PrJamila BENABOU

PrJamila BENABOU

The Search for Identity in the Diviners and le Plat de Lentilles PrJamila BENABOU FLSH, Ain Chock, Hassan II University Of Casablanca jamilabenabou@gmail.com

Abstract :

Le Plat de Lentilles is French written novel. It shows a transformation and enlightenment of the protagonist Nadine. It is about a complete submissive woman whose constant obedience to her husband makes the latter despising her artistic side as she paints the Sun and looks for Happiness. The prominent image of the woman is this of a house-wife; yet, man is omnipresent and symbolizes fertility and the continuity of history; nevertheless he lets his wife sink in incoherence and schizophrenia. Nadine appears to invent her own words and her own imprints. The Diviners is an epic novel, a powerful story of an independent woman who refuses to abandon her search for love. Morag Gunn grows up in Manawaka, a small Manitoba town. She is orphaned as a child. Christie and Prin Logan raise her up and nurture in her sense of pride by telling her stories about her Scottish ancestors until she leaves for Winnipeg University. Morag meets her future husband Dr.BrookeSketlon, a University professor. Brooke treats Morag as subordinate and underestimates her force of writing; but he fails. A new Canadian woman appears to prove herself. An independent mother as she gets her daughter from her Métis lover Jules Tonner and a writer as she publishes her book. This struggle to prove one’s identity is similar in both Le Plat de Lentilles and The Diviners.

Both Margaret Laurence’s « The Diviners » and Madelaine Ouellette Michalska’s « le Plat de Lentilles » are feminist novels. In « the Diviners » Morag Gunn illustrates the English Canadian woman of the seventies and Nadine in « le Plat de lentilles » depicts the assumptions of the French-Canadian woman of the late eighties. On both sides, the female protagonist reflects an immediate picture of the female situation, and how she attempts to take a firm position in society. In letters Quebecoises, MadelaineOulette-Michalaska speaks about « identité problématique » in Dis moique je vis by MichèleMilhot. She Says :

C’est par l’identification que s’établit le lien entre L’individu et la collectivité. Et l’identité, c’est l’image desoi et de structuration de soi qui se forme dans la relation vecu avec son environnement, avec l’autre c’est la perception de soi acquise dans le rapport au temps et à l’espace collectif du groupe auquel on appartient… , l’effort exige pour s’insérer dans l’histoire de l’autre pour entrer dans sa peau et tenir un rôle de figuration oblige à destitution de soi (45)

As a matter of fact, the two novels are asserting female identity which is influenced by surroundings and shaped by historical and religious background. Accordingly, in « The Diviners » Morag Gunn is a middle-aged writer of forty-seven, who has retreated to a secluded log house near a river, where she continues her writing.

On the other hand, in « le plat de lentilles », Nadine is a painter of thirty years old. She spends a holiday with her husband in the country to escape the city and to get some rest since she is supposed to suffer from mental problems.

Thus, both protagonists have the same artistic inclinations. Morag Gunn is a famous writer; she has proved her intellectual capacity after a long struggle with publishers. Her first attempts were rejected many times before being accepted. She does not yield to Brooke’s constant attempt to turn her from writing; he is interested more in her physical beauty than in her professional career. As a female figure, Morag Gunn has let her husband down by putting her maiden name on the book. She is an independent woman who wants to detach herself from her husband. Madelaine Ouellette-Michalska presumes that to fuse oneself with the other is to destroy the self. Brooke says to Morag « didn’t you want to take the chance Morag of putting your married name on it? She responds « Brooke it wasn’t that it was something quite different. It goes a long way back » (262). As far as Morag is concerned, her maiden name has a lot of significance. It is the continuation of the past. It is the strong link with her ancestors whom she knows only by names and by stories Christie tells her when she was a small girl. A parallel can be made between her and her daughter Pique by her Métis lovers Jules Tonner. Pique cannot be detached from her origin. At the end of the novel, she leaves her mother to go west to live with her father’s family in the mountains. Likely, in « le Plat de Lentilles » Nadine wants to assert her identity through painting. It is an outlet to her aspirations. She escapes her female duties by taking refuge in the « néant » which she has created for herself. Nadine is an independent character in a conservative society where she does not fit. Her revolt against the others takes a strange shape. She seems to have lost her mind so that her attitude must be accepted by her society. She says: Qui suis-je ?...Je suis le cameleon aux cent visages qui exhibe un maquillage impeccable, des seins de reine, unetaille plus fine. Je suisl’ombre de la main qui tranche le pain en décrivant un demi- cercle avec le long couteau de josué. Je suis la femme qui s’allonge en ralant un grand spasme de plaisirdésque son male l’approche…a certain moments on me croitnormale. On saitque je me nomme Nadine.Mais je ne réponds pas toujoursquand on m’appelle par ce nom (34)

