The American Dream in Nineteenth-Century Quebec: Ideologies and Utopia in Antoine Gérin-Lajoie's "Jean Rivard"

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

This book is an English translation of an in-depth sociocritical study
of Jean Rivard. Written by the 19th-century Quebec author Antoine
Gérin-Lajoie, the novel features a Québécois protagonist who is
firmly anchored in the North American soil and spirit; it shows how an
intelligent man and farmer can make money and, having become an
exemplary capitalist, move into liberal politics. Major’s study
includes a discussion of Gérin-Lajoie’s fascination with the United
States and devotes a chapter to the examination of Jean Rivard as a
utopian novel (he ultimately defines the novel as “a pure laine
American utopia”). Another chapter explores the use of political
discourse in Jean Rivard and in the end places the novel in the
tradition of mauvism, a “pragmatism that seeks to reconcile Quebec
nationalism and the reality of political power [in America].”

This interesting and very readable book makes a valuable contribution
to our understanding of Quebec literature and of Quebec itself.