Among the stereotypes of parental violence that of the wicked stepmother is probably the oldest: traces of it have been found in antiquity.1 In Europe it has been kept alive by fairy tales, especially “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella,” and “Snow White,”2 and by children’s games like those described by Rétif de la Bretonne in the eighteenth century.3 In French, the word marâtre, which originally meant “stepmother” had acquired a pejorative meaning, starting in the thirteenth century.4 Then, in the nineteenth century the Comtesse de Ségur created the unforgettable Mme Fichini, who would leave a lasting impression on the imagination of little French girls. This stereotype corresponded to the real difficulties that could arise in blended families and were often depicted in children’s literature.5
In Canada the earliest case of a stepmother attempting to rid herself of her husband’s child took place under the French Regime,6 while others surfaced during separation cases and in newspapers. But the Gagnon case remains the most famous of all. The trial of the Gagnon couple, which took place in Quebec in 1920, was a turning point in the history of violence toward children because it left such an indelible memory. Almost all the details of this affair can be found in the voluminous records of the trial, which are preserved in the Quebec National Archives in Quebec City, and in the newspapers that reported it. We shall use this documentation, first to reconstitute the events as they occurred, and then to try to explain them making use of the expert knowledge about family violence which is now available. Finally, we will outline the fictional versions that have been presented to the public in a play, several novels, and a film, leading up to the crucial question: why did the story of Aurore Gagnon move the people of Quebec more than any other tragedy of the same nature?7
In February 1918, a week after the death of his wife, Télesphore Gagnon remarried to Marie-Anne Houde, who was herself the widow of one of his cousins. He still had three living children from his first marriage: Marie-Jeanne, Aurore, and Georges-Étienne. A fourth child, Joseph, had died in 1917, while Marie-Anne Houde was living in Télesphore’s house to care for his ailing wife and the children.8 At the time of her second marriage, Marie-Anne also had two boys from a previous marriage, Gérard and Georges.9 She would give birth to another child in April 1919, and then, in 1920 during her imprisonment in Quebec, to twins (see Boxes 3 and 4).
This blended family lived in Sainte-Philomène de Fortierville, a village in the county of Lotbinière with 300 inhabitants. Télesphore Gagnon, a prosperous farmer, owned property evaluated at $10,000, including twenty-five head of cattle. His house was heated with a wood stove and a telephone was installed, but there was no flush toilet so the family used chamber pots and the “privies” located close to the farm buildings.
In the spring of 1919, neighbours began to notice that the Gagnons were beating their daughters. Marie-Anne Houde sometimes attacked Marie-Jeanne, but the girl was almost twelve (she was born in August 1907) and refused to put up with this, running off into the woods and complaining to people in the nearby village.10 The stepmother then turned her attention to Aurore, born in May 1909, who was not yet ten. She would strike her with a piece of wood (a log chopped in quarters for the wood stove), a strap, or a stick. In the evening, she would tell her husband, “I gave her a good hiding (or two) today, for she wouldn’t listen.” Marguerite Leboeuf, a niece of Marie-Anne Houde, stayed in the home over the summer. After telling Marguerite, “I’m going to show you how well she washes the dishes when I beat her,” her aunt would whack Aurore about the buttocks and legs with a stick while she was washing the dishes.11 She would also strike the little girl on the knees with a log and scorch her scalp with a curling iron.
Télesphore Gagnon’s first marriage, to Marie-Anne Caron:
Marie-Jeanne, b. 1 Aug. 1907
Aurore, b. 31 May 1909, d. 12 Feb. 1920
Lucina-Thérèse, b. 15 Feb. 1912, d. 13 Nov. 1917
Georges-Étienne, b. 9 Apr. 1913
Joseph, b. 9 Apr. 1915, d. 7 Nov. 1917
Marie-Anne Houde’s first marriage, to Napoléon Gagnon:
Gérard, baptized 7 June 1908
Philogone, baptized 28 Jan. 1910, d. 29 Aug. 1910
Marie-Yvette, b. 11 June 1911, d. 31 July 1911
Georges, b. 9 July 1912
Télesphore Gagnon’s second marriage, to Marie-Anne Houde:
Pauline, b. Apr. 1919
Jeanne d’Arc, b. 8 July 1920, d. 3 Feb. 1921
Roch-Jean, b. 8 July 1920
Note: It is possible that Marie-Anne Houde also had two other children, for Dr Prévost said, “She has miscarried twice, in addition to giving birth seven times; she is at present more than six months pregnant” (quoted in Les Grands Procès du Québec: L’Affaire de la petite Aurore, 25).
I am most grateful to Dr Jean Labbé, Professor of Pediatrics at Laval University, for this information, which was taken from various parish records.
In addition to beating Aurore herself, Marie-Anne Houde, in the purest stepmother tradition, made false reports to her husband to get him to punish his daughter: “She wouldn’t listen to me today, give her a thrashing.” Unquestioningly, the father would beat the child with a rod, an axe handle of very hard wood, and sometimes even with a bull-whip, used for animals.12 Once he beat her simply because she had put a milk can lid on her head.13 Her parents told the neighbours that the child had the worst of faults, obliging them to punish her frequently. They were advised to send her to a convent school but they rejected the idea because of the expense.14
Box 4 Chronology of the Gagnon Case
FEB. 1918 Marriage of Télesphore Gagnon and Marie-Anne Houde.
SEPT. 1918 After a stay in a convent and then with their maternal grandparents, Aurore and Marie-Jeanne return to live in their father’s house.
MAR. 1919 Émilien Hamel stays with Télesphore Gagnon. First mention of a severe beating of Aurore by her father.
JULY 1919 Aurore Gagnon and her parents appear before a Justice of the Peace.
AUG. 1919 Marguerite Leboeuf spends a week with the Gagnons.
31 AUG. 1919 The doctor is called to attend to Aurore.
16 SEPT. TO 17 OCT. 1919 Aurore Gagnon is hospitalized.
9 FEB. 1920 Adjutor Gagnon informs the Justice of the Peace that Aurore is being ill-treated.
Mme Lemay visits Aurore and finds her covered with sores.
