Hopes and Dreams: The Diary of Henriette Dessaulles, 1874-1881
Description
Contains Illustrations
$29.95
ISBN 0-88882-088-7
Author
Publisher
Year
Contributor
Lori McLeod is a librarian with the Toronto Public Library.
Review
Henriette Dessaulles, born in St. Hyacinthe, Quebec in 1860, began to record her thoughts, feelings and observations at an early age. A series of four notebooks that Henriette kept between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one have been published to give us this excellent piece of social history and literature.
The reader is drawn completely into Henriette’s world. That world is quite different from some of the more traditional images of nineteenth-century Quebec, which have portrayed it as being “backward,” centred around a rural economy and the Roman Catholic church. Henriette’s father was a banker and the mayor of St. Hyacinthe. Her life was middle class and surprisingly “English.” The journal is reminiscent of a Jane Austen novel, as Henriette describes a social life which consisted of theatricals, balls, sleigh rides, picnics, rowing parties, and choral practices.
Henriette is a sensitive, thoughtful and, often, lonely girl. She writes lyrically of the books, music, and beauty of nature that fill her lonely world, and ponders philosophical questions dealing with death and religion. Her powers of wit and perceptiveness are best displayed when she describes her convent schooldays. Her writing is wonderfully witty, frank, and honest.
Hopes and Dreams is described as being a “love story” above all other things. Throughout the diary we witness the blossoming of a love between Henriette and the boy next door, Maurice Saint-Jacques. In Maurice, Henriette finds a confidant who replaces her need to keep a diary. Eight weeks before her marriage Henriette makes her last journal entry.
When Henriette filled her first notebook, she wrote that she would burn it when she was older. Had Henriette reduced her “confidant” to ashes, she would have denied us the pleasure of reading this delightful diary.
My only criticisms concern the presentation of the book. The footnotes are few in number and minimal in their usefulness as they simply establish the kinship between Henriette and the individuals about whom she writes. There is no index, which would have facilitated the task of those interested in analyzing the work as a historical document.