Gabrielle Roy, until my reading began, was one of those figures, like Hugh MacLennan that I feel like I was bred to dislike, or at least to be skeptical of in the event that I ever read her. I heard so much negativity about the novel that is to be considered her great masterpiece, The Tin Flute. I read it two summers ago, and I was actually quite impressed. It was engaging and moving, and often sad, but good. Its depiction of a French-Canadian family living in the slums of St. Henri was also a little bit dearer to my heart because not only did I spend my formative adult years living in Montreal, and for a while living in a very French section of the city, but I had a boy(yes a boy!) that I dated that lived in the terribly poor section of Montreal known as St. Henri. I've seen what it looks like on the other side of the tracks, and it's not good, and it's sad, still, even though the book was published over 60 years ago. She did a great job with that book. That said, I still had my doubts of Street of Riches which was Roy's second book to win the Governor General. I had(stupid me!) read a review on amazon that wasn't that favorable, and didn't put much merit into this slim volume of interconnected stories about a French-Canadian family living in St. Boniface, Manitoba, where Roy herself grew up. This was also a very pleasant surprise, but in a way moreso, since it reminded me much of L.M. Montgomery's work however many years earlier. Even though the stories revolve around the same family, they are told somewhat out of chronological order; but you still get the idea/sense of everyone and what is going on. L.M. Montgomery, another great female Canadian writer, had the great ability of telling stories about the every day folk, the salt of the earth, but in a funny, quirky, somewhat uplifting, yet poetic kind of way. Each story about Christine and her family is so tightly crafted, but brimming with such life. There is the story "The Two Negroes" in which Christine's family and her neighbors each take in a black porter from the trains, to board with them, and how they compete over which one of their "negroes" is better. It's so innocent, and reflective of a much different time, especially so far removed from the deep South as Manitoba is. When Christine's sister joins the convent, the story revolves around a piece of yellow ribbon that("A Bit of Yellow Ribbon")that Christine so desperately covets. She knows she will miss her sister, but in her youth, she knows that her sister leaving her worldly possessions behind means there's more loot for her.:) But in all these innocent stories, that are reminiscent of the past and a simple life well led, what is interesting is Roy's narrator Christine is also highly observant of a woman's place in society and what it meant, and how she even finds it troublesome. There were so many quotes that I loved that were just so insightful in the year 1957. The first one was from the story "The Gadabouts" which in itself was a great story, since it is when Christine's mother just decides to up and take her with her on a trip across the country to Montreal, without telling Christine's father(who was to be at one of his settlements anyway)and leaving the rest of the children with the neighbors. This shows a very interesting side of the mother, who in all other intensive purposes was a very traditional French Canadian housewife, but with one hell of a streak of independence. At once you're applauding this woman for her courage, especially in her time, but in the other breath, you wonder if she's a little unstable or if she'll get into trouble...which of course you don't want for her at all. To see this whole story unfold through a child's eyes is quite endearing and interesting, but it is really from an adult who is looking back on her memories as a child. Anywho, they go to visit some long lost cousins of Christine's mother, and the whole situation is just a little bit awkward, but lends a great quote.

"We were at once informed that Madame Nault was both niece and sister to archbishops, that she had been born Delilah Forget, and that young girls of good family did not ahve the opportunities of former times to marry well; advantageous matches were growing ever scarcer.

Maman also took on the airs of a lady of position: she remarked how true this all was, that we should like to prolong our visit with Madame Nault, but that we had many people and many things we must see during our trip to Montreal, that the time had come when we must return to our hotel. Then Maman added, as though it were quite incidental, that her husband held a post in the Ministry of Colonization. She spoke of one thing and another, and found ways to interlard frequent little phrases like "my husband - in the employ of the federal government"..."my husband - a civil servant of the state"...and I realized how much better received in society is a woman who boasts of her husband than one who is alone. This seemed to me unjust; I had never noticed that a man needed to talk of his wife in order to appear important" (60).

It is Christine's father, too, who also notices the state of women in the settlements that he works with further into the country. We find out that it is Christine's sister Agnes in whom the father does most of his confiding, for whatever reason. He tells Agnes of his settlement of Ruthenians that live in the settlement of Dunrea.