11 FEB. 1920 The Justice of the Peace mentions the case to the parish priest, who expresses great surprise.
12 FEB. 1920 Death of Aurore Gagnon.
13 FEB. 1920 Autopsy.
14 FEB. 1920 Coroner’s inquest; verdict of criminal responsibility.
Arrest of the Gagnons. Search of their house.
23 FEB. 1920 Start of the preliminary investigation.
8 MAR. 1920 The Crown brings a charge of murder.
13–21 APR. 1920 Trial of Marie-Anne Houde, who is sentenced to death.
23 APR. to 5 MAY 1920 Trial of Télesphore Gagnon, who is sentenced to life imprisonment.
8 JULY 1920 Birth of Marie-Anne Houde’s twins in prison in Quebec City.
19 SEPT. 1920 Marie-Anne Houde’s death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
12 JAN. 1921 Marie-Anne Houde’s twins are entrusted to the Crèche Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Quebec City.
1925 Télesphore Gagnon leaves prison, suffering from a throat tumour believed to be terminal. He returns to live in Fortierville.
3 JULY 1935 Marie-Anne Houde leaves prison and goes to live with a sister-in-law in Montreal.
13 MAY 1936 Death of Marie-Anne Houde from widespread cancer.
8 JAN. 1938 Télesphore Gagnon’s third marriage, to Marie-Laure Habel.
SEPT. 1961 Death of Télesphore Gagnon.
Also during that summer of 1919, Marie-Anne beat Aurore on the feet with a stick. The resultant swelling left the child barely able to walk. In July her parents brought her before a Justice of the Peace. They first declared that they beat her often because she had an extremely vicious character, and then claimed that her injuries were caused by neighbourhood children. When the judge took Aurore to a separate room to question her, the parents warned her, “Watch what you say.”15 The child then told the judge that two small boys had indeed dropped a large rock on her foot, which put an end to the case. The doctor called by the parents found that the treatment he prescribed had been ignored. He therefore sent Aurore to the Hôtel-Dieu in Quebec City, where she remained from 16 September until 17 October 1919, apparently never uttering a word about the abuse she had suffered.
About a month after she returned home the ill-treatment recommenced. Marie-Anne forbade Aurore to use the chamber pot — “as penitence,”16 she said — and when the child could no longer contain herself and relieved herself on the ground, her stepmother used it as an excuse to beat her. Or again she would put excrement in her husband’s clothes and accuse Aurore, who protested her innocence. Her stepmother then struck her on the head, making the child confess, “Yes, yes.” The father, convinced of her guilt, then punished her with the bullwhip.17 During the winter of 1919–1920 Télesphore Gagnon spent his days cutting wood at the edge of his property. In his absence, his wife tied Aurore to a table leg so that she could not move and then burned her with a poker red hot from the stove. When the little girl’s cries became too loud, her stepmother gagged her with a leather belt. The other children were posted at the windows to warn of any visitors. Every night, or almost, Marie-Anne would go into the bedroom of the two girls and beat Aurore with a stick.18 Once she forced her to eat a slice of bread spread with lessi [lye], a very caustic cleaner, while threatening to give her a thrashing.19 On another occasion she made her swallow excrement.20
On 9 February 1920 a neighbour, Mme Lemay, came to see Aurore and found her stretched out on a mattress, covered with sores. Then, without giving a reason, she suggested to the parish priest that he should pay the Gagnons a visit. That same day another neighbour, Adjutor Gagnon, informed the Justice of the Peace of the situation. The JP went to Quebec City to meet with the Crown Attorney, but backed down at the prospect of having to personally sign an official complaint. He first preferred to discuss the matter with the parish priest, who expressed great surprise. On the morning of 12 February, Aurore was barely able to walk because of weakness and pains in her knees. Her stepmother nevertheless forced her to get up, and then struck her three times on the back with a pitchfork handle. “After that, she collapsed,” said Marie-Jeanne. “She was half-dead.”21 Aurore died later that evening. The priest was called, and he informed the Justice of the Peace, who noticed an abnormally high number of injuries and ordered an autopsy. At the coroner’s inquest, Télesphore Gagnon declared frankly, “She was a difficult child to raise and I beat her several times with a bullwhip and other times with a piece of wood. I corrected her like that when I saw she’d misbehaved or my wife told me about it.”22
The parents were arrested on 14 February, following the funeral. When a policeman came to search the house Marie-Jeanne and Gérard handed over the objects used to beat their sister. During the preliminary investigation that followed, the children, duly instructed by their mother, stated that the latter only beat Aurore “when she deserved it,” and “because she was killing Maman.”23 Notwithstanding, the Gagnons were charged with murder on 8 March 1920. Télesphore’s parents came to look after the farm and the baby Pauline, while a charitable institution in Lévis took in the other children temporarily.
In March the newspapers got hold of the affair, which promised to be sensational. La Presse and L’Événement printed large headlines referring to the little girl’s “atrocious martyrdom.” Later these newspapers reproduced the cross-examinations word by word, with comments. As in the other cases of the kind the accused woman was described in derogatory fashion as “the Gagnon woman,” the “virago,” and “the “marâtre,” while no pejorative terms were used to describe her husband. Le Devoir and The Gazette adopted a more moderate tone and gave succinct accounts of the events.
Marie-Anne Houde’s trial took place in Quebec City between 13 and 21 April 1920, followed by that of her husband from 23 to 29 April. The accused woman’s pregnancy was probably obvious, since she was in her seventh month,24 but none of the journalists dwelled on this fact. As for the trial of the “D. woman” a dense crowd, mostly women on this occasion, filled the courtroom.