Nadine is looking for identity rather than asserting it. She says, « je l’ai toujours su de ne pas savoir qui je suis »(38). She does not like her female position. « C’est long une vie josué, il y’a des jours ou je dévors la mienne avec rage » (38) Nadine is reacting behind the screens; she is aware of her subordinate position but cannot defy the system overtly. According to Nadine, a woman is a pleasure for a man, a satisfaction of his desires, she is part of him. Her revolt goes beyond social issues by attacking religion: « pourquo iDieu a-t-ilCreél’homme ? »(46).

Through her painting Nadine has freedom of expression. The Fact that she paints the sun and the earth, this suggest that she is haunted by this relation between man and woman. It is symbolic paintings, but in a way it seems that she has reached an ultimate awareness of the self. What she cannot admit to others she puts down on the Linen cloth. We can notice that freedom of the woman is seen first in her freedom of expression. Nadine, in her painting resemblesM.O.Michalska in her freedom in writing. For a writer to master the intricate and blasphemous female secret world is at the same time estimated and underestimated, in the sense that it requires a great ability of expression also it reveals their intimacies. For M.O.Michalska to reach this level of competence is a step forward. She says in « Faire Circuler le Feminin » :Ecrirec’estquelques chose d’aussi animal, d’aussiinvolantaire en même temp quespirituel…, unefois la page pleine, j’aicomme un sentiment euphorique de délivrance (213)

M.O.Michalska writes about the unspoken and the mysterious subjects, Nadine does the same in her painting. She escapes the real world to express her phantasmal symbolic reality. Both protagonists are asserting their identities not only as persons among a group but also on a wider scale. On the one hand, Morag is attached to Manawaka society since she was raised there. It is more related to Margaret Laurence’s ancestors than to Morag’s origin. In « Margaret Laurence » by Patricia Morley, Laurence says:

I always felt my spiritual ancestors were highlanders, and possibly that is why I gave Morag Gunn in the Diviners, ancestors who came from Sutherland and who were turned out during the highland clearances. Manawaka will probably always be there, simply because whatever I am was shaped and formed in that sort of place and my way of seeing, however much it may have changed over the years, remains in some enduring way that of a small-town prairie person (184)

It is clear that Morag in a way is a representation of Laurence’s character in her writing, and in her seclusion at the end of her life in a log house. Sherrill Grace also turns attention to Laurence’s Morag in her essay « A portrait of the artist as Laurence Hero ». In examining the nature of Laurence hero, she says:

As an artist creating out of the very center of her experience; celebrating the richness of life, Morag exemplifies the Canadian hero who is neither a victim nor an Adam, but one of a long line of builders, working to forge the uncreated conscience of her race. M.Laurencean Appreciation (7)

Morag is the extension of Laurence’s attachment to her ancestors yet; in « The Diviners » Morag Gunn has searched deeper than this, she has crossed the frontiers of Canada to be in touch with her origin; she has gone to England, then to Scotland. She says to her landlady Fan about going up there:

I will go to England and Scotland sometimes. England? Scotland? Why? I have known for a long time I had to go there, Fan. I can’t explain it, exactly, I guess l’ve been waiting For the right moment (347)

Morag feels the urge to see the land of her ancestors. Morag is guided more by intuition than by reason. She thinks that when she goes to England she will be welcomed. On the contrary, she does not find more than she has in Canada. After her journey to England and Scotland, she decides to return « home ». According to Morag, the place where she has grown up is her real place. Similarly, Nadine in « Le Plat de Lentilles » has a sense of nationalistic heroism. Through the novel, she shows her hatred for the English Canadians by alluding to « Josué », who incarnates the heritage and Martin with whom she has an imaginary sexual relation and who represents the son. Through symbolism, Nadine is raiding an attack against the English Canadians, and extending a parallelism between male and female portraying French Canada as a woman dominated by English Canadians and Americans who are metamorphosed in male figures.

