Enchantment And Sorrow Analysis

Roy’s divided nature creates wearisome and challenging “bonds between identity and home” (Boyd), story and situation. Even when Roy was a pupil at the English run school in Manitoba, she found that there was no opportunity for Francophone students to experience “blossoming of the self” (Roy 63). “[She’s] been brought up to be French, but what would [she] find here to nourish and sustain [her]?” (Roy 109). Roy was dissatisfied, thus she decided to set out on a quest for cultural and intellectual stimulation. At this point in the autobiography, Roy admits to feeling trapped in a “walled enclosure” (Roy 109). Nevertheless, her travels in pursuit of her roots did not bring her that personal satisfaction that she had hoped for. On the contrary,

As one begins to read Roy’s autobiography it becomes evident that the first part is mostly set in the town of Manitoba, where Roy discusses her family, education, her teaching career and her love for the dramatic theater. Once the reader moves further into the book, one will find himself situated in a different country. The second half of Roy’s autobiography reflects her travels to Europe, specifically France and England, where she faces the realization that her future lies not in theater, but in writing. There are couple of instances in the text that signal to the reader the prevailing concern with linguistic identity. This concern with linguistic identity becomes evident in the first lines of Enchantment and Sorrow, where Roy asked “when did it first dawn on [her] that [she] was one of those people destined to be treated as inferiors in their own country?” (Roy 3). After this introduction, Roy goes on to retell one of her shopping expeditions with her

Nevertheless, Roy’s autobiography, as well as other writings, gives the reader an inside to both languages. Her autobiography gives examples of linguistic relations and situations where English language, in unification with embarrassment and rejection, brought joy. Roy’s depiction of the variety of linguistic differences sets off a chain reaction which aims to untangle the sense of solid pecking order of languages. Most of all, Enchantment and Sorrow come off as a text about bilinguals, in which Roy presents the reader with many different relationships one can have with language. Hence, the reader can freely move between the realms of victimization and colonization of diglossia to dynamic and original contributor of dialectal relations. Gabrielle Roy’s ‘story’ in Enchantment and Sorrow is shaped by her ‘situation’ as a Franco-Manitoban created a strong voice that encourages all of Canadian minorities to become active, culturally encompassed individuals in our great multicultural country. Gabrielle Roy died of heart failure on July 13th, 1983 (Kalman Naves). Possibly, her flamboyant voice spoke through the racial gloom of everyday life, piercing the hearts of people just to reassure them that they are not