Judge Louis-Philippe Pelletier presided over the first trial, never concealing his hostility toward the accused. The Crown prosecutors were Arthur Fitzpatrick and Arthur Lachance, with Joseph-Napoléon Francoeur for the defence, assisted by Marc-Aurèle Lemieux. The pathologist who carried out the autopsy, Dr Albert Marois, stated that all the fifty-four lesions covering Aurore’s body were superficial: he did not find any fractures. The child had certainly died of exhaustion after her wounds became infected. The lawyers for the accused woman initially tried to attribute the death to an illness, but the evidence given by Mme Lemay, Marguerite Leboeuf, and Marie-Jeanne, Georges, and Gérard Gagnon was damning. The defence then decided to drop the not guilty plea, replacing it with one of not guilty by reason of insanity. Then the battle of the experts began. Two psychiatrists, Albert Prévost and Alcide Tétrault, stated that the accused was mentally ill. However, the Crown called others, Drs D.-M. Brochu, F.-E. Devlin, and Salluste Roy, all alienists; Dr Lafond, the Gagnons’ family doctor; Dr Gosselin, the prison doctor, and Dr Marois, all of whom said that Marie-Anne Houde knew what she was doing when she ill-treated the child. The judge took advantage of his closing instructions to the jury to level a “terrible attack” on the accused. He expressed the opinion that women are usually better than men, but when they are wicked they are worse.25 After deliberating for only a few minutes the jury brought in a guilty verdict and the judge pronounced the death sentence, to be carried out the following October.
The trial of Télesphore Gagnon followed, with Judge Désy on the bench. This time, Armand Lavergne assisted Joseph-Napoléon Francoeur. They tried to convince the jury that their client beat his daughter only at his wife’s instigation, believing he was performing his duty as a parent. Furthermore, Gagnon was unaware of the worst abuses, namely the poker burns, which were inflicted in his absence. The jury found him guilty of manslaughter and the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment. He would serve only five years of this sentence.
Marie-Anne Houde gave birth to twins on 8 July 1920. She breastfed them for six months, after which they were entrusted to the Soeurs du Bon-Pasteur, who ran the Crèche Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in Quebec City. The records of this establishment noted their arrival in the following terms: “We have received the two unfortunate twins of the sadly celebrated Gagnon woman. O Lord, spare them from ever learning the dreadful history of their unhappy parents! May they be born into thy beautiful heaven before they reach the age of reason.” Three weeks later one little girl’s death inspired a further commentary: “Little Jeanne Gagnon, the child of the unfortunate prisoner in Kingston, goes to heaven today. Deo Gratias! say all of us here in a heartfelt chorus.”26
These words echoed what Télesphore Gagnon’s mother said about her little granddaughter, a baby of ten months that suffered from eczema: “If the good Lord came to fetch her, how happy I would be!”27
In the meantime, Marie-Anne Houde’s lawyer asked that her sentence be commuted, and the Canadian Association for Prisoners’ Welfare circulated a petition supporting her. They spoke of the recent maternity of the condemned woman and the difference of opinion between doctors about her mental state.28 Newspapers published columns on capital punishment and letters expressing readers’ views: four asked that she be pardoned, and eleven that she hang.29 The former were opposed to the death penalty on principle and saw the extreme cruelty of the accused as sufficient proof of her insanity.30 The latter, finding her to be of sound mind, thought that her execution would be a deterrent and help to protect all children left at the mercy of a stepmother.31 Some called her a ferocious animal for whom hanging was too good and who deserved to suffer the same tortures as she had inflicted on her victim.32 Comparing the cruelty of the “two hyenas from Lotbinière” to that of the ancient Iroquois, one reader imagined unprecedented tortures for them, such as cutting out the “tongue that spread so many foul lies” and severing “those sacrilegious hands.”33 This led Robert Bickerdike, a prominent opponent of capital punishment, to declare that these individuals were displaying “a large residuum of that very feeling of revenge which is without reason, the relic of savage impulse and often differing little from the motive of the murderer himself.”34 Finally, some people were indignant that the child had not been protected by her aunt, the neighbours, or a society for the protection of children.
The death sentence was finally commuted to life imprisonment on 29 September 1920: the argument that weaning them suddenly could affect the health of the two babies seems to have been decisive. “Saved by Infant Twins,” read the headline in The Gazette.35 Marie-Anne Houde was transferred to the Kingston women’s prison, where she remained until 1935, dying of cancer just a few months after her release.
In the 1920s many children got a thrashing from their parents, but most survived. To understand the specific causes of Aurore Gagnon’s death we must first analyse the child’s character, her relations with her immediate circle, and compare her family situation with that of other beaten children from the same period.
During the trial, the schoolteacher in Sainte-Philomène stated that Aurore was “quiet, obedient, and intelligent.” In drawing this portrait of a model pupil of the 1920s, can it be that the schoolmistress wished to contribute to the innocent reputation of a girl people were already calling a “child martyr”? Télesphore Gagnon’s sister and the neighbours described her more simply as an ordinary child, though taciturn.36 Aurore seems to have been more obedient than her elder sister, Marie-Jeanne. The older girl did not submit meekly to being beaten: she sought safety by running away, causing their stepmother to say, “Marie-Jeanne, she takes off, she runs away, you have to run after her; Aurore doesn’t run away: her you can beat.”37 Marie-Jeanne was two years older than Aurore, and we know, thanks to newspaper reports, that children who ran away were usually aged at least twelve. The maturity acquired during those two years, and possibly the self-assurance arising from Marie-Jeanne’s position as the eldest of the family, explain the different behaviour of these two sisters.
Aurore was also taciturn. She remained completely silent about her situation. She did not even tell her father about the abuse her stepmother was inflicting on her. When the stepmother blamed neighbourhood children for the injury to Aurore’s feet for which she was herself responsible, Aurore did not contradict her. During the trial, Marie-Jeanne commented aptly, “I think it’s because she was afraid of getting a hiding when she got home.”38 Nor did Aurore dare to contradict her parents in the presence of the Justice of the Peace, and apparently revealed nothing to the hospital staff. Not even on her deathbed did she tell Mme Lemay how she had been hurt.39 Alice Miller provides a subtle explanation for this: that victims’ suffering instills in them an intolerable sense of shame that makes them keep silent.40 Though she had no psychoanalytic training, our Informant No. 1, a primary teacher and mother born in 1910, commented that usually children told no one about the beatings they received: “They keep it well hidden.”
