . " (CSJ 14). Born at the moment when the 'Word became

flesh,‘ Radi is, herself, the word made flesh-~she will give a physical

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existence to the words of her people when she writes. She not only
becomes an author, she makes herself her own subject--she textualizes
herself. Radi's stories, her text-self, take on a physical form when she
writes; her words become flesh.

At the same time that Radi fulfills her destiny to be a writer, she
also grows into her full name, Radegonde. Though, as a child, Radi was
never comfortable with her name, as says: "Je n'ai pas non plus change
de nom, l'age m'a tranquillement fait glisser dans mon prénom
complet..." (CSJ 242). That she changes to her full name is important:
as a child she was not comfortable with her full name, and settled for
using only part of it. But just as she must grow into her destiny as a
writer, she must also grow into her real name. Her childhood was her
"anti-destin" (CSJ 242), in her adulthood, she becomes "Radegonde," and
realizes destiny as a writer.

Between childhood and adulthood is a period of Radi's education
that passes largely unnarrated. This period is nonetheless critical in the
development of Radegonde the writer. At the end of the first part of the
novel, devoted to Radi's childhood, Radi's mother dies. Standing at the
gravesite, watching her mother's coffin being lowered into the ground,
Radi feels adrift in the world. Then thanks to her timid oldest sister (a
nun) and two other nuns, Radi is offered the education that she has
always known was the key to freedom of choice. Radi leaves her
childhood behind to accompany her sister Céline to the first Acadian
school ("college") for girls in Memramcook. Education offers Radi not
only the opportunity to choose a career other than wife, nun, or old maid
(CSJ 33), it offers her the opportunity to break free of the familial chains

that would restrict her development as a writer.74

138

Having thus shed her chains, Radegonde is free to explore the
world. Her education opens new doors, and she travels to Louisiana and
to Europe, following the stories passed down to her through the Acadian
oral tradition and through literature.75 She visits France because
literature has inspired in her a burning curiosity about the past. But
when she is there, she also realizes that all the books she was reading
were leading her away from her homeland.

Les livres, tous les livres venaient d'ailleurs. Je n'imaginais méme

pas voir de mon vivant, imprimes sur du vrai papier dans de vrais

volumes relies, mes noms quotidiens et familiers. Mon village qui
faisait la gloire de nos c6tes, mes collines, mes foréts, mes ciels
étoilés, mes gens pourtant aussi pittoresques et gueulards que
tous les héros de Balzac ou de Zola, mes rites et saisons, mes
travaux et mes jours, ma vie propre ne figurait dans aucun livre.

L'école m'avait instruite a méme la vie des autres. Je soupconnais

que si jamais je devais lire mes noms familiers, je devrais les écrire

moi-meme, d'ou 1e cri spontané arraché a ma gorge de douze ans:

"Je veux étre écrivain, en francais!" (276)

Radegonde the adult is just beginning to understand what she has been
chosen to do. In studying the stories of others, she realizes that if she
wants to see her own culture in literature, she will have to write the
stories herself. Radi the storyteller has finally become Radegonde the
author, she has finally actualized her spontaneously chosen career. It is
Radegonde who, like Maillet herself, gives written voice to the stories so
essential to both her personal identity and-~if they can be separated--her

identity as an Acadian.

139

Having become a successful author, and after having returned to
her hometown because her sister is dying, Radegonde re-encounters
Mimo, the anglophone idol of her youth. Mimo was popular, pretty, and
commanded respect, and as a child, Radi admired her for these qualities.
But as she grew older, she abandoned Mimo, who represented the
English-speaking world Radi was forced to live in. Instead, Radi chose as
her idol Jeanne d'Arc, the French warrior whose goal was to "bouter les
Anglais dehors" (CSJ 75). Radi is inspired by this goal, and makes it her
own. When she again meets Mimo, in the cemetery, she understands
that she has realized her dreams. She has, by publishing successful
novels in French, contributed to the re-establishment of a recognized
francophone Acadian identity. Mimo was once the girl to whom
everyone would listen when she talked, as Radi observes: "Quand elle est
la, le monde fait cercle autour d'elle; quand elle parle, le monde se tait et
l'écoute" (CSJ 62). And now Mimo has read Radegonde's books. The
tables have been turned and it is Mimo's turn to be quiet and listen.

Like Jeanne d'Arc, Radegonde has secured (or helped to secure) for her
people the ability to speak their native French in their homeland. Thus
in Radi/ Radegonde, we see that stories actually d9 have the power to
shape lives. The story of the three bears changed Radi's life because she
realized the power of narration and imagination, and later, the stories
that Radegonde writes help to solidify and to disseminate Acadian
culture.

This is, in fact, Radi's mission as a writer, given to her by her
father's cousin Thadée when she is just an apprentice storyteller.

Thadée is the person to whom Radi turns to tell and to hear stories. One

day, he commissions her to become a spokesperson for Acadia:

140

-L'Acadie?

--Dans le mille! Enregistre ce nom-la dans ta petite caboche; un

jour, tu pourrais en avoir besoin, on sait jamais.

Un jour, elle en aurait besoin.

--Pour quoi faire?

Thadée affile l'allumelle de son rabot sur une meule.

-—Pour dire aux autres, qui nous avont oubliés, qui c'est que je

sons, nous autres, et d'ou c'est que je venons. (CSJ 165)

Through her stories, and her writing, Radi will witness to the Acadia that
had been forgotten, she will bring it alive again. As a witness to both the
oral and the written epochs of her community, Radi joins together these
two different traditions. She is not only telling the story of Acadia, she is
giving it concrete shape, making it a reality in her books. Her writings
actually help to effect a new reality, a new Acadia in which Francophones
are recognized, and it is not necessary to "bouter les Anglais dehors," as
she had once dreamed of doing.

For Radi, stories are not only a way of giving meaning to the world
around her, they are, in fact, a way of shaping the world, of molding it to
her own taste. She can have the vacation at the beach that her family is
deprived of, she can be God, creating her own world, and manipulating
the people in it to suit herself.76 For Radegonde this means that she can
tell /hear her own stories and not be confined to those of other people
and other cultures. Barbara Johnson maintains that: "all plots are plots
against authority, that authority creates the scene of its own destruction,
that all stories necessarily recount by their very existence the subversion
of the father, of the gods, of consciousness, of order, of expectations, or

of meaning" (Johnson 88). Both Radi and Radegonde use their stories to

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challenge the world given them, a world in which there are few options
for women and for francophones. In and through their stories, they
exercise control over the world, they investigate and give meaning to life
(Miller 69).

