Honour In Windflower By Gabrielle Roy

Honour is the mindset and way an individual views himself. It is the esteem the one hold himself in front of others and the mirror. Honour is the respect that must be given to high-ranking dignitaries and to an individual’s own mother and father. Without it, the world is void of any respect for status or past successes. Honour is the acknowledgement of greatness. The loss of honour is received when a person wrongs himself or those he is associated with. This leaves that individual wallowing in guilt and hoping to recompense his actions. In the novel Windflower, Gabrielle Roy encompasses the consequences of losing one’s honour, regaining it and trying to find the certainty of retaining it. In the story, Elsa deals with the loss and revival

of her honour and she goes through many obstacles to retaining it.

Elsa, a young and cheerful girl, is stripped of her honour when she is raped but regains it with the birth of her child. Elsa is introduced to the audience as she is returning from the movies with her friends. ON the way back to her home, she is stopped by an American soldier and is raped by him in the bushes. This event affects Elsa to such an extent that her once cheery and carefree personality changes into a morose and melancholy shell of her past. She continues to be like this, seeming like her very soul is missing for the extent of her pregnancy. Elsa, however, is revived by the birth of her child, Jimmy. “So it seemed that in giving birth to her child she had restored her own life to herself.”(18) The birth of Jimmy returns the honour that also lost during the rape that she experiences. In her mind, the only way to retain her honour is to make sure that jimmy never leaves. Because it is a white man who is the father of jimmy, Elsa decides that she must raise him in the white culture. “Elsa took advice from no one but the white people and on this point, Madam Bourgoin had been emphatic: girls in pink boys in blue.” (42) She changes her entire lifestyle to fit the white standard. Elsa scrubs her hut spotless, dresses Jimmy in blue just as she is told, keeps him on a schedule and works as a main for a white woman in town. She lives against her natural tendencies and works by the clock. Soon unbeknownst to Elsa, “Her life was being used up buying him clothes as costly and toys as charming as those possessed by the children of Madame Beaulieu.” (42) Elsa is so busy in providing for her son that she begins to neglect him in favour of work. She is so focused on keeping Jimmy happy with materialistic things that she forgets to be a mother to him. It is only when the pastor of Elsa’s village approaches her and tells her that she must raise him more traditionally lest the boy is taken from her earlier than due time. This frightens Elsa. Unwilling to let her son go, Elsa takes the pastors advice to an extreme and decides to move to Old Fort Chimo across the river. “Actually just as the ice forms in the autumn without the eye being able to catch the precise moment and there is now a solid bridge to cross, the resolution to depart had come to her unawares and one day appeared on her firm already.” (51) Elsa, no wishing to lose the child that returned her honour, for fear of losing it again, believes that the white culture is the right way to raise him. But, upon hearing the pastor’s advice, is convinced that she must raise her child like the Inuit of old.

Now believing that she must raise her child traditionally to keep him from leaving her, Elsa travels to Old Fort Chimo to live with her uncle Ian.

From believing that she must completely envelop Jimmy within white culture, Elsa turns around, denounces the white culture, and accepts the Inuit culture more that she did as a child. She takes Jimmy and travels across the river where Old Fort Chimo is located. ON the beach Elsa leaves most of her White belongings and carries only the most important of possessions to Uncle Ian’s cabin. Upon arriving, at uncle Ian’s cabin, Elsa and Jimmy are welcomed reluctantly by the old man. However, as time goes on, Uncle Ian warms up to the mother and son. Elsa now acts like an Inuit mother, teaching, cooking, and caring for her son and Uncle Ian. “She had just turned the last page of an interesting but somewhat complicated book and was beginning another.” (75) Elsa is now firmly convinced that this lifestyle is the way to keep Jimmy with her. Her confidence, however, is shattered once more by Roch Beaulieu, a policeman who tells Elsa that Jimmy must attend school. She becomes distressed. “He said he would come and take him by force’, she kept saying.” (91) Frightened by the thought that her son could be taken away from her once again, Elsa decides to run away. She decides to go with Uncle Ian and take Jimmy to Baffin Island, where no white person will steal him away from her. However, while travelling through the snowy wasteland, Jimmy falls ill. Frantically, Elsa wonders what to do. She has no medicine to heal her son and all of Ian’s Inuit remedies are far too unreliable to use. Elsa has no choice but to return to New Fort Chimo for the White People’s medicine. Elsa and Ian become stressed and fall onto their culture’s survival instincts. Her dying son spurs Elsa and Ian and, “ Her own senses were stirred by the fierce desire of the man.” (96) Jimmy catches a glimpse of the shadows created by her mother and uncles actions and is

