Enclosed spaces dominate Anne Hebert's imaginary world. The house is usually depicted as a prison and a tomb, and only sometimes as a shelter. Products of a stagnant society whose laws they wish to perpetuate, parents give their children a loveless upbringing, in a house from which nature and the external world are rigorously excluded. A few of these captives think that happiness is to be found in marriage, but the conjugal home and that in which adultery occurs prove scarcely more welcoming. Some houses can even be dangerous. The house almost always appears as a forerunner of the tomb, inhabited by individuals unwilling to outgrow childhood, by the living dead, by the living who await death. Certain of Hebert's characters, however, revolt against this fate and flee the closed house. In order to be free, the Hebertian hero must exorcise the past and dissolve the obsessive image of the closed house. The rare open habitations of Hebert's universe are shelters to be found along the individual's road to liberation and life. Most are located near the sea or in the countryside, in a magnificent natural setting evocative of Paradise lost.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.59253 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Robinson, Christine, 1962- |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001067769, proquestno: AAIMM63442, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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