But there is an even deeper quest in Radi's stories and
Radegonde's writings. As a young child, Radi is constantly trying to
reconnect with her "past," the paradise she inhabited before she was
born; and she is fascinated--and horrified--by the story of Adam and Eve,
who renounced paradise for an apple. Her mentor, the Vieille Lamant,
however, sets her on the path of an even greater quest, the quest for
eternity. This quest, which the Vieille Lamant and Radi call "1e chemin
Saint-Jacques," will pull Radi/ Radegonde throughout her life: "On
s'attaquait a mes reins chaque fois que je m'éloignais du chemin trace
dans l'attique d'une iconoclaste. . . " (CSJ 358). "Le chemin Saint-
Jacques," an Acadian expression for the Milky Way”, is also the route
that medieval pilgrims would take from Paris to Compostella, to obtain
pardon for their sins. "Le chemin Saint-Jacques" becomes, for
Radi/ Radegonde, a sort of pathway to eternity, a pathway she will
ultimately follow through her writing. Finally, before she leaves Europe
to return to her dying sister, Radegonde is taken to the cathedral at
Amiens, where she like other pilgrims who could not make the journey to
Compostella can trace the pilgrimage in miniature, in a stone labyrinth:

Dans le parcours complexe du labyrinthe d'Amiens, mes pieds ont

trace un dessin qui s'est mis a ressembler a mon voyage dans le

temps et le pays qui s'est appelé successivement les Gaules, la
terre franque, la France. Je regardais sous mes pieds la

topographie pleine de reliefs et de configurations, et je

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m'émerveillais de voir suspendu et fixé dans des monuments et des

mots un morceau de temps infini. (CSJ 364)
In tracing "le chemin Saint-Jacques," Radegonde has glimpsed eternity.

Like the storytellers before them, the mission of Acadian writers
like Jeanne de Valois and Radegonde is to keep Acadia alive, nurturing a
sense of Acadian culture and identity. Jeanne de Valois and Radegonde
represent a new awareness, however: the realization that their own
stories, and the stories that surround them not only have value, they
constitute the epic of their people. In both Les Confessions de Jeanne de
Valois, and Le Chemin Saint-Jacques, there is a sense that is very
connected to time. Mere Jeanne states that: "Nous avions hérité du
temps, faute de lieu. J 'ai déja lu quelque part que l'Acadie n'était pas un
endroit mais un envers" (CSJ 228). Acadia may not exist geographically,
but it has a rich history, which goes back several centuries. This sense
of history and time is a key concept in Maillet's novels. When Radegonde
visits the Sistine Chapel in Rome, she sees that in Michaelangelo's
painting "l'avant et l'aprés se rejoignaient. Le paradis retrouvé" (CSJ
361). This vision reflects her goal as an author as well. As Maillet
herself says of her writing career: "Done, moi, je fais chez moi
aujourd'hui avec mes contemporains, je fais ce qu'on fait les petits-fils de
Charlemagne, je fais passer une langue de l'oral a l'écrit" (Discours 14).
In making the transition from oral to written literature, Radegonde,
Jeanne de Valois and Maillet have joined the two ends of time together
and have glimpsed eternity. Their works pull together the past and the

future of Acadia, keeping the past alive and real for future generations.

143

CONCLUSION

L'imaginaire est ce qui tend a devenir réel.
Andre Breton

Like the works of her characters Radegonde and Mere Jeanne de
Valois, Antonine Maillet's writings also keep the Acadian past alive for
future generations. In her novels she has given voice to the epic
heroines, the rebels, the storytellers, and even the writers who constitute
the "petite histoire" of her people. As Marguerite Maillet states:
"Antonine Maillet poursuit inlassablement un projet initié en 1958 avec
Pointe-aux—Coques: récupérer la petite histoire de son pays et fixer les
traditions populaires acadiennes" (128). Through her characters, she
has provided readers with a tableau of the people and the traditions that
color Acadian history. Her characters do this in different ways. The epic
heroes and cultural icons such as Pélagie-la-Charrette, Pelagic-la-
Gribouille or Mademoiselle Cormier provide the mythic framework
around which a sense of cultural identity can be established. The
rebellious characters like Mariaagélas and Crache-a-Pic embody the
cheerful disregard for authority that allowed Acadians to persist in the
face of the British determination to eradicate and assimilate them.78
And, of course, none of this rich material would be available, even to

Maillet herself, were it not for the generations of storytellers--and now

144

writers-~who kept these stories alive. These characters give us a sense of
what it meant to be Acadian in the generations following the Deportation.

But even if Maillet's 'project‘ ("recupérer la petite histoire de son
pays") remains constant throughout her works, her approach undergoes
some transformations. Although her earliest works take place in Acadia,
and valorize the Acadian traditions, they are still more personal, less epic
stories. Pointe-aux—Coques, Maillet's first novel, portrays a heroine
returning to her Acadian roots, and championing the traditional Acadian
village, but it is not rooted in the same legendary tradition that so many
of Maillet's later works are. Written in standard French, Pointe-aux-
Coques is a story which, though set in Acadia, could have happened
anywhere. Its themes are universal. Maillet's second novel, On a mangé
la dune, is also written in standard French. Despite its Acadian setting,
On a mange la dune is, at its simplest level, the story of a girl's evolving
consciousness and imagination. The young heroine, Radi, is developing
an awareness of the world around her, as well as the world of fiction--
although for the most part, she prefers to see the world through her
imagination. Here again, Acadia is the background or setting, rather
than the principal theme of the novel. These two novels have a universal
appeal; audiences of any race and culture could relate to the stories of
Mlle Cormier and Radi. Maillet had not yet begun to focus on the wealth
of material she inherited through the oral tradition.

Beginning with Don l'Orignal, her third novel (published in 1972),
however, Maillet began to turn to this Acadian oral tradition as her
source of inspiration, and as her subject matter. These novels are made
of what Maillet herself calls the "matiére d'Acadie...cette vaste matiére

des c6tes, parallele a cette matiere de France et cette matiere de Bretagne

145

qu'on avait apportees dans ses bagages trois siecles plus t6t" (CA, 227).
Maillet's use of the "matiere d'Acadie" makes of the works of this period a
"geste acadienne" (CA, 227). Written no longer in standard French, but
rather in the Acadian French that comes naturally to the characters, and
reflecting the stories, songs and legendary adventures of the oral
tradition, these works extol and at the same time help develop the
identity of the Acadian people.79 They have earned Maillet recognition as
"a bard who in and through the telling of her tales is living, and is
making us live with her, the birth of the genre and of a country" (Runte,
144). In works like Don l'Orignal, Mariaagélas, Emmanuel a‘ Joseph (I
Davit, Les Cordes de Bois and Crache a Pic, readers witness the gestation
of an Acadian identity.