"The men sat down; not the women, whose role now was to remain standing behind hosts and guests, attentive to pass them the various dishes. Was Papa sorry for them, was he fond of them, these silent, shy women, who hid their lovely tresses beneath kerchiefs and murmered, as they served the men, 'If you please...?'

He had told Agnes that Ruthenian women's voices were the same as murmuring of water and of silence. It is certain, though, that he would have preferred to see them seated a the same time as the men at their own table. This was the only fault he found with his Little Ruthenians - that they were absolute masters in their own families. Several times he was tempted to speak to them about this, to invite the women also to sit down at table...but he was not entirely at home.

Papa often spent a night at Dunrea. There he slept like a child. The women's voices were never high or screeching. They seemed happy. "But what does that prove?" Papa wondered. "The slaves of other days were certainly happier than their masters. Contentment is not necessarily the servant of justice." So the lot of the women at Dunrea was the only thing that upset him. He listened to them humming their babies to sleep...and soon he himself slipped into slumber as into a whole and deep submission. When he awoke, it was to the good smell of strong coffee which the women were preparing for him downstairs." (77)

When Christine dresses herself up in costume jewelry because at the age of fifteen she believes to be what she needs to make herself beautiful, it is when her father is away, but her brother Robert is in town. She comes downstairs in all her finery. Her brother is quite amused by the whole situation, and gives her more money as to egg on her foolishness.

"'Here,' he told me; 'your collection must certainly lack some bit of jewelry. Take this; it'll allow you to decorate yourself even better...'

But Maman sighed sorrowfully. 'Why do you encourage so cruel a bent, Robert?...'

On my way back up to my room, I heard them talking about me. 'Every woman,' Maman was saying, 'has, deep down within her, a poor little pagan soul, and it seems to me that you men all too often bow down before that very pagan...'

'Of course,' said Robert, laughing.

'She who toys with you, she who is dreaming up a thousand hard and pitiless games - yes - that's the one you egg on. When you come right down to it, there is no equality between men and women. The lovely virtues - loyalty, frankness, straightforwardness, admirable simplicity - you insist on for yourselves, whereas you esteem women for their wiles, their flightiness. And that's bad, first of all for yourselves, who are the first to suffer from it, and for women whom - it would seem - you enjoy keeping in a state of artful childishness. Oh, when, indeed,' exclaimed Maman, 'will the same qualities be of good repute for all!...'" (128-9)

It is in "The Voice of the Pools, when Christine's calling to be a writer really begins to show itself, and one wonders if this was a story that is not at least slightly autobiographical. It is her mother who though she has shown her much of the power of the written word who also warns of her self-ostracization. Something that I think of when I am doing something so intensely solitary as this project, something which no one exactly understands but myself.

"'Writing,' she told me sadly, 'is hard. It must be the most exacting business in the world...If it is to be true, you understand! Is it not like cutting yourself in two, as it were - one half trying to live, the other watching, weighing?...'

And she went on: 'First the gift is needed; if you have not that, it's heartbreak; but if you have it, it's perhaps equally terrible...For we say the gift; but perhaps it would be better to say the command. And here is a very strange gift,' Maman continued, 'not wholly human. I think other people never forgive it. This gift is a little like a stroke of ill luck which withdraws others, which cuts us off from almost everyone...'

How could Maman speak with such exact knowledge? As she talked I felt the truth of what she said, and felt as though I had already suffered it.

Maman's eyes were distant, and she was so concerned to guard me well, to defend me, that they filled with sadness. 'To write,' she said to me, 'is this not, finally, to be far from others...to be all alone, poor child?'

After a brief rain, the frogs renewed their song of such fetching wearisomeness. I think one must yearn far in advance for the long road to be traveled, for the ultimate visage which will give us life. Curiosity to know ourselves - perhaps that is what best draws us forward..." (132)

I am at a point now in which I want to know myself better, and it is drawing me forward, drawing me to complete this project and to know what it will become, since sometimes it already feels larger than what I even know about right now...What I do know, though is Gabrielle Roy is no slouch, she's a great writer who earned her place in the hall of fame of Canadian writers. She is important and her writer's voice makes her important on so many levels, not only as a Canadian, but as a Manitoban, a French-Canadian, and most importantly as a woman. I'm glad that I have had to read her.:) PPs-46, GGs-42.