horrified. This causes him to be afraid of his mother for the first time. Believing that the white people are going to steal her son, Elsa decides to raise him as a traditional Inuit. This means travelling to the old Inuit country and living with her Uncle Ian who is a pure traditionalist. This, however, does not last very long and Elsa decides to travel back to the white people village. She becomes uncertain that the Inuit ways will keep her son alive, the son which restored her honour.

Now turning to the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, Elsa denies all of her Inuit culture and now begins raising Jimmy as a white man. Because white people saved her son from dying, she believes that they are the ones that will keep her son by her side. Elsa beings to buy Jimmy materialistic things such as candy, comic books and other things that white mothers bought for their children. “She had in fact, changed her aim again and was once more firmly on the side of the white man.” (105) Elsa, longing to keep Jimmy happy, bought him everything that he wanted without ever saying no. However, to make money, she needs to work. Once more, Elsa begins to work long hours to be able to buy Jimmy the things that caught his eyes. “Adaptable as she was by nature, she now began to live by a new rhythm and from this, she never deviated.” (107) As long as Jimmy remains by her side, Elsa is content in working from dusk till dawn. She holds back her own desires to relax and to go to the river. The products Elsa is creating are in full demand and she must keep working for Jimmy. As the years being to pass, Jimmy begins to grow very fast and so does the distance between him and Elsa. Fearing that he will disappear, Elsa begins to buy him more of the things he wants. But, even with all her hard work, she cannot keep Jimmy at her side. Jimmy now looks at his mother with icy, blue eyes. “Today there was scarcely any doubt: Jimmy was looking at her as a stranger.” (124) Elsa’s honour is beginning to fade once again, so she works even harder. In time, the inevitable happens, “ Little by little Elsa’s now aimless life began to come apart as what had been their mainspring and provided its meaning unwound.” (135) Jimmy leaves without saying where he is going. Elsa’s honour is gone. She no longer needs to be certain about anything. No longer needing to work, Elsa falls into a downward spiral of idleness. “She slipped by stages into the idleness and tendency to endless daydreaming that was probably the basis of her character and had been surmounted only by a perpetual impetus of love.” (135) Her will to live is gone. The honour that she felt from her son is also gone.

A person’s honour is how they perceive their status as an individual. It is the pride that one should place upon oneself and show to the rest of the world. This honour includes acting properly within certain settings and always minding not to wrong others or oneself. In the case of Elsa, Her honour is stolen from her when she is raped by an American G.I. It returns to her, however, through the birth of her son. Elsa wants to remain certain that her honour stays intact. She observes the white culture, certain that it will keep Jimmy with her. But, when she sees that it is drawing him away, Elsa begins to practice the Inuit culture, hoping that this it is the answer to her problems. The Inuit culture works for a time, but it is also abandoned when Jimmy becomes sick and requires the white medicine. Since the White people are part of the reason why her son is still alive, Elsa devotes herself once again to their culture; working long hours, buying materialistic things for her son and cooking him processed meat. She does everything in her power to keep Jimmy by her side but it does not work. Jimmy leaves and Elsa is left with nothing to live for, spending the rest of her life at the bank of the Koksoak dreaming into the abyss. Her honour is gone, lost like ice in the spring.