The characters in the novels of this period are fighting to maintain
their own society, to keep their culture alive. They return from
deportation, they rebuild their communities, they brave economic and
social obstacles, but continue to nurture their stories and traditions.
Together the characters that populate these novels--the adventurers and
heroes, like Michel-Archange, Mariaagélas, Crache a Pic, and of course
Pelagic and Pélagie-la-Gribouille, the upstanding citizens like La Sainte
and la veuve a Calixte, the bootleggers and outlaws like the Mercenaire
women, and of course the storytellers like Pamphile, Bélonie, Jerome and
so many others-—these characters make up what Mere Jeanne de Valois
calls the "verriere représentant l'épopée d'un peuple" (64). They are part
of the mosaic that is the Acadian people.

Even as the characters in her novels fight for their continued
existence as a people, Maillet's novels themselves do the same. They

share with the world the richness of the Acadian culture and help

146

preserve the kinds of stories and traditions that Maillet received from
generations of storytellers. As Melvin Gallant maintains: "une littérature
qui se veut nationale, c'est-a-dire qui cherche a exprimer l'ame d'un
peuple, doit commencer par parler du pays, de son espace vital, des
événements qui l'ont marque et des gens qui l'ont bati" (80). In the
novels of this period, Maillet evokes the people and legends at the heart
of Acadia. She creates a vital space where outlaws, rebels and heroes
live, and she is sharing this space, which is Acadia, with the world.

In her last three novels, however, Maillet has begun to turn her
attention to a more modern Acadia. The characters in L'Oursiade and
her last two novels, Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois and Le Chemin
Saint-Jacques, are not legendary figures from the oral tradition, but
rather modern Acadians facing the challenges of life in the (late)
twentieth-century. Having come out of their isolation in often
uneducated oral societies, these characters are facing different
challenges than those in earlier novels. In these novels, we find that the
vital, creative space of Acadia has long been established, but it is now in
more direct contact and conflict with the majority anglophone
community surrounding it. And though the characters in these novels,
especially Radi in Le Chemin Saint-Jacques, are influenced by the
Acadian oral tradition, this tradition does not play the same critical role
that it does in Maillet's earlier novels. As we rediscover the Radi of On a
mangé la dune, we find that she (as Radegonde) has effectively integrated
the real and the imaginary. In fact, it was through the world of
imagination and stories that Radi/Radegonde came to know the ‘real’
world. She had first to discover the world of fiction, and her study of this

world of fiction led her around the world. Maillet too has progressed

147

through the imaginary world of Acadian legends, back to a world of
everyday difficulties. These characters--Radi/ Radegonde, mere Jeanne
de Valois, and Titoume--will not be the stuff of oral legends. They are the
generation that will move beyond oral tradition, into the world of formal
education and of writing. No longer confined to one small village, their
world has opened to include other villages, other provinces, other
countries. In all of these novels, the characters struggle to balance
tradition and modernity, still valuing their heritage but adapting to the
struggles of life in modern Acadia. They keep the past alive, while still
looking toward the future.

Throughout the various stages in Maillet's works one common
thread remains: each novel, each character represents one small yet
personal facet of the Acadian story. Each voice blends with the others,
creating the "petite histoire" of the Acadian people. Maillet has not tried
to create a general "History" of her people, but merely to give voice to the
many characters who came to her through the oral tradition. These
characters are Acadian, since Maillet is Acadian, but their stories go
beyond the boundaries of time and space. Since her characters so
eloquently portray the "petite histoire" of her people, Antonine Maillet has
often been taken for a spokesman for Acadia, a role that she rejects:

I don't even want to be a spokesman (porte-parole). I want to be

speech (parole). I am one word of Acadia. But there is the whole

language which remains aside, which remains to other writers,

Acadian and quebecois. I haven't told everything. I've told myself.

They must tell themselves. (Fitzpatrick, Search 12)

Maillet does not represent all Acadians, which is what distinguishes her

writings or "petite histoire" from "History," the history of ethnographers,

148

mythographers, historiographers, journalists, etc. (CA 337). Through her
characters she does however give voice, "parole," to some of the Acadian
population; to those whose stories constitute Maillet's own story. As she
states: "Quand j'écris, je sens que je suis l'aboutissement de cet
immense chéne qui s'appelle le monde. Dans ce chéne, il y a une petite
branche qui est la mienne, c'est l'Acadie" (Barrett, 34). Maillet's goal,
writes Renate Usmiani, is "to express the universal via the regional" (71).
Writing connects her to the entire world; in telling her story, which is the
story of her ancestors, she joins her/ their story with the story of all
humankind. Maillet's novels have created a mythic piece of Acadia open
to everyone. As Jeanne de Valois says: "j'ai compris...que la beauté du
monde reside dans sa diversité, que la richesse culturelle universelle est
composée de la difference des cultures multiples, qu'une seule Acadie qui
s'éteint fait un trou dans la tapisserie du firmament" (JDV 47). The
culture that the characters in Maillet’s novels keep alive enriches the
world.

Antonine Maillet deals in words. She uses the words of her people
to tell her stories. Like the stories, the words have been passed down to
her from generation to generation. These are the words which Rabelais
used in sixteenth-century France, words like gg‘goton, chacuniere,
dumeshui. . . which have never fallen into disuse in Acadia. According to
Maillet, the Acadians have preserved all these words, which are no longer
used in France: "Quand Rabelais a écrit ces Cinq livres avec 100.000
mots et deux siecles plus tard, le plus grand, Racine, écrit toute son
oeuvre avec 5.000 mots, ou sont passes les 95.000 autres? En Acadie,
Mesdames, Messieurs" (Discours, 13). The richness of Maillet's works

lies not only in the stories that they tell, but also in the words, the

149

language in which they are told. In the words of Eloise Briere, "Maillet
has created. . . a linguistic homeland for Acadians. . . No longer silent
subjects of discourse, Maillet's Acadian characters become speaking
subjects" (3). Maillet’s characters use their own words, words that were
their heritage, to create both a story, and a linguistic identity.

