A short post today. More of a question for the group than a post. How do people feel about Desrochers’ deployment of French words and phrases at the start of the novel (particularly Chapter 1)? And why do you think they’re there? What purpose do they serve?
For myself, I found they tripped me up. They were noticeable by their frequency. They jumped right out and punched me in the eyeball. And half my brain is thinking as I’m reading “you shouldn’t be annoyed by this. You’ll have to post about it and there’s a good chance Suzanne Desrochers is going to be directed to the discussion before she comes to speak, and she’ll probably bring an axe, or a small, easily concealed pistol and end your sorry life” and half is saying “doesn’t matter. You gotta be honest about your response to the book.” And whatever was left was saying “well buddy, turn it around. Ask yourself what purpose they serve. Try to get inside the writer’s head a little bit.”
So here’s my view: I think she’s striving for authenticity. It’s a noble goal. As someone who is completely obsessive about getting small details right, I understand it. And it’s not like they’re difficult to figure out, even for someone as linguistically challenged as me. It’s pretty obvious from the context what most of these words or phrases means. I remember being stopped in my tracks several times reading Sweetness in the Belly because of the Ethiopian words (and no glossary). I actually put the book down, got up off my chair and went to look the word up on the Internet more than once. I never had to do that here. But still, it tripped me. Not the first or the second time. But probably by the fourth or fifth. And every time I stumbled on another, the trip was bigger. Funny how it works that way – effects become cumulative. Sometimes that works in our favour, sometimes it hurts us. Here, for me, it hurt. How did you feel?
I liked the inclusion of French terms. I think Suzanne was trying to create an atmosphere and I think she struck a nice balance between too little and too much. It’s like writing dialect or an accent – if it’s done well, it adds beautifully to the narrative, but if it’s over the top, it can become silly. Suzanne did it well.
It didn’t trip me up at all, but then again I speak French, so I didn’t need context to understand it. Many of the longer quotes were in original 17th century French, which I don’t understand well (think of trying to read Shakespeare if English is not your first language), but those had the English translation immediately following and I found it interesting to see the archaic language.
Hi Lisa:
Did you think it odd that they petered out completely in Chapter 2?
Interesting point about the 17th Century French, which is, of course, the French they would have spoken. That didn’t trip me up at all, because as you say, the translation followed it immediately.
I’m with Lisa (my French is of the cereal box and street sign nature) — I liked the bits and pieces of the belle language. It would be tiresome, I think , if they were used a great deal throughout but a healthy dose at the beginning were part of the scene setting, enriching the time and place elements.
Later on…oops, not supposed to talk about later on so we will just leave it here but this topic may be introduced again…later on.
I have to admit that I found the many French terms frustrating~first in my attempts to sound them out as written, then say them aloud with my pathetic accent applied and finally to be certain that I’d understood them as intended. I don’t appreciate method that slows down my reading, as this did. But perhaps this was planned to exact that~ did the author want us to feel somewhat off-kilter, as Laure was in her situation? Was it a way of making us a bit power-less, again relating to Laure? Did she want us to feel the tension of that time and place? (Scene setting, as Ruth said.) Or were we meant to find the use of authentic language quaint and educational? Given the way it tapered off in the story I’m pretty sure it was a carefully executed strategy, but my overall opinion is that for me the use of the French was too much and made for some effort on my part as a reader.
The French terms taper off considerably after the first chapter, but they never go away entirely. I agree with Ruth – they were used more in the beginning to establish the setting, but it would have been tiresome to continue at the same level throughout the book.
Seeing this conversation and how 2 out of 4 people commenting found the use of French frustrating, I wonder if the author made an erroneous assumption about just how much French is generally understood by Anglo-Canadians.