Côté, Sylvie B.

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

rapist, are those who make a profit from an entertainment industry that promotes violence and those who treat the rape victims as though they were "indistin- guishable from one another/as eggs in a tray." To paraphrase the poem in this way is of course to do it an injustice. Nelson's argument is complex and runs through all the pieces in the volume. She argues for the truth of the body and she argues as a poet would, in a language sprung free by the power of her voice from mundane connotations: section four of "Gross Na- tional Product" concludes, They may have seen images on the screen, images that fixate the mind, that revolve until they are focused and distilled. We live in fear and with reason. Violent images breed. The tight, next-to-last couplet is closed, locked in; the final two lines-three bare words which seem unfinished, and are- leave the reader with a clear understand- ing on the on-going nature of the thing. In "Heresy, a progress report," Nelson imagines an unholy collusion between science and the church and notes that although men recant, women burn. In "Premenstrual Syndrome" she tells a truth all women have always known. In poem after poem she rights the wrongs of a shabby world, lighting it with language. Perhaps the loveliest and the most daring of the poems in the volume is "Making Waves:" "the sensuousness of words/is the only death by drowninglpoets know," she begins, and makes out of a metaphor unitingwater andbody apoem with which to caress a lover. In the final section of The Work of Our Hands, Nelson quarrels most audibly with the theorists: theologians, engineers and architects, cooks who work by recipe. It is so easy, she writes to confuse science and engineering, engineering and building, when words are not used with preci- sion, when knowing in general is supposed to be knowing enough. And in the final section of "Recipes and Algorithms" she concludes that even the precise language of poets born of the body fails before the body itself. Language fails us; we grasp each other's hands hands untroubled by connotation, unburdened by double meanings, the multiple meanings of tongues hands which have learned nothing from assimilation of restraint, politeness, distancing unbound by recipes, unmistakable in meaning. These are wonderful poems. UN MAL INVISIBLE: L'ISOLEMENT SOCIAL DES FEMMES N. Guberman, J. Leblanc, F. David et J. Belleau (L'R des Centres de Femmes du Quebec). Montreal: Les Bditions du remue-menage, 1993. par Sylvie B. C6tb I1 est rare qu'un ouvrage presente avec autant de simplicitt les complexitts d'un problkme trop souvent qualifid de banal, donc de peu d'interet, soit la solitude des femmes. Et pourtant, c'est ce que les auteures d'Un mal invisible ont reussi h faire: elles mettent en evidence l'ampleur de la solitude qui touchent plus particulihrement les femmes et qui contribue, par ailleurs, h leur isolement social. Dans un premier temps, les auteures font le point sur la terminologie qu'elles emploient, soit les notions d'isolement dCvelopp6es par le sociologue Robert Weiss. Pour lui, il y a d e w  types d'isolement, kmotionnel et social, et chacun m2ne h La solitude. Le premier provient d'une carence de liens affectifs, le second, du manque d'un rkseau social. Les auteures expliquent ensuite les causes principales de l'isolement en mettant l'accent sur celui des femmes en particulier. Elles en inftrent que cet isolement est directement lik h la condi- tion spbcifiue des femmes, au fait qu 'elles sont totalement ou partiellement responsables des enfants, d'autres personnes dkpendantes, du travail domestique. En d'autresmots, tropd 'entre elles, quelle que soit leur place duns la socittk, n 'ont pas d'identitk propre. Les auteures poursuivent en laissant la parole aux femmes qui vivent cet isolement, ce qui ajoute beaucoup de richesse et de tendresse h leur ouvrage. Ces temoignages de femmes nous font @netrer au coeur du probltme et nous donnent un apery des complexitBs de l'isolement dependamment des femmes qui le vivent. Naturellement, le statut et les r6les multidimensionnels des femmes ajoutent des nuances h leur solitude; I'isolement social d'une lesbienne est different de celui d'une mtre monoparentale ou d'une immigrante, par exemple. Les auteures sont conscientes des differentes realit6s des femmes et c'est avecbeaucoup de sensibilite qu'elles analysent l'isolement et la solitude des femmes en tenant compte du contexte VOLUME 13, NUMBER 3 social dans lequel elles vivent. Elles nous font r6aliser, entre autres, qu'une femme de couleur ne serait pas isolte pour les mEmes raisons si elle vivait au milieu d'autres persomes qui ont la m€me couleur de peau. Vient ensuite un examen des condquences de l'isolement sur la sant6 physique et mentale des femmes. Le tab- leau est plut6t sombre puisque beaucoup de femmes deviennent d6pressives et meme suicidaires, elles ont recours aux drogues, aux pilules et B l'alcool et, cons6quemment, comme les auteures l'ont constat6, leur sant6 se dCt6riore. Les auteures enchainent avec des solutions &taillCes B l'isolement des femmes. Elles recomaissent que la solution de l'une n'est pas nkcessairement celle de I'autre mais en gros, ce chapitre propose un point de &part pour mettre fin l'isolement. Pour mieux comprendre la sp6cificitC de l'isolement des femmes, les auteures ont utilid une mtthode tr&s astucieuse: h l'aide de questions precises, elles ont demand6 aux