| Roy Home |

BY PHYLLIS GROSSKURTH

JACK McCLELLAND once told me that among all the Canadian writers he had dealt with, the one he felt most "privileged" to have known was Gabrielle Roy. His face became soft and serious; and I took it that he meant she combined integrity, professionalism and true femininity. I had already read all her books, and McClelland made me feel that I wanted to know her as a person as well. I had heard she had been ill for a long time; but when I read she had died, I felt the sorrow of a loss that can never be repaired.

I think there are few people who would dispute that she was the foremost French-Canadian novelist, and one who received international acclaim. She was born in St. Boniface, Manitoba, in 1909, her parents had been part of a large influx of Québécois who emigrated to the West at the end of the nineteenth century. Her father was a colonization agent for the federal Government, supervising the settlement of the Doukhobors, Hutterites and Mennonites. He had to be away from home a large part of the time, and her mother assumed the role of the strong centrifugal force in the family, a figure who appears frequently in her books.

Street of Riches (Rue Deschambault, published in 1955), the most autobiographical of her books, is my favorite. A kind of A la récherche du temps perdu, it is a nostalgic evocation of her childhood, a montage of brightly-colored moments and figures, contained in a frame house, its wide verandah lined with a row of rocking chairs. In summer, the air was pervaded with the scent of stocks and roses. The narrator, the youngest of a large family, is called Petite Misère by her father because of her precocious capacity for grief.

The miseries of childhood arise from what is so often described as the intolerable burdens of love, such as her anguish over her sister's mental illness. But Petite Misère also has an extraordinary gift for being surprised by joy, like the occasion on which she had been weeping uncontrollably over her father's anger, only to stop occasionally when overcome by the sight of beauty:"Why did the sky seem to me so beautiful that evening that never since, in any portion of the world, have I seen any the like of it?"

In 1927, Roy decided to become a teacher and entered the Winnipeg Normal School. The seven years she taught school she has described as "the most beautiful years of my life," parts of which she incorporated into Street of Riches and Where Nests the Water Hen (La petite poule d'eau), published in 1950. The depth of that experience is recounted in the last incident related in Street of Riches, in which two little children who have fought their way through a snow storm for the bliss of learning inspire the young teacher to the reflection. "Was not all the world a child? Were we not at the day's morning?" During these years she also became interested in acting and, as a member of the Cercle Molière, was one of the cast who won the French Trophy in Ottawa at two dramatic festivals.

In 1937, she left for Europe -- "In a very divided frame of mind as I see it now," she recalled later. She really had no clear idea which direction her life would take. For a time, she studied dramatics at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England. Then, from France she began sending back articles and stories to the St. Boniface newspaper. By 1939, because of the international situation, she decided to return to Canada.

She settled in Montreal as a freelance journalist for Le Jour and La Revue Moderne. Soon she was travelling all over Quebec and becoming deeply interested in French-Canadian problems. It was during this period that she began work on her first novel, inspired by her concern for the poor in the tenements of Saint-Henri, the poorest district in Montreal.

In 1947, she married Dr. Marcell Carbotte, and eventually they settled in Quebec City.

Bonheur d'occasion (1945) was an outstanding event in Canadian literature; and the English translation, The Tin Flute, was chosen by the Literary Guild aas [sic] its book of the month. The English title was an inspired insight of the translator, Hannah Josephson. The French title is almost impossible to render literally because of the nuances of meaning it carries in relation to the theme of the book. Chance happiness is the only sort of transient pleasure the poor can expect; but it is also a delusive cheat, because like the tin flute that frail little Daniel craves, it becomes useless in his hands when he is too ill to enjoy it.

Roy never leaves us in any doubt about her own attitude toward her characters. She is very explicit about the nature of their illusions; there is none of the subtle suggestiveness whereby a reader is involved in filling in the contours of a character. Too often she tells us the exact tone of voice in which they speak. Nevertheless, other achievements balance this weakness. Despite the fact that the characters speak grammatically in the English translation, the emotional quality of their relationships is superbly conveyed by the dialogue. Above all, the author's scorn of sentimentality lifts them to the plane of tragedy.

In all, Roy wrote 13 books, for which she won many prizes, including the Governor-General's Award, which she won three times. The quality of femininity in her novels is difficult to define; perhaps the best that one can say is that she views her characters with the loving and protective concern of a mother. The virtues Gabrielle Roy extols are courage, endurance and a concern for others. In a sense, these can be described as negative virtues, necessary in a world in which man is at the mercy of impersonal forces beyond his control. Roy maintains a tight rein on her characters; moving and believable as they may be, they are puppets whom she can manipulate within an area of her choosing.

The qualities that entitle her to serious consideration as a distinguished novelist are a talent for delicate, vibrant prose; a gentle understanding of the longing of the heart; and a warmly compassionate view of people. However, for a rounded estimate, we must not blind ourselves to certain omissions. Her characters act intuitively; they do not engage in rational or irrational analysis; they are not torn by mental conflict; they are uninterested in ideas. They are lovable, gentle creatures, but comparatively simple and childlike, sometimes sentimentalized. Roy totally ignores the darker spectres that inhabit man's souls; nor does she ever allow her characters to experience those sudden revelations that unexpectedly open a precipice at our feet.

It is for these limitations that we muust deny her a place with the greatest novelists. Tolstoy gives us the illusion that Anna Karenina is activated by a vitality of her own, that she exists in her own right. She must make the real moral decisions; in her impellant drive to self-destruction, she is permitted to wreck her own life.

But is it fair to compare a very fine novelist with a giant? We need both; and both are sorely missed when they are no longer with us.

Phyllis Grosskurth is the author of Havelock Ellis: A Biography. She is preparing a biography of Melanie Klein.

Source: The Globe and Mail, Friday, July 15, 1983.

By Permission of Phyllis Grosskurth.