Louis Hémon (1880–1913)

Time stands still, for a moment, in Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine, allowing us a view into a society that faced an internal upheaval, stemming from its very roots. While Hémon was penning his novel, Québec was undergoing a mass migration of its French Canadian citizens into the United States: between 1840 and 1930, just over a million Québécois made the move to industrial towns in the US, seeking jobs. Hémon's novel reflects this heartbreaking quandary in which the citizens found show more themselves: how does one leave behind one's hearth and the place of ancestors; and conversely, how does one ignore the cry of the future and hungry children to feed?

The story is a simple one, commonplace and (almost) devoid of romance. Maria Chapdelaine is courted from three worthy suitors: Francois Paradis, the very essence of the adventurous coureurs de bois who were the backbone of early Québec society, they being responsible for carving a way into the harsh Canadian landscape; Eutrope Gagnon, the embodiment of the habitants who followed behind and carved the broken trails into concessions and built farms and towns in the heart of the country; and Lorenzo Surprenant, a "surprising" gift from the south, who represents American temptation and allure for an easier life: one that she will never know if she remains behind in Quebec.

Paradis alone offers Maria a chance at romantic love.

Francois Paradis regarda Maria à la dérobée, puis détourna de nouveau les yeux en serrant très fort ses main l'un contre l'autre. Qu'elle était donc plaisante à contempler! D'être assis auprès d'entrevoir sa poitrine forte, son beau visage honnête et patient, la simplicité franche de ses gestes rares et de ses attitudes, une grande faim d'elle lui venait et en même temps un attendrissement émerveillé, parce qu'il avait vécu presque toute sa vie rien qu'avec d'autres hommes, durement, dans les grand bois sauvages ou les plaines de neige.

Il sentait qu'elle était de ces femmes qui, lorsqu'elle se donnent, donnent tout san compter: l'amour de leur corps et de leur coeur, la force de leurs bras dans las besogne du chaque jour, la dévotion complète d'un esprit sans détours. Et le tout lui parissait si précieux qu'il avait peur de la demander.

The other two offer stability, dependability, and a sedate constancy which, while laudable, just don't pull at her heartstrings. She is head over heels in love with the adventurer, the romantic pioneer, and she would follow him, willingly -- despite her own better judgement.

Il lui semble que quelqu'un lui a chuchoté longtemps que le monde et la vie étaient des choses grises. La routine du travail journalier, coupée de plaisirs incomplets et passagers; les années qui s'écoulent, monotones, la rencontre d'un jeune homme tout pareil aux autres, dont la cour patiente et gaie finit par attendrir; le mariage, et puis une longue suite d'années presque semblables aux précédentes, dans une autre maison. C'est comme cela qu'on vit, a dit la voix. Ce n'est pas bien terrible et en tout cas if faut s'y soumettre; mais c'est uni, terne et froid comme un champ à l'automne.

Ce n'est pas vrai, tout cela. Maria secoue la tête dans l'ombre avec un sourire inconscient d'extase et songe que ce n'était pas vrai. Lorsqu'elle songe à Francois Paradis, à son aspect, à sa présence, à ce qu'ils sont et seront l'un pour l'autre, elle et lui, quelque chose frissonne et brûle tout à la fois en elle. Toute sa forte jeunesse, sa patience et sa simplicité sont venues aboutir à cela: à ce jaillissement d'espoir et de désir, à cette prescience d'un contentement miraculeux qui vient.

By wanting to choose a "miraculous" life instead of one "as cold as a field in autumn", it is almost predestined that Maria will lose her paradise. When the fall finally comes, she barely grieves, subjugating her life and her emotions, with barely a whimper, to those who rule her hearth, if not her heart.

While it is the song of a lonely girl, it is equally the song that Hémon wanted to sing for Québec, his adopted land. He saw the flow of humanity moving south of the border, giving its heart, and its best years, to a foreign beauty; some part of him yearned to want to stanch the flow, and so not lose all the best that there was.

Maria frissonna: l'attendrissement qui était venu baigner son coeur s'évanouit; elle se dit une fois de plus: "Tout de même ... c'est un pays dur, icitte. Pourquoi rester?"

Alors une troisième voix plus grande que les autre s'éleva dans le silence: la voix du pays de Québec, qui était a moitié un chant de femme et à moitié un sermon de prêtre ...

[Elle disait]

Nous avions apporté d'outre mer nos prières et nos chansons: elles sont toujours les mêmes. Nous avions apporté dans nos poitrines le coeur des hommes de notre pays, vaillant et vif, aussi prompt à la pitié qu'au rire, le coeur plus humain de tous les coeurs humains: il n'a pas changé ... ici toutes les choses que nous avons apportées avec nous, notre culte, notre langue, nos vertus et jusqu'à nos faiblesses deviennent des choses sacrés, intangibles et qui devront demeurer jusqu'à la fin.

