The tradition of an identifiable homosexual writing in Canada has long been suppressed in order that a virile heterosexuality might continue to be inscribed upon the national consciousness, especially in the process of building a national literature, in either English or French. The English Canadian canon is a consciously constructed literary place wherein only those texts, and their authors, that can be critically authorized to reflect this national "goal" are admitted. The aspiration and need for a "straight"-forward canon underscore—and continue to do so—an anxiety regarding presumably uncontrollable (sexual) desires seemingly inimical to its project.

Homosexual desire, this dissertation argues, has often been pathologized, criminalized and ignored, and the study of its place in writing by (or about) gay and lesbian Canadian writers has been woefully underexamined (if not suppressed itself). In order to rectify this situation, this dissertation recasts both the writing and the reading of the writing of Sinclair Ross. It argues that an appreciation of Ross must take into consideration the discourses circulating in Ross's formative years (and beyond), especially those discourses which prescribed a normative (hetero)sexuality and which controlled other sexualities by labeling them either deviant or criminal.

Ross's coded and closeted fictions reveal configurations of problematic identities, genders, and subjectivities, especially as these evoke and trouble acceptable (sexual) desire. The threat (or promise) of a homosexual Other is suppressed or misrepresented in critical examinations of Ross's fictive characters, based largely on a misunderstanding, perhaps, of Ross's literary exhibition of the closet, one which underscores a strategic (though perhaps unconscious and necessary) encoding of what Eve Sedgwick calls "male homosociality."

Key to this dissertation's argument is the notion that Ross may have rejected as much as accepted psychosocial profiles of the homosexual in mid-century Canada. The influence of the work of sexology and psychiatry cannot be underestimated, though it was (and is) not the only formative discourse circulating during Ross's life. The trajectory of Ross's writing, from 1934 to 1974, reveals an ongoing and shifting concern with not only (sexual) deviance but also gender. The examinations of gender play and instability in Ross's early stories give way to a concern with the representation of a homosexuality not differentiated by "gender confusion"—such as a "manly woman"—but by an allegorized narcissism and/or sense of criminal deviance. Ross's growing awareness of the contradictions between what was considered sexually criminal—such as homosexuality—and the ability to write about it accurately (as far as one is able to do so) resulted in the inability of Ross's homotexts—his stylized representation of homosexuality—to withstand the contradiction.

Informed by gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and feminist theory, this dissertation illustrates my contention that queering Ross both reveals new avenues for textual exploration and threatens foreclosure of a critical understanding of the impossibility of homosexual subjectivity in his fiction. My critical interventions propose that an understanding of the unstable categories of desire, identity, and subjectivity are required in order to comprehend Ross's concerns with homosexual difference and changing configurations of gender and sexuality.

La tradition d'une écriture homosexuel identifiable au Canada a été supprimé pendant longtemps, afin de permettre l'inscription d'une hétérosexualité virile sur la conscience nationale, surtout en cours de développer une littérature nationale en anglais ainsi qu'en français. Seul les textes des auteurs autorisés à refléchir ce "but" national sont admis dans le canon anglais-canadien, un milieu créé consciemment. L'aspiration et le besoin d'un canon "direct" a souligné — et continue de le faire — une anxiété vis-a-vis les désirs (sexuels) soi-disant incontrôlables et apparemment opposés à son projet.

Cette dissertation soutient que le désir homosexuel a souvent été depeint comme pathologique, criminalisé et ignoré, et que l'étude de sa place dans la littérature écrite par (ou concernant) les auteurs canadiens gaies et lesbiennes a été tristement sous-examinée (sinon supprimé). Afin de rectifier la situation, cette dissertation refait l'écriture ainsi que la lecture de l'écriture de Sinclair Ross. Elle argumente qu'une appréciation de Ross doit réfléchir le discours qui circulait pendant les années de formation de Ross (et au-delà), surtout le discours qui prescrit une (hétéro)sexualité normative et qui contrôle les autres sexualités, en les étiquetant déviantes, ou bien criminelles.

La fiction de Ross, codée et "enfermée," revèle les configurations des identités, des sexes et subjectivités problematiques, surtout car ceux-la évoquent et troublent le désir (sexuel) "acceptable." La menace (ou la promesse) d'un Autre homosexuel, est supprimé ou mal representée en cours de l'évaluation critique des caractères fictives de Ross, peut-être basé en grande partie sur un malentendu de son exhibition littéraire de "l'armoire," soulignant un codage stratégique (pourtant, même si c'est subconscient et nécessaire) d'une "homosocialité mâle," comme c'est appelé par Eve Sedgwick.

