May / June 2002 Vol. 34, no. 3

The Gabrielle Roy Fonds at the National Library of Canada

Denis Robitaille, Research and Information Services

The National Library of Canada holds the precious heart of Gabrielle Roy. You must admit you didn’t know this…

Oh no! Not the one that throbs and loves. The "other" heart, the author's intimacies, the work in progress, the future masterpiece: her literary manuscript fonds preserved at the National Library of Canada.

Last February 12 was a celebration at the Library, and Gabrielle Roy was the host. Some of her manuscripts had arrived ahead of her in the large room, which was full of anxious admirers awaiting her arrival. It was a rendezvous, a SAVOIR FAIRE all in half tones.

Through the voice of Christine Robinson, Gabrielle opened her heart and shared her hesitations and uncertainties. In those too short minutes, the author-idol revealed her secret garden, offering a foray into the antechamber of her writing workshop.

Christine Robinson is familiar with the National Library's Special Collections Reading Room. Well known by staff, she regularly consults the Gabrielle Roy fonds. A Quebec literature specialist and recipient of a grant from the Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l'aide à la recherche (Fonds FCAR), Christine Robinson is currently working on post-doctoral research at Carleton University’s French Department and is teaching at the Ottawa University’s Département des lettres françaises.

The Gabrielle Roy manuscripts form a fantastic and dynamic writing studio. By studying the manuscripts of the short story "La Route d’Altamont," Christine Robinson led her audience along the steps in the creative process. From first draft to published work, the story evolves, grows and explores in depth the mother-daughter relationship, in particular.

Gabrielle Roy’s Unpublished Works

Right from the beginning, the speaker presented "two" Gabrielle Roys. First, the famous one, the one whose published work has been the subject of numerous studies in Canada and abroad. Then, "the other," the obscure one, the one with unpublished texts, some of which continue to evade critics. We are very fortunate that some of the manuscripts from Gabrielle Roy’s numerous works are still available. They provide us with the opportunity to watch her work take shape, to witness the intense efforts involved in rewriting successive versions.

Gabrielle Roy had no private diary. Her unpublished works (letters, autobiographical texts), nevertheless, approach certain themes more freely than her published works do. We now understand the care that Gabrielle Roy took with her literary legacy, ensuring that her manuscripts were transferred to the National Library of Canada after her death. Unavoidably, these manuscripts are used for "genetic criticism" of the work, analysis which would be impossible without them.

Some researchers, like Christine Robinson, are very aware of the potential of unpublished texts and devote themselves to their scrutiny and to making them better known.

Gabrielle Roy’s Writing Habits

For the second part of her presentation, the speaker dealt with the actual writing habits of Gabrielle Roy. Due to her journalistic background, the novelist preferred using a typewriter during the 1940s and 1950s. Around 1960, she began writing in school notebooks, reworking some parts up to three times. Boileau described well the greatness and the miseries of writing…

Rarely dated, the Gabrielle Roy manuscripts challenge the researcher…

The Genetic Record of "La Route d’Altamont"

Prior to her presentation of the manuscripts of "La Route d’Altamont," Christine Robinson fittingly positioned the short story in relation to both the work and life of the author. A part of the Rue Deschambault "cycle," "La Route d’Altamont" draws inspiration from the lives of both Gabrielle Roy and her family. The mother plays a very important role; this is characteristic of her work, since the author wrote for her mother in particular.

After providing an overview of the background and structure of the 1966 publication, Christine Robinson briefly described the "La Route d’Altamont" manuscripts available at the National Library of Canada, including a version currently held by François Ricard. Since the author did not keep all the manuscripts, the "genetic record" of the work is undoubtedly incomplete.

After studying the surviving manuscripts, Ms. Robinson concluded that there are four manuscript versions of "La Route d’Altamont" in existence.

Her description of the second version brought to light how much the novelist had redrafted, lengthened and transformed her text as it approached the published version. Some parts of the mother-daughter relationship are, nevertheless, treated differently in the published work.

The third, incomplete, version shows similarities to the second.

As for the fourth version, a composite of manuscript notebooks, it is the closest to the text published in 1966.

To better grasp the evolution of the work, at the end of her presentation Christine Robinson judiciously showed a short excerpt of the published text, comparing it to its equivalent in the first and second versions.

The questions that followed the exposé illustrated eloquently the affection Gabrielle Roy’s numerous devotees feel for her. Anxious to preserve her reclusive life (in Quebec and Charlevoix), for approximately 30 years, the novelist confided to us in her published work, and even more boldly in her unpublished work.

Listen… Can you hear her porcelain heart beating?