C'est pourquoi il faut rester dans la province où nos pères sont restés, et vivre comme ils ont vécus, pour obéir au commandement inexprimé quie s'est formé dans leurs coeurs, qui a passé dans les nôtres et que nous devrons transmettre à notre à de nombreux enfants: Au pays de Québec rien ne doit mourir et rien ne doit changer...

This is a period piece if ever there was one: a slice of early (Québécois) pioneering life, caught in amber. Maria will forever be casting her eyes down, silently mourning for Paradis; she will be caught in that eternal spring, ever-promising to marry Gagnon -- an eternal consummation-postponed.

I view it in the end as a museum piece, and see it with charitable eyes: I recognize that it was poignant, and emotional without being (altogether) persuasive; un cri de coeur from a distant past. show less

I loved this book. I am not capable of reading it in the original French, so I can't know how the Canadian English of an earlier century compares with the French written by Monsieur Hémon, but I can say that the English is highly readable. It is poetic without being burdensome, telling a sparse world with richness of observed detail. The people are understated, but that is not just a literary device, it is a reflection of their response to the life they lived. Beautiful, transporting, at show more times worrying as we see pur protagonist struggle with her plight. There were two pages in the whole book I could have cut down or dispensed with, but that is because I live today, with the last century's review on matters of life, and because I have never lived the way Maria Chapdelaine did. So I accept them and I am truly delighted that I stumbled across this hidden Canadian classic. show less

I read a different French edition, but close enough. An allegory of sorts. Pastoral. Roughly idyllic or idealized version of French Canadian "frontier" life around the turn of the last century. I did enjoy the colloquialisms, such as the French-speaking Canadians referring to themselves as les Canadiens and les habitants (tr. as inhabitants, those who live in this place), whereas the English-Speaking Canadians are labeled les Anglais, les Russes, les Italiens, etc. One of the dominant themes show more is the Christian struggle between good and evil, dark and light, here embodied in the antagonism between primeval forest and farm. Slaying the forest as quickly and completely as possible, both by logging the Old Growth and by hacking fields out of the forests is portrayed as a religious duty, the bringing of the Word to the wilderness, civilization to barbaric nature (one that shows no particular use for man). This brings to mind what Americans often think of as the Puritan view of the wilderness. Apparently, a view also shared by the pious Canadian Catholics. Their world view is fatalistic. God has his mysterious purposes, not to be questioned by humans. One must bend to his will. And in return, nature must bend to the will of man. What we think of as the Puritan work ethic manifests itself here as the work ethic of the Catholic peasant. A man proposes to a woman by claiming to be a hard worker and never drinking a drop. Certainly, a drinking man would make a miserable life for a woman, true everywhere, but even more true in the hard circumstances of the northern homestead. Everyone here must be able to get up at the crack of dawn and labor hard till dark, just to survive. A drinking man would mean an impoverished family. A woman married to such a man would live a miserable existence in an environment where the best situation is already a tough one. This is also an unquestionably patriarchal world. A woman marries a man's decisions as well as the man himself. If he, like Samuel, Maria's father, is never a settler, must always move on once a farm has been cleared and is ready to become part of a settled community, then his wife has no choice but to move with him. She can be happy or not about it, but the decision is his to make, not hers. In other respects, putting aside the gender-based division of labor, such a life is a partnership. Also, as indicated by Maria's consideration of her 3 suitors, a woman marries not only a man, but a way of life and a place, the land. In the final instance, when faced with choosing between Lorenzo Surprenant (tr. Surprising) who would take her away to city life in the United States and Eutrope Gagnon (perhaps from the verb gagner, to earn or to win), her closest neighbor, which would mean a life exactly like the one her mother had with her father (her mother, prematurely dead of a mysterious malady), chooses to stay(after having been spoken to by the voice of the land & the voice of duty). She might have faced a somewhat different life if her first fiance, François Paradis (tr. obviously as paradise) hadn't died of exposure in the winter en route to visit her for the New Year. He was an adventurer, a guide to buyers of pelts from the Indians and a lumberman, not a farmer. The lesson intended, perhaps, is that paradise is meant not for daily life but only for the afterlife. show less

Set among the pioneering French settlers of Quebec, clearing forest, surviving savage winters and solitude....and sustained by their Catholic faith
The eponymous heroine is a lovely daughter of a farmer; when three suitors come to the farmstead, her eyes are on dsashing Francois Paradis, off for a stint away logging/ trapping in the shanties. But there's also local farmer, Eutrope Gagnon, and an outsider, Lorenzo Surprenant, who's back visiting from the US, where he can offer her a life of show more ease and plenty....
I was a bit "meh" about this for the first half, where it seemed an average work, portraying the quebecois lifestyle. However it grew on me as the tale unfolds.
"And we have held fast, so that, it may be, many centuries hence the world will look upon us and say "These people are of a race that knows not how to perish...We are a testimony." show less