Ringkasan :
In her autobiography La Détresse et l’enchantement, Gabrielle Roy captures a moment from her schooldays in Saint-Boniface that reveals the complex cultural situation of the Franco-Manitoban minority in the 1920s. Recalling a visit from the (anglophone) inspector from the Department of Education, she describes the kind of bicultural role-play expected of French-speaking Manitoban pupils: “Il me demanda si je connaissais quelque passage de la pièce. Je ne perdis pas une minute, imprimai sur mon visage le masque de la tragédie et me lançai à fond de train: Is this a dagger ... [He asked me if I knew some passage of the play by heart. I lost no time in drawing the mask of tragedy over my face and launching full tilt into ‘Is this a dagger ... ’].”1 Roy then comments on the pleasure this ritual seems to produce: “C’était la première fois que je découvrais à quel point nos adversaires anglophones peuvent nous chérir, quand nous jouons le jeu et nous montrons de bons enfants dociles [That was when I first discovered how dearly our Englishspeaking adversaries can love us, providing we play the game and show what good, obedient children we are]” (de 75; 56). As Roy implies, the scene confirms power relations between anglophone and francophone in Manitoba (Franco-Manitobans as children and anglophone power symbolically justified by the Shakespearean text). It is essentially a colonial scene, in which recitation becomes “a ritual act of obedience, often performed by a child before an audience of admiring adults.”2 Roy analyses the ambivalent positioning of her young self vis-à-vis English and French culture. In a tone half admiring and half self-mocking she declares: “Mais j’avais, je pense bien, un petit côté cabotin, peut-être en partieentretenu par notre sentiment collectif d’infériorité, et qui me faisait rechercher l’approbation de tous côtés [But I was a bit of a show-off, I think, perhaps owing partly to our collective inferiority complex, which led me to seek approval at every opportunity]” (de 73; 55). Indeed, Roy’s education, her family situation, and her personal aspirations required her to become bilingual and bicultural

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