English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

Parallel structures Damnee Manon, Sacree Sandra allegorizes the effects of la grande noirceur, a period of extreme social and religious conservatism in Quebec under Premier Maurice Duplessis. (1) During Duplessis's tenure, which lasted from 1936 to 1959 (with the exception of a five-year hiatus from 1939 to 1944) the Church maintained direct oversight of education, health care, and social services. Although Church and state were officially separate, "in actual fact the church was deeply involved in promoting and ordering social life" and had a "considerable influence" on the operation of the government (Baum 438). The guiding principles of this era included an emphasis on religion, authority, tradition, and the family; the promotion of agriculture; "fierce opposition" to unionization, communism, and socialist principles; and a "suspicion" of democratic government (Rouillard 25). According to one sociologist, "there are few historical parallels" for a modern industrialized society so determined by Catholic ideology (Baum 438). It was only when a liberal government was finally elected in 1960 that the social climate began to change drastically, precipitating a cultural shift that became known as the Quiet Revolution. Tremblay is one of the artists most closely associated with this period of social regeneration. The premiere of Les Belles-Soeurs at Montreal's Theatre du Rideau Vert on 28 August 1968 is commonly cited as a turning point: in the words of one critic, "There is clearly a before and after Les Belles-Soeurs" (Durand 13). Damnee Manon, Sacree Sandra, the eleventh instalment in the BellesSoeurs cycle, concerns itself with the legacy of la grande noirceur. The social inertia and isolation of this period are formally embodied in the stage directions: Tremblay separates the two characters on stage, placing Manon in her kitchen and Sandra in her dressing room (7). It is from these remote locations that the characters will deliver their "confessions" (10). (2) This mise en scene recalls an earlier play in the cycle, Forever Yours Marie-Lou, which is similarly structured by the two parallel (although antagonistic) monologues delivered by Manon's parents. In that play, the stage directions stipulate that "Marie-Louise and Leopold never move, never look at one another. They stare straight ahead" (4). The resultant dramatic immobility evokes the deeper social and cultural stasis at which the playwright is taking aim, the theme of which in Forever Yours Marie-Lou is developed in multiple relationships: that of the parents, whose dysfunctional arguments have been repeated throughout their marriage, as well as their child Manon, who is accused by her sister Carmen of being unable to move beyond a pathological mourning for their dead mother. The truth of Carmen's accusation is revealed in Damnee Manon, Sacree Sandra (set roughly six years later), when Manon admits that her life's purpose has been to "perpetuate my mother" (34). Sandra's trajectory has been similarly centripetal: she has moved back to the same street on which she grew up, "right across from the house where [she] was born" (37). The social dysfunction displayed by Marie-Louise and Leopold has been replicated in the next generation, an inheritance that Tremblay emphasizes by way of structural echo. In addition to physically isolating them on stage, Tremblay reinforces the ideological chasm separating Damnee Manon, Sacree Sandras characters through a visual opposition: Manon, "very devout and all dressed in black," is sitting in a "completely white" kitchen. The transvestite Sandra, "all dressed in white," is doing her nails in a "completely black" dressing room (7). However, at the same time as the opposite colour-coding distinguishes the two characters, the chiasmic mise en scene compels us to identify them and moreover thwarts our desire for coherent symbolism. (3) Manon, the religious zealot, whom Tremblay calls a "full stop" on the religious era in Quebec (Boulanger 92), (4) is positioned in a room painted the colour of purity and virginity. …

“At the end of everything”: Confession and Critique in Michel Tremblay’s Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra