Debt in the Quebecois Novels of the 1960-1980

This article will study the Quebecois novels of the 1960-1980＇s and especially the feeling of debt that women had because of the Christian Bible that condemned women as being the sinful Eve responsable for the Fall of Humanity. These novelists from Quebec, Marie-Claire Blais, Anne Hebert, and Gabrielle Roy, show that their female characters are unable to let go of this myth of the incarnation in their bodies of the temptations leading to Sin. Consequently, these heroines show a violent disgust for their bodies, and for all sexual manifestations （puberty, pregnancey, child-birth） that they describe very crudely. They reject their bodies and live in shame of their bodies. For this reason, they dress with modesty and have a neurotic fear of the Sin of the Flesh. This Sin makes them want to withdraw from the image of the temptress Eve and to identify themselves to Mary, the sublimated woman. For Quebec novelist Gabrielle Roy, the female debt cannot be repaid by a sublimation of women to Mary, but by a sublimation of women＇s own talents. Gabrielle Roy sees her late birth as a debt contracted towards her very impoverished and old parents. Fortunately, in her adolescence, she rebels against this unfair contract that her family and especially her mother imposes on her and that wrongs her because it forces her to follow the career path of a school teacher to repay the debts of her family. She withdraws from this debt by leaving for France and following the career path of a writer. She will redeem the debt of her family by writing her autobiography which is a monument in sublimation of her mother