The Silent Cry: Empathy and Elegy in Mavis Gallant's Novels

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
The Silent Cry: Empathy and Elegy in Mavis Gallant's Novels
Abstract
The author notes that in Montrealer Mavis Gallant's novels -- Green Water, Green Sky (1959) and A Fairly Good Time (1970), and novella "Its Image on the Mirror”, -- structure and language, the emotional and empathic elements of the fiction, serve to involve the reader in the experiences of each mournful character. She explains that when silence seems to be the only option for a character, Gallant either uses a narrator to elegize on behalf of that character (as in Green Water, Green Sky), or provides the character with a displaced form of self-expression (as in "Its Image on the Mirror" and A Fairly Good Time). In all of these works, the silent cry of each protagonist is ultimately voiced. Yet, the author argues, there is a judgmental quality to Gallant's fiction, in that the uninvolved reader is implicated alongside the non-comprehending, unempathetic characters in Gallant's critiques. In the end, the author concludes, we are urged to take responsibility for our own readings, both of the literary realities of the fiction and of the literal reality it serves to illuminate -- we are urged to listen for that silent cry.
Publication
Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature Canadienne
Volume
Vol. 15
Issue
no. 2
Pages
116-135
Date
Summer 1990
Language
en
URL
Citation
Smythe, Karen. “The Silent Cry: Empathy and Elegy in Mavis Gallant’s Novels.” Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature Canadienne Vol. 15, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 116–135. https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/scl/article/view/8123/9180.
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