The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy: Aspects of Great Depression (Essay Sample)

The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy
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Introduction
Novels usually tell stories of events that have occurred in history. A country’s historical events can be narrated through oral tales or documented in novels. For instance, in Canada, slum dwellers had their unique tales that were recorded in the fictional work of Gabrielle Roy called The Tin Flute. This novel is set in the slums of Montreal’s Saint-Henri and explores the lives of people during the Great Depression. The Great Depression, which was a period of economic crisis, had a significant impact on the lives of families and individuals as they struggled to overcome poverty and ignorance and seek for love.
This essay explores the various aspects of the Great Depression and its impact on the role of women and social conditions. It also examines the impact of this economic crisis on families and its effect on gender inequality and discrimination in low-income neighbourhoods in Canada. In the novel, Gabrielle Roy subverts the gender roles as women play a crucial role in supporting families despite the overarching social conditions, discrimination and gender inequality at the time. The paper examines the centrality of women’s economic input to family and society during the Great Depression despite being disconnected from formal employment due to discrimination.
The Role of Women
Gabrielle Roy’s The Tin Flute demonstrates the vital role that women played in supporting their families during the Great Depression in Canada. Roy starts off by establishing Florence Lacasse’s innocence for purposes of representing her as a sympathetic being influenced by society as opposed to as a manipulative and sensual woman. In this sense, Roy can present the issue of Florentine’s illegitimate pregnancy and lessen some of the blame attached to her. In explaining her sexual encounter, Roy explores Florentine’s ambivalence because her submission was more of a resignation and less of pleasure. He states “For a moment she tried to pull herself up against toward all those mourning, pleading faces.”
This representation of women as submissive can also be explained in their role as producers of homemade products. This role is often not regarded as work. Some authors have argued that rural women produced home-made butter and cheese. This contribution was substantial thus coupled with production from sales of vegetables, fruits and eggs makes women hidden producers. Married urban women [Rose-Anna] could exploit their domestic roles to earn income and minimize family expenses. Such duties included knitting, craft activities, sewing and hairdressing.
Women in the middle working class took up major roles while trying to balance family life and work responsibilities. During this period, women had to accomplish their domestic roles as mothers and wives, but also work in various positions to earn a living. The novel shows how women survived on a very small income yet they were able to support their families. In The Tin Flute, Roy constantly implicates men in the suffering of women. Men ignore the great burden that they have assisted to create such as pregnancy. For example, Azarius is often jobless and incredibly optimistic about the fortunes of the family, constantly “making plans”, which will go unfulfilled. He is blindly optimistic that the fortunes of the family will change soon. As a consequence, Rose-Anna is imprisoned by this cycle of despair as she does not expect any emotional or financial support from Azarius. Both Jean and Azarius abnegate their responsibility to family with the former retreating into a cocoon of egotism that is as impenetrable as the latter’s optimism. This disconnection from reality forces women to subvert gender roles and provide for their families.
In The Tin Flute, women endure the severe hardship of many children and limited resources owing to the social conditions at the time. These women are often poor and definitely weary, physically and economically depleted. Coupled with this is the difficulty of illegitimacy suffered by Florentine. Roy shows that such a transgressing woman and the illegitimate baby must receive redemption from a male figure. However, she also challenges this dominant ideology through characters that exude strong will in the face of inequality and discrimination. In this sense, children, regardless of the number, are a locus of happiness and power. Women were able to endure these hardships because they sought employment through low-income jobs, which were often provided by organizations that supported women.
Women also had to take up jobs in very poor working conditions with very low pay. Oftentimes, many would remain unemployed due to limited work opportunities during the Great Depression. One common area of employment is clerical work, which was highly feminized. Clerical work was viewed as a source of cheap labor and required less time for training. As such many women were employed as clerical workers. Apart from their contribution to the economy of their families, women also contributed immensely to the economy of Montreal. This is because they worked in various sectors such as hotels, shops and offices. The reason for women’s involvement is because of the debilitating social conditions, which affected their families, especially children.
Social Conditions during the Great Depression
Social conditions as a determinant of the standard of living influenced several aspects of families’ lives during the Great Depression. In Montreal, as depicted by The Tin Flute, social conditions determined the number of children that a woman had and women’s purchasing power. This scene is used to engender sympathy for Florentine and all women suffering under the overwhelming power of a patriarchal society. Margaret Hobbs argues that during the Great Depression, women worked because of the need to put clothes on their backs and food on the table as opposed to living in lavish neighborhoods. The sole motive for working was to improve their children’s academic achievements and enhance their standards of living.
The Montréal Council together with other groups was responsible for advocating the economic autonomy of women. To the Council, the right to work was essential to every person. Hobbs notes that organizations that defended female workers in this era had to deal with cultural and social milieu concerned with precise questioning women’s economic rights. To this end, Roy’s protagonist, Florentine works as a waitress to support not only herself and her unborn baby, but also her family. Therefore, the support for women as breadwinners was grounded in the sameness of men and women.
In order to understand Montreal’s social condition at the time, aspects such as workers’ minimum weekly rates and related cost of living may help to shed more light to the plight of the middle working class. In the novel, the protagonist Florentine Lacasse, struggles to make ends meet by working as a waitress. When examining the weekly wages of workers in Montreal in 1946, workers in the kitchen and a help in hotels earned a minimum of 35 cents per hour. Furthermore, the statistics indicate that hotel employees had to work a minimum of 60 hours every week. This is a very small amount considering that many women had many children to support. More time spent working implies less time for family duties. In this sense, women had to endure juggling between these roles since all of them were necessary.
During this period of economic strife, certain jobs were designated for women. This discriminatory nature of the job market had a bearing on women’s ability to purchase commodities and support their children and families. Many of the jobs labelled as ‘female only’ were mostly low paying thus encouraged income inequality. Gender discrimination and lack of equality influenced the type of work that women could get. In this sense, social conditions increased poverty among women. In The Tin Flute, Roy juxtaposes the role of women with that of society and the state to raise pertinent questions regarding mothering and social injustice amidst poverty.
Roy’s novel, through Florentine Lacasse, is conformity to patriarchal suctions against illegitimate pregnancies. Florentine is rescued from an out-of-wedlock pregnancy as she becomes engaged to another man in order to legitimize her baby. Furthermore, the novel reveals the challenges that women in poverty face whose legitimate children severely deplete their finite resources. Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute is an intricate representation of the challenges of city life. The novel focuses on the burdens of illegitimacy and poverty as they affect women. As obstacles to survival, children also inspire hope as portrayed by Rose-Anna who is poor and expecting her twelfth child.
Gender Inequality and Discrimination
During the Great Depression, as portrayed in The Tin Flute, gender inequality and discrimination was common. Roy Gabrielle describes the poor working conditions that women had to endure in order to earn a living. Women had to cope with pervasive inequality and discrimination in order to support their families. Roy develops a world that reveals the inequality in the lives of women and men. At the heart of this inequality is the representation of the baby, a symbol of great constraint for women even though it has the potential to motivate women. Men, such as Jean and Azarius, are at liberty to walk away or live with the family without taking responsibility for the family. Even though women are devoted mothers, such as Rose-Anna, the text render inequality and the demands to which the inequality compels women. In the novel, Roy calls attention to the lack of invol...