Undressing the text: the function of clothing in Gabrielle Roy's Bonheur d'occasion.(Critical Essay)

Quebec Studies

| March 22, 2004 | Kevra, Susan |
Gabrielle Roy's 1947 speech to the Societe royale du Canada amounts to a brief sequel to her 1945 novel, Bonheur d'occasion. In the address, she describes what had transpired in the lives of her characters in the years since the end of the story, which was set in 1940. Here is what she had to say about the protagonist, Florentine Lacasse:

Durant la guerre, Florentine a travaille dans les usines de munitions, puis elle a grimpe l'echelle sociale jusqu'a devenir vendeuse dans un grand magasin. Pour elle, cela represente une veritable ascension, un grand pas dans la vie. (Roy 1978, 172)
Using the war as a springboard, Florentine, like many women of her generation, was able to earn a living and move beyond the traditional role of wife and mother, enjoying unprecedented economic agency. Her climb is all the more impressive when we recall the image of Florentine in the opening pages of the novel, a humble waitress in a Montreal diner, clad in a drab green uniform, serving "des hommes mal eleves." The after-novel life that Roy imagines for Florentine leaves no doubt of the affection and pride she felt for this character and her belief that Florentine is a kind of success story: frustrated with her lot in life, she is driven to transcend the poverty of her past and rise to the relatively lofty position of a saleswoman in a department store.
In Au Bonheur des dames (1883), Zola had shown how the new Parisian department stores, veritable cathedrals of consumerism, inspired a cult of fashion. Dazzling displays of sumptuous, ornately decorated fabrics replaced the impressive rose windows of the great cathedrals while beautifully bottled perfumes supplanted the priest's incense-bearing censer. The devoted followers of this modernist religion were, by and large, women. Florentine is a direct descendant of