Author of some fifteen novels, more than a dozen plays, a large number of radio and television scripts, several children books, and many feature articles; translator of Shakespeare’s Richard III and Twelfth Night; keynote speaker of reputation and visiting professor at several North American and European universities, Antonine Maillet is certainly one of the best-known Canadian writers on both the national and the international scene.

Since winning the prize for the best Canadian play for Poire-Acre at the Dominion Drama Festival in 1958, she has been awarded many prizes for her works: these include the Governor General’s Award for Don l’orignal in 1972; both the Prize of the City of Montréal in 1973 and the Prix France-Canada in 1975 for Mariaagélas; the Chalmers Canadian Play Award from the Ontario Arts Council in 1980 for La Sagouine; and the most prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1979 for Pélagie-la-Charette. Companion of the Order of Canada (1982), Member of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada, Officer of the National Order of Québec, she was also made Officier des arts et des lettres and Officier des palmes académiques in France, Commandeur de l’Ordre du mérite culturel in Monaco, and she has received honorary degrees from more than 25 universities in Canada and abroad.
 

"I have avenged my ancestors," said Antonine Maillet after writing Pélagie-la-Charrette (1979) and receiving France's prestigious Prix Goncourt. The soul of contemporary Acadian literature, Maillet has been largely responsible for generating unprecedented pride in her people whose expulsion from Nova Scotia in 1775 and whose epic journey of return are celebrated in many of her stories, novels, and play. [Photo, courtesy Guy Dubois]

In line with a long tradition, Antonine Maillet is above all a storyteller, but she distinguished herself by recounting her stories in writing. Most of these stories relate to Acadia and celebrate her people and her culture. Using their own language, which has similarities to the French spoken in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, her characters are mostly poor, illiterate, and irreverent, yet very courageous and strong-willed women. Living on the wrong side of the track, they embody her forgotten people. While clashing with the local establishment, they grapple with the harsh realities of life; nevertheless, they maintain their sense of humour and are still able to marvel at little things.

Published in 1971, La Sagouine established Antonine Maillet’s reputation first in New Brunswick, then in Québec, and finally throughout the rest of Canada. In it, a 72-year-old charwoman and former prostitute who is married to a fisherman tells her life’s sad story. While scrubbing the floor, she comments on politics, social injustice, religion, the history of the Acadian people, education, and even the moon landing. However naïve and simplistic, her views often express those of voiceless people and make a lot of sense. Thanks to a television series, La Sagouine has become so popular in French Canada that the area of Bouctouche, New Brunswick, where Antonine Maillet was born on May 10, 1929 and where the events in la Sagouine’s monologue take place, is now known as la Sagouine country and has become a tourist attraction.

Under the cover of often grotesque and extravagant stories, Antonine Maillet’s novels and plays present recurrent themes which convey an acute social criticism. Her characters, some of whom have quickly become familiar to the reader because they reappear in different books, animate a small world divided by old quarrels, envy, jealousy, and social injustice but where a sense of resourcefulness and a joie de vivre prevail to make it most humane.

The awarding of the Prix Goncourt to Antonine Maillet for Pélagie-la-Charette, the first non-French citizen to receive such an honor, earned her international praise. With that epic novel, she no doubt gained recognition for Acadia as she herself became known throughout the world as a spokesperson for her people; in addition, her extraordinary heroine became the symbol of resistance to English assimilation and the inspiration for an Acadian renaissance. Although she recounts the British Army’s 1755 brutal destruction of the Acadian settlements in what is now the province of Nova Scotia and the cruel dispersion of the Acadian people along the eastern coast of North America, A. Maillet chose to highlight the return of the scattered families to their homeland after an odyssey of ten years, under the strong leadership of Pélagie. Thus, instead of cultivating the nostalgia for the past as in Longfellow’s Évangéline, who for generations incarnated the Acadians’ tragic history, Pélagie’s adventures focus on the present and the future.

Antonine Maillet’s works and success have undoubtedbly stimulated literary creation among the Acadians and no one questions her huge contribution to the resurgence of the Acadian culture. She has, however, sometimes been criticized by the younger generation of Acadian writers for what they consider a “folklorization” of that culture. Refusing to take refuge in the past and merely substitute the legend of Pélagie for that of Évangéline, they now claim their cultural heritage, which they want to keep alive, and call for the continuation of the Quiet Revolution she initiated in her own manner.

Jacques Cotnam