The Quebecois society of the 1970s strove to reject Les Fées ont soif from its cultural discourse for its vulgar language and its treatment of then proscribed themes such as menstruation, prostitution, violence against women and women’s rage and madness; from the social discourse for its religiously blasphemous import and its virulent onslaught on taboos and myths profoundly anchored in the history of the people; and from the artistic discourse for its amateurish melange of genres like poetry, theatre and opera. However, as is often the case with censorship and succès de scandale, despite its modest artistic quality and its espousal of what now seems to be a utopian cause of the feminism of difference, the play has found a niche in the literary history of Quebec as a daring attempt to create social justice for women by calling for a profound restructuring of society and of the way in which people think and experience the world. By stressing that ‘the personal is political’, breaking the silence over issues like rape and incest, and, of course, rendering the discourse with much potence by attributing it to the character of the Holy Virgin, this play made the social inequality of women a public and not merely a private problem.

How does one explain the public’s nonchalance in the consequent years leading to the present, to the staging of what was once disparaged as blasphemous? Envisioning the humanity of the divine and evoking or expressing it in art is still considered as an attack on conventional piety as we have seen in the public’s reaction to Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) or Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ (2004). It is therefore understandable how a recognisably human dimension and an avant-garde feminist depiction of the Virgin as a woman compelled to suppress her corporeal desires, a mother who resents having to sacrifice and grieve for her son in silence in accordance to a higher plan (‘I went through this excessive agony of making a child see the light of the day and the darkness of the unknown higher plan. Since I gave him life, I became in many ways responsible for his death as well’^[33] ), and as a rebel who finally breaks away from her role, challenged the beliefs and expectations of the Quebecoise Catholic community.

But with the passage of time, a community that was already divided and in a state of transition gradually lost the importance it accorded to religion as a factor of social cohesiveness. Therefore, an artistic creation that was once considered as morally and spiritually objectionable and had overstepped the metaphorical and ideological limits imposed by the traditional order, did not shock the Quebecois society anymore. The focus of the public has thus shifted from the alleged blasphemous content to the humour and the social message embodied in the play, which Ingrid Pux who played the role of the Virgin in 1995 when the troupe Majeure presented the play, describes as being ‘topical because it shows women fossilised in stereotypes’.^[34] Far from being an indictment against men, as it was viewed when it premiered amidst the re-emergence of feminism as ‘feminism of difference’, for the audience today the play, ‘transmits the enduring message that the world can only change when women and men work together to bring about change instead of imprisoning the other in proverbial clichés’.^[35]

I must confess, however, the moral conflict that assailed me while writing this chapter. Boucher’s depiction of the Virgin scandalised me, for, as a Catholic, I have always revered the Holy Virgin for her emancipatory role in the history of redemption of Mankind. As a daughter, a wife and a mother, I look up to her not as a servile instrument in the fulfilment of a greater plan but as a role model exemplifying dedication, fortitude and courage — she is one of the reasons why I feel privileged to be a woman. Despite my reservations and my personal religious convictions, as a Bakhtinian, I laud Les fées ont soif for its artistic iconoclasm, which induced society to reconsider and re-evaluate its attitude towards women; and for its heteroglossic capacity to reflect a multitude of dissenting voices in a dialogic relationship, interrogating the predominance of a single repressive ideological discourse.