Aurore’s silence in other circumstances is more difficult to understand. When Télesphore Gagnon told a neighbour, Eugène Lemay, how he punished his daughter with a horsewhip and an axe handle, he added, “She didn’t even cry.”41
It should be pointed out immediately that Aurore’s brothers and sister gave evidence that she did cry out under the blows. Her cousin and Marie-Jeanne explained why she sometimes remained silent. Marguerite Leboeuf heard her aunt tell Aurore as she struck her, “The more you bawl, the more I’ll give you.”42 Marie-Jeanne corroborated this statement. When Marie-Anne Houde beat Aurore during the night “she told her that if she didn’t hold back from crying, she would kill her.”43 Such a command was not out of the ordinary. Our Informant No. 2 recalled having been beaten with a stick by her mother, who at the same time ordered her to be quiet, whereupon the ten-year-old suppressed her cries as best she could in the hope that the punishment would end sooner.44
Aurore’s silence can also be explained by the fact that intense pain can render a child momentarily unable to cry out. The same informant told how once, when she was about six or seven, her mother had gripped her thigh so tightly that the pain prevented her from crying out, the sound being literally strangled in her throat. Jos-Phydime Michaud, born in 1902, witnessed a much more painful situation. His teacher used to cane her pupils, administering about twelve strokes with a large hardwood ruler. The author described the punishments inflicted on one classmate:
She took his wrist and flailed away. At the start he would cry and cry, but then he couldn’t. He just whimpered, with his head thrown back. You’d have thought he was going to collapse. It was only then she let him go, or rather that she made him kneel down. His hands were all red and swollen. The others couldn’t say anything unless they wanted the same medicine.45
This is quite similar to Télesphore Gagnon’s account: when he whipped Aurore, “her legs folded on her and the blood flowed.”46 Unfortunately, the father interpreted his daughter’s silence as insensibility, leading him to punish her even more harshly. The child, beaten day and night, sought a way to escape the blows by way of silence and obedience. But it was useless, for the cause of the violence did not lie in her.
If Aurore said nothing to her teacher or the neighbours, her sister and her brothers all saw her being beaten every day. How did they react?
In families where violence was rampant the children sometimes developed different strategies for self-defence. Claire Martin, born in 1914 “of the marriage of a tiger and a dove,” had no hesitation in categorizing herself, along with her brothers and sisters, as a “child martyr.”47 She relates that her father developed a hatred for one of his sons. To avoid their little brother being punished too often, the older sisters often accused themselves of the minor misdemeanours he had committed and for which their father was more ready to excuse them.48 Informant No. 3 provides another example of mutual assistance between siblings. When her father was drunk he would beat his eleven children indiscriminately, and only the sight of blood would sober him up. In such moments of crisis the older ones formed a circle, put the smallest in the middle, and kept turning constantly so that the blows, which were delivered blindly, were shared among several children instead of falling on one.49
In the Gagnon family we find no defensive alliance of this kind, perhaps because the children were too young — after all the oldest was only eleven in the early summer of 1919. Furthermore, since the parents beat all the children from time to time, the latter had only too much reason to fear them. During the trial, Gérard said that none of them dared to tell their father that their stepmother was inflicting burns on Aurore because she had threatened to beat them if they spoke out.50 Nor did they risk telling neighbours. As Mme Hamel would express it later, “They were children that never talked to the folk that went there.”51 In this way the complicit silence that accompanies child abuse52 enveloped the Gagnon family.
But the role of the children was not restricted to maintaining a passive silence. In his evidence, Gérard, aged eleven, stated that when his mother was tired of burning Aurore she made Marie-Jeanne take over from her. The latter denied this energetically, but if her half-brother was telling the truth she certainly obeyed out of fear of being beaten. Gérard added that he had seen Marie-Jeanne become impatient with Aurore for carrying a kettle too slowly, pushing her against the stove and injuring her.
Thus the older girl imitated a stepmother who beat the two little girls on the excuse that they were not quick enough at their work. In addition, Aurore was made to sleep on a mattress, while Marie-Jeanne had a double bed to herself. When the former, who suffered from the winter cold, wanted to get into the bed, her sister would drive her off using a stick, again replicating her stepmother’s behaviour. Finally, Marguerite Leboeuf witnessed the children pretending Aurore was a horse. Tying a rope round her neck, one little boy pulled her from the front while the other beat her from behind. Their mother laughed and encouraged them to continue. Obviously Aurore served as a scapegoat, a butt for the cruelty of the whole family.53
Taken together, these facts, especially the last, point to a behaviour that looks very like a survival strategy founded on an alliance of the weakest with the aggressor. The Gagnon children harassed Aurore to earn the favour of the mother, or at least to be left alone while she persecuted their sister. It is also possible to apply Alice Miller’s explanation: that their identification with the aggressor (the mother) helped them to repress their own feeling of vulnerability and feel strong at the expense of another (Aurore), and so survive.54 Miller speaks of psychological survival, but in the present case it was truly a matter of life or death.
In addition to her siblings, at least two of Aurore’s cousins were aware of the thrashings she received. Marguerite Leboeuf, aged fifteen during the summer of 1919, stated in writing that she had seen her aunt beating Aurore: “I wanted to take her side but the mother told me I would get the same thing.”55 A reaction of this kind was described by Informant No. 1. As a child, when she saw her mother take out the strap to punish her elder brother, she wept and cried so loudly that her mother threatened her, “Shut up or you’ll get the same.”56 About thirty years later, however, this informant, having become a mother in her turn, would say the same thing to her eldest daughter who protested when she saw her mother spanking her younger sister. Unawares, this woman was reproducing her mother’s behaviour. We have also seen that in the school attended by Jos-Phydime Michaud the pupils were not allowed to protest when they saw a schoolmate being beaten, or they would suffer the same punishment.
Marguerite Leboeuf went on, “She hit her three times and I left, I went off behind the house.… Because I was afraid.”57 And when Télesphore Gagnon went up to the attic, whip in hand, telling her, “If you want to see her get a beating, now’s the time,” the adolescent reacted in the same way: “I didn’t want to go up because I was afraid.”58 Informant No. 2 also remembers making off when she saw her aunt preparing to spank her little cousin even though it was just a matter of slapping with the bare hand.
