IMAGES DES ETATS-UNIS DANS LE ROMAN QUEBECOIS MODERNE (IMAGES OF THE UNITED STATES IN CONTEMPORARY QUEBEC NOVELS)

Although most Quebec novelists are not preoccupied with the United States, the presence of the huge southern neighbour makes itself felt now and again. One is struck by the similarities in the images of the U.S. when it does appear in literature: Quebec novelists seem to see it as a powerful attraction and as a dangerous threat. Three novels, representing three different approaches, illustrate this point: Ringuet's Thirty Acres, Roger Lemelin's The Plouffe Family and Anne Hébert's Kamouraska (other novels are cited where relevant in the original paper).

The attraction of the U.S. is most oftén presented in French-Canadian literature by the theme of escape, frequently for economic reasons. Ringuet's novel explores the reasons for large immigrations southward, and in so doing exposes the myth of the “easy” life in the U.S. versus a “hard” life in the North (cf. Maria Chapdelaine). But the novel shows how misleading this myth can be: once Quebeckers taste the bitterness of economic depression in the U.S. in the 1930's, they begin to look back to the North with the same kind of illusions of economic independence which brought them South.