Moreover, like her character Radegonde, Maillet is the word made
flesh--she has taken the stories she has heard, and those she has
imagined, and concretized them in her novels. Her word has also
become "flesh" in the Pays de la Sagouine, a tourist attraction near her
hometown of Bouctouche, New Brunswick. Here, on a tiny island (not
unlike the "ile aux puces" featured in several of her novels), there stands
a tiny "Acadian village" where every summer Maillet's most famous
characters, la Sagouine, la Sainte, and many others, come to life, and
her stories are acted out for the myriad tourists who visit each year.
Maillet has created an entire world, with her words and stories, and a
portion of this "world" can be seen at the Pays de la Sagouine. Like Radi
in On a mange la dune and Le Chemin Saint-Jacques, Maillet has used
imagination and legend as a basis for creating a new world. The patterns
of imagination and consciousness that we see in Radi’s life are reflected
in the corpus of Maillet's work. By delving into the fantastic world of flea
people (les Pucois), outlaws and other such legendary characters,
Maillet's "world" has become real, both literally and figuratively, to the
thousands of people who read her books and who visit the Pays de la
Sagouine.

Maillet has stated that: "tout acte de creation. . . est une lutte
contre le destin, une sorte de tentative d'éterniser les choses et la vie"

(Major 14). In telling the stories of Pélagie, La Sagouine and her many

150

other characters, Maillet has created a vision of Acadia and the Acadians
that will endure. Through these characters she has battled a destiny
which nearly silenced Acadia forever. The characters she has created
may not speak for all of Acadia, but they are voices, telling their own
pieces of the Acadian story. And, as Maillet points out: "Si nous n'avons
qu'un cri a faire et que nous le crions avant de mourir, c'est déja énorme.
C'est déja énorme qu'aujourd'hui on parle de l'Acadie, qu'on sache qu'elle

est vivante" (Gay 21).

151

1 The French colony known as Acadie was settled in 1604, and although
as early as 1621 the English claimed it as their own (naming it "Nova
Scotia") it did not officially become English territory until 1713.

2 Although there were many complicated historico-political factors
leading to the Deportation of the Acadians, their refusal to become
anglicized, protestantized subjects who would fight against the French
was probably the most decisive factor in the Deportation.

3 This same demand was made successfully by the people of Quebec after
the defeat of the French by the English in 1759. On that occasion, the
English, feeling pressure from the independence movement in the
American colonies, acted to obtain the neutrality of Québecois in the
impending war.

4 For a more thorough examination of the history surrounding the
Acadian Deportation see N.E.S. Griffiths, The Acadian Deportation:
Deliberate Perfidy or Cruel Necessity?, which gathers historical texts and
analyses from the past three centuries, and l'Acadie de 1686 d 1 784:
Contexte d’une histoire which both attempt to provide a detailed,
historical study of the situation in Acadia leading up to the Deportation.
5 See Ernest Martin's study L'Evangéline de Longfellow et la suite
merveilleuse d'un poéme, Paris, Hachette, 1936, p. 150.

6 Antonine Maillet, Pélagie-la-Charrette, (Montreal, Leméac, 1979),

hereafter cited as PLC.

152

7 Raoul Boudreau, "La Quéte de l'identité en poésie acadienne,"
LittéRéalite. Vol. V, No 2, Hiver/ Winter 1993-1994.

8 Antonine Maillet, Cent ans dans les bois, (Montreal: Leméac), 1981 and
Les Cordes-de-Bois (Montreal, Leméac, 1977), hereafter cited as CA and
CdB, respectively.

9 This "je-tu" opposition manifests itself on the individual level as well.
Maillet's characters often pair off in diametrically opposed sets, such as
Mariaagélas and la veuve a Calixte, and the Mercenaires and Ma Tante la
Veuve. The oppositions between these rebelious heroines and their
moralistic adversaries are examined in Chapter 2.

10 But Acadian society was not (and is not) homogeneous. The
difference between "self" and "other" also divides their society into "les
gens d'en-haut" and "les Crasseux" or "les gens d'en-bas." The rigid
distinction between these two groups is seen in almost all of Maillet's
works, but most clearly in Don L'Original and Les Crasseux.

11 In referring to "l'Histoire" with a capital H, Maillet seems to be positing
a difference between History, and "la petite histoire" that she refers to in
novels such as Les Cordes-de-Bois and les Confessions de Jeanne de
Valois. The story of Pélagie, then, (as will be examined in Chapter 1),
belongs to Acadia's epic past, and is therefore elevated beyond the realm
of mere folktale.

12 Antonine Maillet, Crache 61 Pic (Montreal: Leméac, 1984), hereafter

cited as CAP.

153

13 Antonine Maillet, Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois, (Montreal:
Leméac, 1992), hereafter cited as CJV.

14 Bernard Aresu, in his introduction to a special issue of Quebec Studies
devoted to Antonine Maillet, points out that the language she uses-—the
language of the Acadians--is, in itself, a form of cultural resistance: "This
archaic French of the late Middle Ages and of Rabelais symbolizes, in a
sense, a striking phenomenon of cultural resistance, fighting as it does,
unlike the joual and chiac dialects, against the encroachments of the
language of the conquerors. To the modern reader, it profices a rich
insight into the cultural and historical development of an ethnic group"
(232).

15 Runte, in "L‘Acadie de l'ultime deportation" distinguishes between
"l'acadianité, américaine ou autre" and "l'acadianitude," implying a more
profound understanding of Acadian identity (117).

16 Mikhail Bakhtine, Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris, Gallimard,
1978.

17 "He really did save a ship with Acadians in it, or at least that's what
the legend says. So I took the legend and I put it into my book and that's
the reason it may seem a little less real than the others. Since I took as
much of him from legend as from history, I stuck to the legendary Robin
Hood part of his character. He seems like a character who is 'out of this
world' in that he's already enshrined before the end of the story" (Smith

266).

154

18 Beausoleil-Broussard and Pélagie meet after she has already begun
her journey back to Acadia. She is determined to bring her people back
to their land, and he has devoted himself and his hijacked ship to the
transport of deported Acadians to the Caribbean islands and to
Louisiana. Their missions will keep them separated, except for a few
brief encounters.

19 "Others defer to her [Pélagie's] natural leadership without question, as
when, on a day when she decides to give her flagging troupe a pep talk,
‘l’Acadie entiere leve des yeux bleus suppliants sur son chef qui déja
s'empare de la tribune.’ When she has finished, ‘elle redescend de la
tribune en se drapant dans sa cape comme un consul romain dans sa
toge.'" (Fitzpatrick, Epic 148).

20 These levels of narration will be examined in chapter 3, "Storytellers:
Conteurs, Menteurs, Menteux and Défricheteux de parenté."