One of Aurore’s cousins, Émilien Hamel, aged sixteen, spent two weeks with the Gagnons, working with his uncle. On three occasions he saw the latter beating Aurore with a little switch. When he was asked if he told the father not to beat his child like that, he answered, “Well, I didn’t say anything because I was young and I was afraid I’d get into trouble.”59 If these young people aged fifteen and sixteen were afraid to stand up to the Gagnon parents, it is easier to understand the fearful reaction of children aged between nine and twelve at the time.
The adults in Marie-Anne Houde’s circle had no reason to be intimidated in the same way as her children and nephews. How did they react to the situation? And, to begin with, did they know what was happening?
During the holiday season of 1919–1920, Mme Hamel, Télesphore Gagnon’s half-sister, was moved to pity on seeing the marks on Aurore’s face. She reproached her brother, who responded jokingly, “If you saw the other end, you’d see something else.”60 Marie-Anne attributed all these marks to tuberculosis, and said that the child limped because she had a splinter in her foot. Since Aurore did not deny this, her aunt let the matter drop. Arthur Leboeuf was more concerned. When his brother-in-law told him he had beaten Aurore with the lash of the whip, he thought of taking her home with him because she was his goddaughter and he felt he had a special responsibility for her. “He will tell you that I tried, and it was what I wanted.”61 But his plan led to nothing.
Then there were the near neighbours. In rural environments such people are a source of significant mutual assistance and are best placed to be aware of ill-treatment. Indeed, Mme Lemay learned from Marie-Anne herself that the father beat his daughter with an axe handle. She was indignant: “A man hits too hard with a weapon like that.”62 Another neighbour, Mme Badeau, reproached Télesphore Gagnon for beating Aurore like a dog, at the risk of killing her.63 Both of them advised her parents to send the child to a convent school instead, but it was useless.
This leaves the Justice of the Peace (who saw Aurore and her parents during the summer of 1919) and the parish priest (who had learned directly from the Gagnons that they punished Aurore with a whip and an axe handle). They could have combined forces to put the child in a safe place: in the Beauce in 1911 a similar case was settled in this way after an abusive father was reported by two neighbours.64 But in Sainte-Philomène the judge failed to realize the extent of the ill-treatment, while the priest was content to point out to the parents that children should not be beaten with such instruments.65 As for the actions taken by Adjutor Gagnon and Mme Lemay, they came too late.
Télesphore Gagnon’s lawyer portrayed his client as a well-intentioned father who had beaten his daughter only to teach her a lesson because he blindly believed the accusations made by his wife. The reporter from La Presse reinforced this opinion by commenting that the accused’s features indicated a very weak character.66 But even if we accept his good intentions, how can we explain that he went so far?
At the time of his trial, Télesphore Gagnon was thirty-seven. The most prominent citizens of the locality attested to his excellent reputation. The reporters described him as a colossus:67 he was six feet in height (about 1.80 m) and strong enough to chop down trees with an axe. We can imagine the effect of such strength when turned on a child of ten.
It was precisely the excessive nature of the beatings that attracted the neighbours’ attention. Télesphore Gagnon said that he beat Aurore until he was worn out, “finished.”68 At the time, other men would also beat their children to excess, but without killing them. Claire Martin describes how her father went about it:
“It began with a few slaps … then, as he gained enthusiasm, it turned into punching with his fist and, if the enthusiasm lasted, it would end with a few kicks that shifted you from one room to the next along all the first-floor parquet. When you think that he was six feet tall and weighed 230 lbs, that in his youth he had carried out exploits worthy of Jean Valjean that the whole of Anticosti Island still talked about, it is amazing all the same that he didn’t kill any of us. It makes me think that he must have held back a little.69
Similarly, in the French movie La Guerre des boutons, a father punishes his son while his wife shouts at him, “Restrain yourself.”70 These testimonies agree: some fathers were able to control their violence, but not Télesphore Gagnon. In addition, Gagnon used inappropriate instruments. In the nineteenth century a punishment administered with a horsewhip was tolerated in exceptional circumstances — the writings of Louis Fréchette and the Comtesse de Ségur provide evidence for this71 – but in the twentieth century such harshness was considered to be abuse. The use of the rod also became questionable. Télesphore’s lawyer tried to get the witnesses to say that this practice had been preserved in rural areas. He therefore asked Émilien Hamel:
Q. Did he strike her the way parents beat their children in the country?
A. Yes, the same way.
Q. (From the Court): Have you often seen fathers beating their children with rods like the one your uncle had in his hand?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Several?
A. Yes.
Q. That’s the fashion around there?
A. …72
In these questions it is clear that the judge sees a difference between what is usual in the city and in the country, even displaying a hint of urban dweller’s contempt. Mme Lemay was even more reticent about the use of the rod. She stated that slaps on the buttocks, applied with the hand, were quite sufficient punishment for a child. The defence lawyer resisted:
Q. If you had a dozen troublesome children, you know what’s done in the country; people don’t think twice about hitting a child with a rod or a ruler, that’s what’s done in school?
A. They take care more than you see, there’s not one, there’s not ten that punish children with a rod.73
The axe handle, made of very hard wood, was another “weapon” unsuitable for punishing a child, for it risked “dislocating a few limbs,” as Mme Lemay also remarked to her neighbour.74 But Aurore’s father paid no attention. Odilon Auger heard him say that “he had the right to break her arm, for the law allowed it.”75 Visibly, Télesphore Gagnon acted as if he owned his child and was completely ignorant of the notion of “reasonable” punishment permitted by law.
The defence lawyer then tried to get the witness to say that Télesphore was influenced by the harshest advice that was current at the time:
Q. When he told you that a father can punish his child even to breaking a limb, was he referring to what they teach, that it’s better to save a child’s soul at the cost of their limbs than to let them be damned?