femmes victimes d'isolement ce qui aurait 6tt diff6rent si elles 6taient n6es hommes. Par ce petit questionnaire, les auteures ajoutent beaucoup de dimension B leur analyse et B la fin, on constate que routes les rbjmduntes pensent que l'isolement se vit diffdremment, selon que l'on soit un homrne ou une femme. Cela tient autant aux conditions socio-trconomiques, aux spk&res d'activitbs respectives, qu'aux cotnportements, attitudes et valeurs enrra Snbpar une socialisation diffbrente. Deplus, hommes et femmes ne voientpas leurs rsles valoristrs de la mgme facon par la soc2t4, n 'ontpas les m&mes ressources et n 'entretiennentpas les mgmes rapports avec autrui. Les centres de femmes sont propos6s comme solutionh l'isolement des femmes. En fait, ces organismes communautaires et fbministes g6r6s par des femmes exist- ent &jB depuis une vingtaine d'annks au QuCbec. On y offre, sans frais, une oreille attentive et un accueil chaleureux, des therapies personnelles et de groups, de l'information et de la documentation, des activit6s tducatives et des garderies sur place. Les femmes y trouvent r6confort, mitiks, entraide et solidarit6 et cela les aide B briser leur isolement. Cependant, quoique ces centres soient en eux-memes une solution formidable, ils sont limit& par des contraintes financibm; les femmes qui gbrent ces centres aimeraient atteindre et aider beaucoup plus de femmes. Enfin, quoique les auteures pdtendent n'avoir rien d h u v e r t  de spectaculaire, elles ont sensiblement a m 6  l'une des causes les plus pemicieuses du manque de sant6 physique et mentale des femmes, soit l'isolement social. La seule chose d6plorable c'est que ces centres de femmes n'existent pas B l'ext6rieur du Qdbec  et meme au Quebec, ils ne sont pas assez nombreux. Toutefois, la recherche des auteures peut servir d'excellent mod&le pour en ouvrir d'autres et arriver ainsi h changer la vie & milliers & femmes. PETTICOATS IN THE PULPIT: THE STORY OF EARLY NINETEENTH- CENTURY METHODIST WOMEN PREACHERS IN UPPER CANADA Elizabeth Gillian Mpir. Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 1991. by Rev. Nan Hudson landmark work of Canadian women's his- tory. It is not easy to translate great quantities of research and factual information into a compilation that reads well, and this book struggles to avoid smothering in the vol- umes of information that Muir uncovered in the course of doing her doctoral re- search. It remains animated, however, in part by the clever use of snippets and quotations such as this one, from 1763: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." After tracing the roots of Methodist women's preaching in John Wesley's Britain, Muir documents their arrival in Canada, and their service as itinerant preachers in the Bible Christian, Primi- tive Methodist, and Methodist Episcopa- lian churches. She goes on to briefly look at their Methodist counterparts in the United States, and then attempts to docu- ment and explain why Canadian Method- ist women increasingly lost ground as the 19th century progressed, eventually be- ing all but forced from the pulpit, while American women were able to struggle on to win ordination before the turn of the century. Why were the work and contributions of so many dedicated and gifted women all but lost in the historical record? Muir occasionall~ One reads a book of examines the Ucontextual blindness,, of which, while bringing to light stories from another era, casts shadows on the present Methodist histories and period publica- tions, and then documents the means by by the simple telling of those tales. Petti- which women's work was obscured. One coats in the Pulpit is that kind of book, in example be found by loogng at that although it n l ae s  no direct refer- pcschingcircuit schedules, where ences to issues facing the church today, it en's Christian names were often referred lays bare some of what has, and hasn't, to only with initials, thus hiding their changed for women who seek a career in gender. Methodist publications consist- ministry at the end of the twentieth cen- &.-.S ently downplayed women's preaching truy. At the same time, this is a book which recovers and celebrates the tremendous role of women who preached during the late 18th and 19th centuries in Canada, a contribution that was largely unacknowl- edged in their own time and all but lost to the historical record. Through painstak- ing research, Dr. Muir has gathered the surviving threads, scraps, and shreds of archival materials to weave together a story that brings some of these women, and their times, alive for us today. In doing so, their contribution is chronicled for the first time and celebrated in this activities, employing euphemistic phrases to describe their ministries instead. For example, Elizabeth Dart Enyon, an itiner- ant preacher in Great Britain and then in Upper Canada for the better part of 50 years, was remembered upon her death in a number of publications with such phrases as "devoted Christian," a "superior woman," the "wife" of Rev. J.H. Enyon, and a "superior teacher" who "took a lively interest in the cause." No reference, however, was made to her lifetime of preaching. The harshness of pioneer life was exac- CANADIAN WOMAN S T U D I W E S  CAHIERS DE LA FEMME 

Un Mal Invisible: L'Isolement Social des Femmes

https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/10429/9518

Un Mal Invisible: L'Isolement Social des Femmes

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)