21 Ironically she refuses to accept her daughter's decision to do what she
herself did, marry a man from the island.

22 Antonine Maillet, Mariaagélas, Ben-Z. Shek, trans. (Toronto, Canada,
Simon 85 Pierre, 1978), Crache a Pic, (Montreal: Leméac, 1984), and Les
Cordes-de-Bois, (Montreal, Leméac, 1977), hereafter cited as MG, CAP
and CdB, respectively.

23 This issue will be discussed at length in Chapter 2, "Before the Law:

Outlaws and Rebels."

155

24 This will also be examined in detail in chapter 2, "Before the Law:
Outlaws and Rebels."

25 La Bessoune is, in fact, a name pointing to a relationship, but La
Bessoune has no twin, therefore the name refers to a non-existent
relationship. Her name remains something of a mystery, the assumption
is that her twin died at birth. And the narrator sees this as a sign of
something important: "cette bessonne, qui devait réunir tant de vertus et
de vices contraires, n'aurait pas pu, des sa naissance, s'approprier seule
la double part des bessons? Deux jumeaux en une seule personne: i1 y
avait la de quoi faire réver presque au Messie" (CdB 7 3).

26 The land was not always called "les Cordes-de-Bois," when first owned
by the Mercenaire family, "on disait la butte, 1e bois, ou plus
couramment le haut du champ" (CdB 18). But a wealthy villager,
MacFarlane starts to stack the wood for his trade on the butte, (and
becoming angry when they use it), thus giving the butte its new name.

27 See also Chapter 2, "Outlaws and Rebels."

23 Antonine Maillet, Don l'Orignal, (Montreal: Leméac, 1972), hereafter
cited as DO.

29 The importance of storytellers in Maillet's works will be examined at
length in chapter 3, "Storytellers: Conteurs, Menteurs, Menteux and
Défricheteux de parenté: Maintaining the Oral Tradition."

30 He further adds that: "'l'histoire de l'Ile—aux-Puces et des personnages

qui figurent dans ce récit constitue en quelque sorte une plaque

156

tournante dans l'oeuvre d'Antonine Maillet. On y retrouve une
atmosphere, un decor, des personnages et des themes qui reviennent
dans un bon nombre de ses livres" (Gallant, Epopée 286).

31 Antonine Maillet, Pointe aux Coques (Montreal: Leméac), 1977, and
Emmanuel a Joseph 5: deit (Montreal, Leméac, 1975), hereafter cited as
PAC and EJD, respectively.

32 In choosing her own destiny, she has also chosen, however, to join in
the struggle to keep Acadia alive.

33 In fact, in writing down Acadia's oral traditions and stories, Maillet has
propelled them into a new realm. This issue will be examined in greater
detail in chapter 3.

34 Narrative technique will also be addressed in detail in chapter 3.

35 Antonine Maillet, l'Oursiade, (Montreal, Leméac, 1990), hereafter cited
as O.

36 Interestingly, by having their improvised words in print, Maillet gives
them more impact, and also concretizes them.

37 La Bessoune is not only illegitimate, she is also the offspring of "un
pere inconnu"; she is thus completely free of paternal restrictions. But
she also lacks the paternal ties and name that would legitimize her in
society's eyes.

38 This is the monosyllabic interjection that often punctuates the

discourse of others.

157

39 Dieudonné is the chief bootlegger on the coast, as well as the
wealthiest man there, who has purchased or acquired most of the prime
coastal land from the villagers. As his name would indicate, he seems to
feel he has the right to whatever he can take.

40 This play on polysemy indicates the true linguistic power of both the
characters and the author.

41 The importance given to public speaking indicates the extent to which
verbal ability is valued in this society, and emphasizes as well linguistic
component of the war between the two cultures.

42 All of these customs, interestingly, are characterized by restraint,
whether of a physical, moral or social nature. Thus having broken the
restraint of the law, they in the end come to embody it themselves.
Curiously, this restraint comes at the moment of their liberation from
their geographically restrictive island. And conversely, the former
mainlanders, now restricted to the island, have lost their sense of moral
and social restraint.

43 Interestingly, it is the Church itself that introduces Simon to the
concept of reincarnation. "Un jour, il avait entendu condamner du haut
de la chaire ce que le prétre avait appelé l'hérésie de la reincarnation.
Personne dans la paroisse n'avait cu vent de cette hérésie-la avant que
l'Eglise s'en méle d'en faire mention" (0 75). The Church is thus the

agent provocateur of Simon's theological straying.

158

44 Antonine Maillet, On a mangé la dune, (Montreal, Leméac, 1977), and
Le Chemin SaintJacques, (Montreal, Leméac, 1996), hereafter cited as
OMD and CSJ respectively.

45 Radi becomes the root (radical) of the writer, Radegonde.

45 This is Helene Cixous’ term; as she maintains, "at a certain moment
for the person who has lost everything, whether that means a being or a
country, language becomes the country. One enters the country of
words" (Coming xx).

47 Maillet is careful to distinguish between a storyteller, or "menteux" and
a historian, however: "la difference entre le menteur et le menteux, dans
mon pays, est la méme qu'entre l'historien et le conteur: le premier
raconte ce qu'il veut; l'autre, ce que vous voulez" (CA 13).

48 "Au XIXe siecle, la chanson, 1e conte et les traditions sont au coeur de
la vie collective" (Clarke 13)

49 Radi will be examined in Chapter 4, since she--unlike Maillet's other
storytellers--becomes an "author."

50 The references here are to the English translation, (published as On
the Eighth Day, Trans. Wayne Grady, Toronto, Canada, Lester 8r. Orpen
Dennys Ltd. 1986), hereafter cited as HJ.

51 Noume's bivouacked troops hear the story of their country's epic
battle, just as the troops of William the Conqueror heard the story of the

Chanson de Roland just before the battle of Hastings.

159

52 Their use of this story to escape from a Charleston prison is examined
in Chapter 2, "Before the Law: Outlaws and Rebels."

53 The narrator emphasizes his role as a professional: ”C’est a son tour de
conter, surtout que c’est sa profession a lui, comme qui dirait son métier,
tout comme sa fonction. Les autres, ils content par surcroit; mais
Jerome..." (CA 28).

54 Denis Bourque, in his article "Une Renaissance au pays du rire"
designates this as the moment at which both story and storyteller are
"tournés en derision" as the storyteller is dethroned, and the whole
community takes over his story, deforming it, and making it grotesque by
with the insistance on the bestiary. It becomes "un vrai batard de conte
d'animaux" (88).

55 "Les menteux et colporteurs de nouvelles, c’est connu, ne surgissent
qu’aux saisons mortes ou creuses" (CA 138).

