Regarding the Refugee: Mavis Gallant’s Short Fiction in the Age of the Exile

Resumo

Many of the late Canadian writer Mavis Gallant’s short stories concern themselves with the social landscapes of postwar Europe. The predominance of the “international theme” in her work, as well as the North American expatriate experience, is well-documented. Enough of her stories feature refugees as central characters that the relationships between such persons and the societies into which they enter should also be regarded as one of her central thematic preoccupations. This paper considers some of the narrative means by which Gallant analyzes this postwar relational space. While other relevant stories are signaled, the essay focuses on two: “An Alien Flower” and “Varieties of Exile”. As is the case in other stories by Gallant, this space is determined, in part, by what we call an “inability to witness”. Among her chief interests in this topic seems to consist in how knowledge of this particular set of others – along with the traumas constitutive of their pasts – is avoided. This interest shows itself with especial clarity in how she positions the reader’s perspective vis-à-vis that of the narrator. Her ethical and political concerns are, in this manner, inseparable from her narrative technique and style.