A. No.76
In formulating this question the lawyer was repeating Louis Fréchette’s text almost word for word, minus the humour: “Such was the recommended method: ‘Fathers and mothers, punish your children, break one of their limbs if you have to; it is better that your child go to heaven without an arm or leg than to hell with all its limbs.’”77 Since the witness had never heard Télesphore Gagnon express himself in this way, the lawyer rephrased the question:
Q. Didn’t he tell you that the fathers say in their sermons that you have to be harsh with children, if it’s necessary?
A. I don’t remember.78
But the denials of this witness would not prevent the lawyer, in his final address to the jury, from quoting the Bible passage that says that parents who love their children should use the rod of discipline to punish them.79 Actually, there is nothing to indicate that Télesphore Gagnon knew this biblical quotation. On the contrary, he said to Mme Badeau, speaking of Aurore, “She’d better not try to ride roughshod over me, for she’ll soon take a tumble!”80 This is very reminiscent of Father Boncompain’s advice: “You have to be strict with children or they’ll ride roughshod over you.”81 Had Télesphore Gagnon heard a preacher quote this text, or was he simply expressing an idea very widespread at the time? What is certain is that he used violence to uphold his authority.
Odilon Auger recalled another significant utterance by Télesphore Gagnon: “He told me he thought he was obliged to punish her.… Because he thought it was his duty, that he accepted his responsibility to teach his children a lesson, that he wouldn’t want to be cast out by his children.”82 These words reflect a frequent theme expressed by child-rearing authorities at the time: that children excessively spoiled by their parents become ungrateful. The same belief was expressed by an old man who wrote to an advice column complaining that his children had left him in need. He attributed their ingratitude to the fact that he loved them too much: “I didn’t punish them when they deserved it.”83 Télesphore Gagnon had decided not to take that risk.
So, among the different varieties of child-rearing advice in his day and the generally accepted ideas about how children should be brought up, Télesphore Gagnon reflected the harshest tendency.
Télesphore Gagnon was excessively severe, completely lacking in empathy,84 and unaware of the limits of reasonable punishment; he failed completely to recognize that he risked killing his child, though there is nothing to indicate that he desired her death. This was why the jury found him, unlike his wife, guilty of manslaughter but not of murder.
Marie-Anne Houde, on the other hand, obviously wished for Aurore’s death. She told Mme Lemay “that she wouldn’t mind if she ended up dying without anyone knowing.”85 She had also declared in front of her sister-in-law, Mme Hamel, “We’re not going to spend fifty dollars on a doctor. If she dies I won’t shed a single tear.”86 Finally, two days before the child’s death, she went further: “Let her die, it’d be a good riddance.”87 This is why she was found guilty of premeditated murder.
As the prosecutor and the judge stressed, she was lucid enough to justify her violence to her husband and neighbours by presenting the abuse she was inflicting on Aurore as well-deserved punishment. To do so she accused the child of various misdeeds, in addition to describing her as untruthful, thieving, impure, and vicious, with “all the evil fancies a child could have.”88 When she burned Aurore with the poker — a form of abuse that no one considered reasonable punishment — she took care to do so in her husband’s absence, instructed the children to warn her if any visitors came, and forbade them to mention the deed to their father. She therefore foresaw the consequences of her actions.
Her lawyer, in attempting to prove his client was mentally ill and therefore not criminally responsible, used all the arguments accepted by the psychiatry of the day. First he tried to prove that Marie-Anne’s parents drank to excess, which amounted to saying that she was a victim of heredity and degeneracy. Then he pointed out that at the age of twelve she had suffered from meningitis, leaving possible after-effects. He also stressed the fact that she became more violent when pregnant.
Dr Albert Prévost, who was a witness for the defence, noted the existence of certain disorders in the accused. Questioning her to find out if she expressed her motherly love with caresses, he received the answer, “I don’t do that, for it’s not the custom. I do it once a year at the time of the big celebrations.” The judge expressed his astonishment: “Which is to say that she practically never caressed nor kissed her children?” “Yes.”89 In fact, this type of behaviour was in conformity with Father Boncompain’s advice to avoid excessive kisses and caresses.90 Furthermore, this reserved attitude was predominant in certain regions of France. Émilie Carles, born in 1900, testified to this: “We embraced my father twice a year, on his birthday and New Year’s Day. That was all!”91 But the Canadian doctor concluded that Marie-Anne Houde suffered from “disorders of her affections, that is, in her feelings as a mother.”
Alice Miller’s theory can help us to understand Marie-Anne Houde’s behaviour.92 Miller maintained that many behavioural disorders originate in violence inflicted in childhood. When children are beaten they do not dare to express their anger for fear of losing their parents’ love. In time this anger is transformed into a more or less conscious hatred directed against surrogate individuals. This explains why adults beaten in childhood often beat their own children out of a compulsive need to repeat their own story, this time not as an impotent victim but with the power to inflict pain. They are trying to revoke their tragic passivity in the past by their present actions. Such parents, when unable to overcome a mood or a disappointment, will often drag a sleeping child from its bed and beat it to re-establish their own narcissistic balance.
This was how Marie-Anne Houde acted. Nearly every night she went up into the girls’ room to beat Aurore. Later, in prison, she would write that she had no recollection of having done so, that everything had happened as if in a dream. Many witnesses have confirmed that she detested the child she was abusing. And the hatred felt toward a substitute is boundless and insatiable: as we have seen, Marie-Anne went on beating her stepdaughter until she died.
Had Marie-Anne Houde been beaten by her parents? No one troubled to ask her. However, it was mentioned during the trial that her sister, who had also married a widower, had abused a child from her first marriage without concealing her hatred for it.93 The fact that both Houde sisters acted in this way suggests that a high level of violence had existed in their family, though this cannot be stated with certainty.