56 Radi, the heroine of On a mangé la dune and Le chemin SaintJacques
also plays a similar game of recreating the world. This is examined in
Chapter Four.

57 The act of writing, or becoming an "author," will be examined in
Chapter 4, "From Oral to Written Literature."

58 Le Chemin Saint Jacques and Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois
also contain first-person narration, but they will be discussed in the

context of Chapter 4, as their narrators are also authors.

160

59 This is discussed in Chapter 1, "Epic Hero(in)es, Legendary Figures
and Cultural Icons."

60 In fact, Tit-Jean (Titoume) it turns out, is in the process of collecting
the stories relating to him, and to his birth throughout the novel. In a
sense, this is what all of Maillet's narrators are doing, collecting and
presenting the stories which may not have originated with them, but
which help to define their cultural identity.

61 This follows Schopenhauer's theory that existence depends on a
perception of / by a consciousness.

62 In an interview with Martine Jacquot, Maillet states that: "je fais partie
de la generation qui a fait le pas entre la littérature orale et la littérature
écrite. Je suis la charniere dans le sens ou j'arrive au tout debut de la
littérature acadienne contemporaine, dans les années 60, 70. 11 y avait
encore a cette époque des conteurs, donc je suis de la generation de ceux
qui ont pu entendre ces authentiques conteurs, alors que mes
successeurs n'ont pent-étre pas eu cette chance. Je fais vraiment partie
de ceux qui ont gouté aux deux domaines" (Chamie‘re 253).

63 Antonine Maillet, Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois, Montreal:
Leméac, 1992, hereafter cited as CJV.

64 Mere Jeanne de Valois was, in fact, an actual Acadian nun who taught
many generations of Acadian girls, and for whom a building at the

University of Moncton is named.

161

65 From the beginning of the colony of "Acadie," Catholicism was the
official religion (Griffiths, L'Acadie 1) however, until the end of the
nineteenth century, many Acadian communities did not have an
established priest. In the early twentieth century, though the parishes
had priests, they were largely Irish (Roy, l'Acadie 222) or Québecois. It is
not until the 1940's that Acadian dioceses truly began to take hold, and
Acadian schools ("colleges") began to expand their influence (Roy 223).
After the second world war, religious institutions such as parishes,
schools and convents flourished in Acadia. For more historical
information on the Church in Acadia, please see L'Acadie des origines a
nos jours (Michel Roy) and Heritage d 'Acadie (Jean-Claude Dupont).

56 The "petite histoire" is the story of the Acadians, not the "History" of
Acadia, but a more personal view, an insider's view.

67 The difference between the storyteller's audience and the narrator's
audience is examined in Chapter 3. As Phyllis Wrenn points out, "Le
conteux dessert un public informé et engage, sa performance l'emporte
donc souvent sur la narration et la transmission cohérente de
l'information. Le narrateur dessert, par contre, un public extérieur
(nous, 1e lecteur non-initié)" (8).

63 In an interview with Derek Attridge, Derrida talks about what he terms
an "internal polylogue" which motivates his writing: "the idea of an
internal polylogue. . . was first of all the adolescent dream of keeping a

trace of all the voices which were traversing me--or were almost doing so-

162

—and which was to be so precious, unique, both specular and
speculative" (Attridge 34-5).

69 As in L'Oursiade, the bears have almost magical powers to open new
worlds.

70 The forge, or blacksmith's shop, in the Acadia of Maillet's novels, is not
merely a place of business, but a place where the men of the village
would gather to tell stories. In an interview, Maillet talks about her
childhood impressions of the forge: "In every country each village has a
centre, a soul, a focal point. And in Acadia the centre was usually a
blacksmith's shop... But what struck me most when I was a child was
that the blacksmith's shop was a rather dark place, and also the fire and
the anvil were quite mysterious--almost like an alchemist doing his
experiments" (Smith 263).

71 Here Radi is repressed by her family (and their morality); they are
attempting to reign in her creativity and her exploration of the world. In
fact, Radegonde will not--cannot--become a writer, until after she loses
both her father and her mother, until she frees herself from her family
and from the "law."

72 This incident, which does not appear in On a mange la dune,
represents a critical moment in Radi's development as a writer. While On
a mangé la dune reflects the development of Radi's imagination and her
storytelling abilities, Le Chemin Saint-Jacques takes this one step further,

examining the forces in Radi/ Radegonde's childhood and adult life which

163

allow her to become not just a storyteller, but an accomplished author as
well.

73 Like Radi, Maillet herself was born at noon, "midi sonnant," the
moment when the Angelus is rung. In an interview in Les Amitiés
acadiennes, "Ce Jour-la," Maillet also recounts the story of how she, like
Radi, stood up to her teacher and maintained that she wanted to become
a writer, in French. She explains her compulsion to speak out: "c'était
en classe de redaction, et la redaction se fait avec la langue, or la langue,
c'était tout ce qui nous restait, a nous, pour nous distinguer, nous
affirmer, apprendre a étre... ce qu'on appelle aujourd'hui la recherche de
l'identité" (5). Like Radi, Maillet received the same note in red ink on her
finished essay in French: "Mademoiselle, si vous continuez a lire et a
écrire, le succés vous attend" (5).

74 Radi's insistance upon finding more choices is examined in Chapter
Two, "Before the Law: Outlaws and Rebels."

75 Radegonde's research takes her to the bayous of Louisiana, where she
meets Madame Primeau, an old cajun woman who speaks only French
and has never been formally schooled. Radegonde asks Madame
Primeau to tell her a story, and Mme Primeau proceeds to recount the
Roman de Renart. "Elle savait par coeur de grands pans du Roman de
Renart, 1e chef-d'oeuvre du XIIe siécle que ses ancétres avaient passés ou

dérobés a la littérature écrite, transmis parallelement de bouche a

l'oreille de l'aieul au rejeton durant huit cents ans..." (CSJ 263). Her

164

research also takes her to France and to Norway, to study the mythical
giants that came to her through Rabelais.

76 This aspect of storytelling is particularly evident in On a mangé la
dune. In this novel, to an even greater extent than in Le Chemin Saint-
Jacques, Radi's stories are the fantasy life that she creates for herself.
77 According to "Le Glossaire acadien," the usage of the expression "1e
chemin Saint-Jacques" comes from either the Touraine or the Berri
region (Poirier 107).

