Mavis Gallant and the Politics of Cruelty

Author: Condé M.¹

Source: The Yearbook of English Studies, Volume 31, Number 1, 1 January 2001 , pp. 168-181(14)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

Mavis Gallant is a writer with a very strong sense of the dangers of fascism. A Canadian who has lived permanently in Paris since 1975, she has in her journalism been constantly alert to French anti-Semitism. In ‘Malcolm and Bea’ she investigates the horrifying possibilities of human behaviour through the crude and self-pitying appropriation of the word ‘Pichipoi’, a term coined by Jewish children awaiting deportation, by an expatriate Canadian. In ‘In the Tunnel’ the focus of her narrative of cruelty and exploitation is a painting of Judas in an abandoned chapel in the South of France.

Keywords: fascism; anti-Semitism; Malcolm and Bea; Pichipoi; In the Tunnel; Judas

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: Queen Mary and Westfield College, London

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