Marie-Anne Houde’s violent tendencies can be explained in another way. By her own admission, this young woman (she was not yet thirty at the time of her trial) did not like children.94 Yet, married for the first time at seventeen, she had, according to Dr Prévost, given birth seven times, in addition to two miscarriages: “You could say she has been pregnant all her life.”95 One can only imagine the feelings of impotence and anger that must have overwhelmed her in the fall of 1919 when, already burdened with six children, she discovered that another baby was on the way. Her husband and her brother noticed that during her pregnancies she became more irritable and beat her children more.96 This time she was projecting her general aversion to children onto Aurore. Dr Prévost was probably not far from the truth when he said that her repeated pregnancies may have affected her mental state.97 Despite this, neither the judge nor the jury recognized the slightest attenuating circumstances for the accused. The death sentence would never be carried out, but subsequently the Minister of Justice would reject all her requests for parole because this case had left “too vivid an impression on the memory of the Québécois.”98
People in Quebec would indeed preserve a very vivid memory of this case, but it was one transformed by the literary imagination. In 1921 the theatre company of Léon Petitjean and Henri Rollin began staging Aurore, l’enfant martyre.100 Four novels would follow: La Petite Martyre victime de la marâtre, by Robert de Beaujolais (1927); Le Roman d’Aurore la petite persécutée, by Hubert Pascal (1950); Le Drame d’Aurore, l’enfant martyre, by Benoît Tessier (1952); and La Petite Aurore,101 by Émile Asselin (1952). The latter also wrote the script for the film Aurore, l’enfant martyre made by Yves Bigras in 1951.102
Although the source of their inspiration was obvious, in these four novels and in the film all the characters except Aurore were given fictional names. The authors also altered the facts in order to structure their work like a fairy tale, including the trio of the wicked stepmother, the absent father, and the defenceless victim.103 In doing so they minimized the violence committed by Télesphore Gagnon. In the play, the novel by Beaujolais, and the film, the father only strikes Aurore once, while in the other novels he never touches her: the cruelty was reserved for the stepmother. However, the abuses described fell short of the reality. Instead of making Aurore eat lye, the deadly caustic cleaning product, the stepmother made her drink soapy water (in the novels by Pascal and Tessier) or eat soap (in the novel by Beaujolais and the film): this was the source of the famous “bread buttered with soap” that became implanted in the memory of the Quebec public. The authors sometimes looked for a rational motive for the stepmother’s behaviour. According to Petitjean and Tessier, she wanted her husband’s inheritance for herself or for her children. In the film she caused the death of Aurore’s mother in order to take her place and then caused Aurore’s death to stop her from making accusations against her. Psychological motives were also explored. In the novels by Pascal and Tessier, Aurore refused to accept an intruder taking her mother’s place. In the same works, as well as in the film, Aurore’s resemblance to her mother provoked the jealousy of Gagnon’s second wife. Finally, Hubert Pascal showed the stepmother as an only daughter, egocentric, and a child-hater, while Asselin stressed her sadistic pleasure in seeing Aurore suffer.
Even if they lacked the happy ending characteristic of fairy tales, all these works of fiction nevertheless ended satisfactorily for the public. In the novels by Beaujolais and Pascal, Aurore was avenged by the sentence passed on her stepmother. In the play, Christian morality was expressed by Aurore’s final song, which pardoned her torturers, asked for the jury’s mercy for them, and above all rejoiced that she had found “happiness with the Lord.”104 It was an ending not unlike that of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Little Match Girl.” Forced to sell matches despite the winter cold and not daring to go home for fear of being beaten by her father, a little girl freezes to death in the street. In a vision her dead grandmother appears to her and carries her off “very high, where there is no hunger any more, nor thirst, nor fear, for it is with the Good Lord.” Her body is discovered with a beatific smile on her lips.105 This fairy tale and the play express the same moral of Christian resignation: children who are unhappy on earth can find consolation in the hope for heavenly bliss after death. The same idea inspired the sentiments expressed by the Gagnon grandmother and the nuns of the Crèche in speaking of Marie-Anne Houde’s children. During a 1949 performance of the play in a Montreal school,106 the young spectators spontaneously expressed the same thought: “She’s much better off dead, the poor little thing.” The editor of a magazine intended for these schoolchildren tried to comfort them:
Dear little friends, the third act of this very moving play will show you that the wicked are always punished. The old stepmother is sentenced by the judges. You will also see that good people, who can suffer for Jesus, are amply rewarded. Aurore prays for her tormentors from her heaven above. And of course you all want the same reward as Aurore, don’t you?107
These comments endow the play with a religious meaning: Aurore suffers for Jesus and forgives her tormentors. In addition, an aura of near-sainthood is conferred on the child martyr.108 This victory of good over evil in the next world was a shield against the perhaps disturbing spectacle of human cruelty and a child’s senseless suffering. To make it easier for children to identify with “good” people like Aurore, the same author offered them a guideline:
Well! Be GOOD! Be kind to your little brothers and sisters: no squabbling at home, no fighting! Be kind to your schoolmates: do them a good turn now and again. Be kind to poor little children, the little abandoned ones that must surely be among you. And then say often, “Oh Jesus, thank you for giving me good parents! Keep them by me for a long time!109
Modern-day psychologists would doubtless approve of such appeals for kindness, which can have a positive effect on children’s behaviour. But the author never advises children to rebel against ill-treatment or try to flee from it. In fact, he takes no account of the possibility that among the pupils attending the play and reading the review some might be victims of abuse. So an absolute divide is established between “good” and “bad” parents. And what child would dare to question the goodness of his or her own? Such is the perverse effect described by Catherine Rollet: the audience members imagine that they have nothing in common with the victim and the monsters described in the play.”110
The play was an extraordinary success in its day: it was staged almost 5,000 times in Quebec, Canada, and the United States. The film, which appeared in 1952, also met with keen interest.111 The audience, large and small, was outraged by the father’s imbecility, shouted their hatred for the stepmother, and applauded when she was found guilty.112 As they left the theatre some audience members even tried to harass the actress who played the stepmother.113 This craze continued until the 1960s, when, after the Quiet Revolution and the decline in religious practice, the message of Christian resignation expressed by the play was no longer so well received by the public.114
But how can we explain such lasting interest? The writer Jacques Ferron saw it as an admission of collective guilt: “The stepmother was quite simply the good land of Quebec, maternal until then, still brimming with vitality but betrayed in the very heart of a generation that could no longer care for its children and saw them go into exile and become lost in their hundreds of thousands.”115 Alonzo Le Blanc made the judgment more explicit: “People could see the child Aurore as a symbol for the alienation of the Québécois collectivity, deprived very early of its own mother (France), and ill-treated by its stepmother (England) under the complicit gaze of the father, the holder of authority, with the impotence of the political and religious authorities.”116 Subsequently, Heinz Weinmann took up and developed this political metaphor117 though even Professor Le Blanc himself had disowned it.118
We can also try to explain the lasting success of the play by referring to Bruno Bettelheim’s work The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976). According to Bettelheim the image of the stepmother helps to ease relations between children and their biological mother. The caricatures of wicked stepmothers found in fairy tales serve to support the idea that a biological mother is necessarily kind. But in reality almost all children suffer frustrations and punishments at the hands of their mothers — in addition to the rebuffs incurred in their moments of ill-humour. To make this negative side of the mother tolerable, some children resort to fantasy. They imagine it is not their mother that has treated them in this way, but rather some evil person who has temporarily replaced the good mother, like the Big Bad Wolf who replaces the grandmother in her bed. In this way children can allow themselves to feel anger against this mother substitute without feeling guilt. This fantasy usually disappears as the child grows up and becomes able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.119 Peter Gossage, who has used Bettelheim’s work (among others), believes that the story of Aurore Gagnon as it was depicted in works of fiction helped to maintain the belief that it is impossible for a real (i.e., biological) mother to hate and ill-treat her child.120
We can only subscribe to Bettelheim’s insight. Among the audience who attended Petitjean’s play, vilified the stepmother, and rejoiced at her eventual punishment, many had probably received blows from a mother’s hand. By unburdening their aggressive feelings on a stepmother, they were able to preserve an idealized image of their own real, imperfect mother.