73 Albert Dugas maintains that: "C'est l'assimilation qui était le premier
but visé par la deportation. C'était cela l'objectif principal. La bataille
fut publiquement et manifestement oubliée, mais la guerre, loin d'étre
terminée, fut reprise sous une forme beaucoup plus menacante" (35).
79 Eloise Briere finds that the choice of this language is "highly
significant: the expulsion from Acadia and subsequent exile caused the
vernacular to become the 'carrier' of Acadiénitude. . . Reclaiming the
mother tongue is much more than reproducing a dialect or marshaling
archaic vocabulary; it is an allegory of national rebirth, a strategy for
finally producing congruence between language, geographic space and

time" (8).

165

BIBLIOGRAPHY

166

Works Cited

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Cornell University Press, 1984.

Bakhtine, Mikhail. Esthétique et théorie du roman. Paris, Gallimard, 1978.

Barrett, Caroline "Entrevue avec Antonine Maillet" Ouébec francais 60
(décembre 1985) 34-37.

Benveniste, Emile. Problemes de linguistigue générale. Paris:
Gallimard, 1966.

Boudreau, Raoul. "La Quéte de l'identité en poésie acadienne,"
LittéRéalité 5— 2 (Winter 1993-1994) 47-59.

Bourque, Denis. "Une Renaissance au pays du rire: Cent ans dans les
bois d'Antonine Maillet et le carnavalesque" Mélanges Marggerite
M_aill_et. Moncton: Les Editions d'Acadie, 1996. 83-96.

Briere, Eloise. "Antonine Maillet and the Construction of Acadian
Identity," Postcolonial Subjects: Francophone Women Writers.
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Cixous, Héléne. "Coming to Writing" and Other Esjayg, Deborah Jenson,
ed. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991.

---. Readings, The Poet_ics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kaflca, Kleist, Lispector,
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Clarke, P.D. "'Sur l'empremier', ou récit et mémoire en Acadie" Lg
question identitaire au Canada francophone: RécitsL parcours,
enjeux, hors-lieux. Jocelyn Létourneau 81, Roger Bernard, eds.
Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1994. 3-44.

Culler, Jonathan. Framing the Sigr_1. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1988.

DeFinney, James. "Antonine Maillet: un Exemple de reception littéraire
régionale." Revue d'histoire littéraire du Québec et du Canada
Frangais 12 (Summer-Fall 1986) 17-33.

Derrida, Jacques. "Before the Law." Acts of Literature. New York:
Routledge, 1992.

Dupont, Jean-Claude. Heritage d'Acadie. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

"Fable." Petit Robert Dictionnaire de la langue francaise. Paris, 1990.

Fitzpatrick, Marjorie. "Antonine Maillet and the Epic Heroine."

Traditionalism Nationalism Feminism. Ed. Paula Gilbert Lewis.

 

Westport CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

---. "Antonine Maillet" The Search for a Narrative Voice." Journal of
Popular Culture. 15:3 (Winter 1981): 4-13.

Gallant Melvin. "Epopée, fantaisie et symbole dans Don l'Orignal."
Quebec Studies 4 (1986): 286-297.

---. "Du mythe a la réalité: Evolution du roman acadien." Revue de
l'Université d'Ottowa/Universitv of Ottowa Quarterly vol. 56- 3

(1986) 77-83.

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Gay, P.A. "Interview d'Antonine Maillet." Les Amitiés Acadiennes 4 (avril

 

1978) 18-22.

Genette, Gerard. Narrative Discourse, an Essay in Method. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1980.

Godard, Barbara Thompson. "Tale of a Narrative: Antonine Maillet's Don
l'Origna." Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal 5:1 (Fall 1979) 51-
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Godin, Jean-Cleo . "L'Evangéline selon Antonine." _Si_q1£ 4 (automne,
1979) 23-46.

Griffiths, N.E.S. The Acadian Deportation: Deliberate Perfidv or Cruel
Necessity? Toronto: The Copp Clark Publishing Co, 1969.

Griffiths, Naomi E.S. L’Acadie de 1686 a 1784: Contexte d’une histoire.
Trans. Kathryn Hamer. Moncton: Editions d’Acadie 1997.

Jacquot, Martine L. "'Je suis la charniére': Entretien avec Antonine
Maillet." Studies in Canadian Literature/ Etudes en L_ittérat1_n'_e
Canadienne 13-2 (1988) 250-263.

---. "Last Story-Teller: An Interview with Antonine Maillet." WM 14-4
(Spring 1986) 93-95.

Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference. Baltimore, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1980.

Lamarche, Claude. "Antonine Maillet, créatrice de géants" Les Diplomés

376 (hiver 1992) 29-30.

169

Laroche, Pierre-Ivan. "Notre diplémée Goncourt: Antonine Maillet, Une
entrevue avec le professeur Jean-Cleo Godin." L'Interdit, 1a revue
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14-15.

LeBlanc, Rene. "Antonine Maillet: conteuse de l'Acadie." Quebec
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Lukacs, Georg. Theory of the Novel. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1983.

Maillet, Antonine. "Ce Jour-La. . . Une entrevue avec Antonine Maillet. .
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--- Cent ans dans les bois. Montreal: Leméac, 1981.

--- Le Chemin Saint-Jacques. Montreal: Leméac, 1996.

--- Les:Confessions de Jeanne de Valois. Montreal: Leméac, 1992.

--— Les Cordes-de-Bois. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

--- Crache a Pic. Montreal: Leméac, 1984.

--- The Devil is Loose. Ed. Philip Stratford. Toronto: Lester 8n Orpen
Dennys Ltd. 1986.

-—- "Discours d'Antonine Maillet." Les Amitiés acadiennes 42 (Quatriéme
Trimestre 1987) 12-14.

--- Don l'Orignal. Montreal: Leméac, 1972.

--- Emmanuel a Joseph a Davit. Montreal: Leméac, 1975.

170

--- "From Oral to Written Literature." Seminar with Antonine Maillet.
Marquette University, Milwaukee. 4 Apr. 1990.

--- Mariaagélas. Trans. Ben-Z. Shek. Toronto: Simon 85 Pierre, 1978.

--- On a mangé 1a dune. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

--- On the Eighth Day. Trans. Wayne Grady. Toronto: Lester 85 Orpen
Dennys Ltd. 1986.

--- L'Oursiade. Montreal: Leméac, 1990.

--- Pélagie-la-Charrette. Montreal: Leméac, 1979.

--- Pointe aux Coques. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

--- Rabelais et les traditions populaires en Acadie. Quebec: Les Presses
de l'Université Laval, 1971.

--- The Tale of Don L'Orignal. Trans. Barbara Godard. Toronto: Clarke,
Irwin 85 Company, Ltd. 1978.

Major, Andre. "Entretien avec Antonine Maillet." Ecrits du Canada
frangais 36 (1973) 9-26.

Martin, Ernest. L'Evarigéline de Longfellow et la suite merveilleuse d'un
m. Paris: Hachette, 1936.

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McLaughlin. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1990.

Paratte, Henri Dominique. "Une Acadie plurielle: la littérature créatrice
d'identités de l'empremier a l'an 2000." Mélanges Marguerite

Maillet. Moncton, N.-B: Les Editions d'Acadie, 1996. 283-302.

171

Poirier, Pascal. Le Glossaire acadien. Ed. Pierre M. Gérin. Moncton: Les
Editions d'Acadie, 1995.

Roy, Michel. L'Acadie des origes a nos iours: Essai de synthése
historique. Montreal: Editions Québec/Amérique, 1981.

Runte, Hans. "Acadia as Literary Topos." Francophone Literatures of the
New World. Ed. James P. Gilroy. Denver: U of Denver Department
of Foreign Languages 85 Literatures, 1992. 27-41.

--- "L'Acadie de l'Ultime Deportation." Littéréalité 5-2 (Hiver/ Winter
1993- 1994) 109-21.

--- "Cent ans dans les bois: L'Acadie entre l'épopée et le roman." Quebec
Studies 4 (1986) 311-319.

--- "Romancing the Epic: Forward to the Past with Antonine Maillet."
Romance Langgges Annual 4 (1992) 143-147.

Sellers, Susan. Writing Differences, Readings From the Seminar of
Helene Cixous. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press, 1988.

Shiach, Morag. Helene Cixous: A Politics of Writing. London: Routledge,
199 1.

Smith, Donald. l'Ecrivain devant son oeuvre. Montreal:
Québec/Amérique, 1983.

--- Voices of Deliverance. Trans. Larry Shouldice. Toronto: House of
Anansi Press, Ltd. 1986.

Usmiani, Renate. "Recycling an Archetype: the Anti-Evangelines"

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172

White, Hayden. "The Value of Narrativity." On Narrative. Ed. W.J.
Mitchell. Chicago: The U of Chicago P, 1981.

Wrenn, Phyllis. "Une Ecriture dialectale en evolution: le Franco-Acadien
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Francofonia 12, (Primavera 1987) 3-19.

173

Bibliography of Antonine Maillet

Prose

--- Cent ans dans les bois. Montreal: Leméac, 1981.

--- Le Chemin Saint-Jacques. Montreal: Leméac, 1996.

--- Comme un cri du coeur. Montreal: Editions l’Essentiel, 1992.

--- Les Confessions de Jeanne de Valois. Montreal: Leméac, 1992.

--- Les Cordes-de-Bois. Montreal: Leméac, 197 7.

--- Crache a Pic. Montreal: Leméac, 1984.

--- The Devil is Loose. Ed. Philip Stratford. Toronto: Lester 85 Orpen
Dennys Ltd. 1986.

--- Don l'Orignal. Montreal: Leméac, 1972.

--- Emmanuel a Joseph a Davit. Montreal: Leméac, 1975.

--— "From Oral to Written Literature." Seminar with Antonine Maillet.
Marquette University, Milwaukee. 4 Apr. 1990.

--- La Gribouille. Paris: Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, 1982. (also
published as Cent Ans dans les Bois).

--- Le huitieme jour. Montreal: Leméac, 1986.

--- ariaagélas. Montreal: Leméac, 1973.

--- Mariaagélas: Maria, daughter of Gélas. Trans. Ben-Z. Shek. Toronto:
Simon 85 Pierre, 1978.

--- On a mange la dune. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

174

--— On the Eighth Day. Trans. Wayne Grady. Toronto: Lester 85 Orpen
Dennys Ltd. 1986.

--- L'Oursiade. Montreal: Leméac, 1990.

--- Par derriére chez mon pere. Montreal: Leméac, 1972.

--- m. Trans. Philip Stratford. Toronto: General Publishing Co Ltd.,
1982.

--- Pélagie-la-Charrette. Montreal: Leméac, 1979.

--- Pointe aux Coques. Montreal: Leméac, 1977.

--— The Tale of Don L'Orignal. Trans. Barbara Godard. Toronto: Clarke,

 

Irwin 85 Company, Ltd. 1978.

Theater

Maillet, Antonine. Le Bourgeois gentleman. Montreal: Leméac, 197 8.

--- La Contrebandiére. Montreal: Leméac, 1981.

--- Les Crasseux. Montreal: Leméac, 1973.

--- Les Drélatiques, horrifiques et épouvantables aventures de Panurgg,
ami de Pantagmlgmmg Montreal: Leméac, 1983.

--- Eva_ngéline Deusse. Montreal: Leméac, 1975.

--- Evangeline the Second. Trans. Luis de Céspedes. Toronto: Simon 85
Pierre, 1987.

--- Gapi and Sullivan. Trans. Luis de Céspedes. Toronto: Simon 85 Pierre,
1986.

--- Gapi et Sullivan. Montreal: Leméac, 1973.

175

--- Garrochés en paradis. Montreal: Leméac, 1986.
--- Margot la folle. Montreal: Leméac, 1987.
--- La Sagouine. Montreal: Leméac, 1971.

--- La Sagouine. Trans. Luis de Céspedes. Toronto: Simon 85 Pierre,

 

1979.

--- William S. Montreal: Leméac, 1991.

Children’s Literature

Maillet, Antonine. Christophe Cartier de la Noisette dit Nounours.
Montreal: Leméac, 1981.

--- Christopher Cartier of Hagelnut, Also Known as Bear. Trans. Wayne

Grady. Toronto: Methuen, 1984.

Studies and Essays

Maillet, Antonine, Scalabrini, Rita. QAcadie pomuasiment rien.
Montreal: Leméac, 1973.

Maillet, Antonine et a1. Les Acadiens,j;iétons de l’Atlantique. Paris:
ACE, 1984.

Maillet, Antonine. Rabelais et les traditions populaires en Acadie.

Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1971.

176

Translations

Shakespeare, William. Richard III. Trans. Antonine Maillet. Montreal:
Leméac, 1989.

Shakespeare, William. La Nuit des rois. Trans. Antonine Maillet.

Montreal: Leméac, 1989.

Interviews

Maillet, Antonine. "Ce Jour-La. . . Une entrevue avec Antonine Maillet. .
Les Amitiés acadiennes 7 (janvier 1979) 4-5.

--- "Discours d'Antonine Maillet." Les Amitiés acadiennes. 42 (Quatrieme

Trimestre 1987) 12-14.

177

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