In a way, Morag and Nadine are defying men; yet Morag is more practical and realistic than Nadine, Morag is an active character. She assumes a responsibility by choosing to be a single mother. She does not repress her female instincts; she prefers to divorce and break up marriage with Brooke rather than to yield to him and share his life without having children of her own. More than that she gets impregnated by a Métis lover. Verduyn explains in « M.Laurence. An Appreciation » that Morag dares to love across racial lines to achieve her goal and have a child at any cost without expecting any help from Jules Tonner. Morag is a strong character. Morag resembles N.Brisson’sHéloise in « Plus jamais l’amour éternal »; who defends her love for Abélard and her progeny though it is unconventional and sinful according to the Catholic Church at this time. So, for Morag she is not afraid of any prejudice; on the contrary, she goes on living with great assurance. Morag is unlike Nadine, who is frail by condemning her woman hood. Nadine says, « je ne me trouve que pour mieux me perdre. Cela m’épuise »(87) She says also, « il n’existe aucune commune mesure entre toi homme de la continuité et moi, bibelot de luxe, chatte persane vautreé dans sa nonchalance » (59) Thus, to assert her personality, Nadine goes beyond natural forces, she rejects motherhood. She wants to free herself in particular and all women in general from submitting to their primary responsibilities of caring for and nurturing children. Psychologically speaking, Nadine is undergoing masochism by hating herself. More than that, she pretends to be insane to escape society’s criticism. Nadine is like Elaine in « Cat’s Eye » who persists in marrying her lover since she is pregnant. Elaine wants to save her social status. In both cases, Nadine and Elaine represent weak women who fell in the abyss, « le néant ». So, Nadine is fed up with the system and she condemns herself to annihilation. Also, we find that in both novels the protagonists are looking for intellectual freedom, in the sense that they have wider horizons than ordinary women; yet the visions of the two protagonists differ. Morag’s intellectual freedom is a long struggle with life to assert her position as a recognized writer. She makes her living through her writing this is contrary to Nadine who through her painting hides her feminist outlook. Her paintings are continuous expressions of how woman is dominated by man. It is more or less a weak position. It has no effect on the others. She is revolting against herself. As a character, Nadine becomes the symbol of pity since she chooses « le néant ». Nobody takes her deeds or her words seriously. She is supposed to be mentally disordered; therefore all she does is presumably out of her control. To conclude this comparative paper, I would like to mention that both Margaret Laurence and MadelaineOulette-Michalska represent the literature and culture of their country. Michalska is an example of the French-Canadian woman who succeeds in achieving the highest level of expressions without being able to have elementary or secondary education like the other girls. She is self-educated. Through her novel M.O.Michalska creates a complicated womanly figure. Nadine is rebellious and frustrated at the same time. On the English side; M.Laurence is reflecting her ambitious and independent personality in that of Morag. The latter has succeeded in asserting her identity and establishing a professional career without the help of anyone. Yet, she becomes the victim of society. She has to divorce her husband in order to practice her writing, to have a baby to raise on her own, to endure a single life for her survival and that of her daughter pique. In « M.Laurence. An Appreciation » M.Laurence emphasizes her concern about individual identity. She says:

My entire life as a writer has been concerned with my belief that all individual human beings matter, that no one is ordinary…; As a writer, therefore, I feel I have a responsibility to write as truthfully as I can about human individuals and their dilemmas, to honor them as living suffering and sometimes joyful people. My responsibility also must extend into my life as a citizen of my own land and ultimately of the world. (8)

Works Cited

Laurence, Margaret « The Diviner ». Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1974 Michalaska-ouelette, Madelaine « Le Plat de Lentilles ». Montréal, Edité par le Biocreux, (1979). Morley, Patricia « Margaret Laurence ». Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1981. Grace, Sherrill ». A portrait of the Artist as Laurence Hero », University of Toronto, Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 13, August 1978. Verduyn, Christi, « Margaret Laurence. An Appreciation ». Canada Broad View Press, 1989. At Wood, Margaret. « Cat’s Eye », Canada, McClelland and Stewart, September 1988.