The power of magic: Representations of women in selected contemporary magic realist fiction from Latin America, English Canada, and Quebec (Quebec).

摘要

This study explores the representation of women in contemporary magic realist texts from Latin America, English Canada, and Québec. From a feminist standpoint, it examines how men and women writers represent women characters in texts that allegorically use supernatural power to denaturalize social power. Intracultural, and intercultural considerations of these New World texts reveal shared approaches, both positive and negative, to women's identities and roles. In the more progressive works—Isabel Allende's La casa de los espíritus, Jack Hodgins's The Invention of the World, Anne Hébert's Les fous de Bassan, and Michel Tremblay's La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte—women characters use naturalized supernaturalism (defined as the casual presence of the supernatural in the natural world) to affirm feminine subjectivity and freedom. The assumption of mythic forms or an engagement with the occult can give a female character mobility, spiritual freedom, and pleasure. But the power figuratively expressed through the supernatural is denied women in Gabriel García Márquez's Cien años de soledad, Sheila Watson's The Double Hook , Anne Hébert's “L'ange de Dominique,” and Jacques Ferron's L'amélanchier. Moreover, masculine supernatural power is often affirmed through juxtaposition with a reduced form of feminine magic power. This latter form—in which a natural phenomenon is treated as supernatural—reinforces women's “natural” identities as passive, giving, and unpredictable beings. Indeed, the reader's sense of “nature” is disturbed so that s/he will re-examine, and thus confirm, what is “true”.; Although issues of identity, resistance, and tradition unite the texts as they challenge Old World ideologies and assert a New World consciousness, a denaturalization of women's stereotypical identities is not a common trait. In fact, problematic aspects of other supernatural traditions—such as the universality and hierarchy of traditional myth, or the limited feminine roles within fairy tales—reappear with new vigour. The magic feminist texts, however, subvert tired forms and themes by using them to empower women characters. They take advantage of magic realism's ability to disrupt “reality” in order to challenge the reader's sense of the known and the possible.