Ross aurait pu rejeter autant qu'accepter les profiles psychosociaux de l'homosexuel au Canada au milieu du siècle, une notion clé dans cette dissertation. L'influence de sexologie et de la psychiatrie ne doit pas être sous-evaluée, pourtant ce n'était (et n'est) pas le seul discours formatif qui tournait pendant la vie de Ross. La trajectoire de l'écriture de Ross de 1934 à 1974, révèle une inquiétude continuelle et changeante à l'égard de la représentation d'une homosexualité qui n'est pas differenciée par une "confusion des sexes" — par exemple, une "femme masculine" — mais plutôt par un narcissisme allégorisé et/ou un sens de déviance criminelle. La perception montante des contradictions entre ce qui était considéré sexuellement "criminel" — par exemple, l'homosexualité — et l'abilité d'écrire sur ce sujet avec précision (en tant qu'on est capable de le faire), a mené à l'inabilité des "homotextes" de Ross — sa représentation stylisée de l'homosexualité — de résister à la contradiction.

Informée des études gaies et lesbiennes aussi bien que la théorie féministe, cette dissertation illustre mon affirmation que l'écriture de Ross déroule des nouvelles voies d'exploration textuelle, et menace la fermeture avant terme de la compréhension critique de l'impossibilité de la subjectivité homosexuel dans sa fiction. Mes interventions critiques proposent qu'une compréhension des catégories instables du désir, de l'identité et de la subjectivité, sont requis pour comprendre les soucis de Ross a l'égard de "la différence homosexuelle" et les configurations changeantes de sexe et de la sexualité.

An excerpt from the opening pages:

Mavis Gallant's stylistic brilliance, assured narrative control, and challenging technique firmly resist "de-authorization." Her fictions garner, as Janice Kulyk Keefer notes, "accusations of 'chilling indifference'" (1984, 732), perhaps not unsurprising since the prime narrative feature of Gallant's writing is undoubtedly irony, in all its varied forms. The trope of irony indeed pervades Gallant's knotted narratives, what she has referred to as those "locked situations" of her characters' lives.

In Gallant's fictive creations, irony arises from what the characters ostensibly know and what we, as readers of those characters' lives, actually know; yet Gallant also imposes external constraints on her readers, effectively limiting their agency. Having positioned her readers thus, Gallant appears to invite them to become her truly privileged audience. She initiates a secret dialogue with them, to let them in on her reasons for articulating life's "ugly mysteries." Yet even here, the dialogue comes close to a monologue, with Gallant doing much of the talking and the readers doing much of the nodding. This is not a passive act of alignment on the reader's behalf, since the reader, through the very act of reading, ultimately concretizes the text. Gallant's authorial control in delineating her ironic portraitures guides the reader to her inevitable conclusions about locked situations; the correct or "authorized" interpretation(s), combined with the reader's hesitancy to forgo other narrative responses, results in a disentangling of the "multiplicity of writing"—those narrative knots—which, ultimately, divulges, rather than deciphers, meaning.

Gallant describes how these knots are further tightened by things such as obstinacy or wilfulness, thus exposing phenomena such as what she has called fascism's "small possibilities in people." Gallant's "ironic scorches" (Kulyk Keefer 1989, 27), then are distinctly instructive, as well as aesthetically pleasing. The purpose of irony in much of Gallant's fiction is to open up for the reader the realm of possibilities not seen or ignored by the characters. Gallant invites the reader to become entangled in story while, simultaneously, breathing in the air of aesthetic achievement.

Misreading Gallant's fiction will tend to leave the reader bereft of both the story's knotted "meanings" and aesthetic involvement. Gallant's intention—her own real plot behind the pseudo-plot—is to engage the reader in moral as well as aesthetic reflection, and this is especially evident in historical narratives, such as "The Pegnitz Junction." Correct perception of irony is crucial to this project in that the reader must not end up like Gallant's self-subversive characters, locked in a situation of their own creation. Kulyk Keefer writes that Gallant's distinctive brand of irony proceeds not by simple opposites, but by creating a puzzling distance between narrator, characters and readers. One of the principal targets of Gallant's irony is the belief that we can make clear and sweeping judgments of people and situations: she shows us not only that we do not know more about a certain character than that character knows about her or himself, but also that we do not know nearly as much as we think we do about our own responses to others and the desires that provoke those responses. Again, the un-comfortable principle of extension operates here: not only Gallant's characters but also her readers are revealed as self-deceived and imperfectly aware. (1989, 45)

The discomforted reader, struggling against the closure of a locked situation and toward a suitable interpretation, is, simultaneously, forced to face his or her own (moral) reactions to the story.

Yet the key to evading the fate of the characters would appear to lie in spanning the "distance" between oneself and Gallant's seemingly disinterested narrators, to accept the knot as something given, and move to an aesthetic appreciation of how Gallant has orchestrated the reader's participation by including her or him in the narrative wherein the reader is forced to judge and become a moral agent. We can close the gap, then, by entering into that secret dialogue. The distance between author and reader is revealed as emblematic of ironic breadth: the more we see ourselves as exiles from pretensions to erroneous knowledge of self and others, the more we can understand how Gallant's narratives work to frame their characters in limited situations, with the result that we can resist becoming caught within her narrative knots.

Works cited

Kulyk Keefer, Janice. Reading Mavis Gallant. Toronto: Oxford UP, 1989.

---. "Strange Fashions of Forsaking: Criticism and the Fiction of Mavis Gallant."
Dalhousie Review 64.4 (1984-85): 721-735.