шш in review DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER - University of British ...

BOOKS IN REVIEWen troisième ou quatrième année, parexemple.IMPERFECTCONQUESTSNEIL В. BISHOPj. L. LEPROHON, The Manor House of DeVilleray, ed. Robert Sorfleet. Journal of CanadianFiction, no. 34, $6.00.MME Ε. BERTH., Le Tour du Québec par deuxenfants. Liberté 163 (February 1986),$8.00.FROM SEVERAL POINTS of view, these twobooks have much in common. Both areshort novels; each takes up the wholenumber of a periodical which otherwisenormally publishes shorter pieces of criticismand creative writing; both are supposedlywritten by women ; and both dealwith national issues pertaining to Quebec.The two novels also deal with thepressure of historical realities on theeveryday lives of relatively uncomplicatedpeople. Leprohon writes aboutthese realities in English in a romance setin the later eighteenth century, and Bertildoes so in French in a satire on contemporarylinguistic issues in Québec.Elsewhere, the differences between thetwo books are striking. If anything, it isnot the century between their compositionsthat sets the books apart, but theirrespective tones. Leprohon's book is oneof the earliest Canadian novels in English.It appeared serialized in the MontrealFamily Herald in 1859 and i860,and its pages are replete with the quietromanticism and the gilt-edged feelingsof affection and loyalty that coloured thefrontier rainbow dreams of colonial Canada.Bertil's book (if, in fact, Bertil exists)is a late twentieth century allegoricalsatire about language, class, socialprétentions and the vanity of nationaldreams. The contrast in genre betweenthe two books is therefore almost absolute.But despite the contrast, the two booksshare one powerful idea. They both dealstrongly with the desire for cultural survivalof a vanquished race against whicha conquest was never anything more thanmilitary. In the background is the commonhistorical theme that the conquestwreaked by one culturally and politicallysophisticated race on another leaves allbut its immediate military problems unresolved.The theme of the imperfect conquestis dominant in both books. In TheManor House of De Villeray, the themeis responsible for many of the types ofcharacters and many of the circumstancesbehind the novel's plot. In LeTour du Québec par deux enfants, thetheme is the source itself of the dreamof the Québécoise grandmother (exiled inManitoba in childhood) of someday findingagain "le coeur vibrant du Québec."This search for the vibrant heart of theprovince is the central and unifying ideaof Bertil's book. The perfection of thehopes, dreams, and desires of the charactersof both books throws into reliefthe utter imperfection of the eighteenthandnineteenth-century conquests of Europeanwars which provoked them. Inthe name of their respective glories, theimperial powers tried to subjugate oneanother's settlers in the various NewWorlds scattered about the globe, and abattlefield won was so often a culturalwar born.And yet the stories of these two novelshave little in common. The ManorHouse of De Villeray, written by aMontreal-born woman of Irish-Catholicdescent, and published a century and aquarter ago, is a sad love story of yet acentury earlier. The fall of Quebec tothe English is its background. Its intrigueis the parentally arranged engagementof a beautiful young aristocrat, the172