The fury unleashed against Marie-Anne Houde was equalled only by the oblivion surrounding the part played by her husband. Why? Probably because his behaviour did not correspond to the stereotype of male violence that temperance societies had been denouncing since the nineteenth century: that of a drunkard who beats his wife and children in moments of inebriation, like the labourer Bijart in Zola’s L’Assommoir.
Télesphore Gagnon did not at all correspond to this image. The father of numerous children, a hard-working farmer of total sobriety, a Catholic who attended church regularly, he was esteemed by those around him. The fact that this apparently irreproachable man could beat his child to death on the pretext of curing her of her vices remained incomprehensible for most people. The idea that the same harshness could be found in any strict father full of his paternal authority was so disturbing that Quebec society preferred to erase this recollection from its collective memory, leaving only the image of the stepmother to maintain a reassuring distance between good and bad parents.
A final question remains: why did the Gagnon affair stir up more violent emotions than the other stories of abused children that filled the newspapers? No doubt it was because the society of the time viewed cruelty toward children as a phenomenon that resulted from urbanization, alcohol, working-class poverty, and the particular customs of immigrants.121 This version, provided by journalists, helped to fuel the myth that it was “others” who tortured children, as Gelles and Straus have shown so well.122 But in 1920 people were stupefied to discover a case of ill-treatment in a pure laine French-Canadian family living deep in the country where life is good, at least if we are to believe the words of the song.* Quebec society suddenly became aware of the violence existing within it. This was a revelation so shocking that its repercussions can still be felt today, and that is what explains the lasting interest in “Aurore the child martyr.”
___________
The Gagnon affair is a rich mine of information, not only about the situation of abused children in the province of Quebec in 1920 but also about society’s reaction on discovering the existence of such tragedies.
One initial fact is glaringly obvious: the inadequacy of the measures taken to protect children, especially in rural areas. The Justice of the Peace in the municipality of Sainte-Philomène was aware of the situation as early as the summer of 1919. He could have launched an investigation and applied the law of 1912 which allowed any taxpayer to bring “any child habitually beaten or cruelly treated by its parents” before two Justices of the Peace or a magistrate in order to have it removed to a secure environment.123 Perhaps he was unaware of this law? What is certain is that he did not understand the clues that pointed to abuse: the parents’ threatening tone and the child’s nervousness. But can he be blamed for not possessing, in 1919, an expert knowledge that it would take social workers decades to acquire?
Perhaps children enjoy better protection inside a community such as a village? Marie-Anne Houde’s sister Ernestine, who also abused a child from a prior marriage, lived in Lyster. One day when she was beating this little boy too severely his cries attracted passers-by and a neighbour snatched the child from her. But since the Gagnon family lived on a farm some distance from the village neighbours could not be moved by Aurore’s cries, even if they were aware that she was beaten.
A large city like Montreal, on the other hand, possessed organizations such as the Montreal Society for the Protection of Women and Children and the Salvation Army, whose members sometimes took the initiative in reporting violent parents to the authorities.124 Reporters who frequented the courts mostly reported cases that arose in Montreal. Paradoxically, the measures that served to protect children had the secondary effect of giving the impression that cases of ill-treatment were more numerous in urban areas. On the other hand, we have seen that on occasion members of the above Society recommended the use of the whip to punish certain children, thus legitimizing a practice that Télesphore Gagnon took to an extreme.
In addition to these facts was the notion that the ultimate solution for children’s suffering resided in death and heavenly bliss. Such Christian resignation was evident in the words of Aurore’s grandmother and the nuns of the Crèche, in Aurore’s song, and in the reaction of some of the audience attending the play. In the 1940s it was still expressed in certain children’s books.125
The publicity around the Gagnon affair could not but have had social repercussions. When the jury brought in its verdict of guilty against Télesphore Gagnon Judge Désy expressed the hope that it would give parents inclined to brutality cause to reflect.126 A few years later, a judge in the region of Quebec City lectured abusive parents, saying, “Do you want to join the Gagnons?”127 And in Montreal in 1925 a woman spoke to her neighbour who was beating her little girl, “Aren’t you ashamed to treat your own child like that? You’re another Madame Gagnon.”128 The comparison would often be repeated subsequently, yet no brutal father was ever compared to Télesphore Gagnon. The Gagnon case thus became the standard point of reference in analysing cases of abused children. At the same time it instilled in the popular mind the idea that the typical abusive parent was a stepmother, while the part played by the father was forgotten. Indeed, the impression still exists that the Gagnons were “degenerates” who had nothing in common with ordinary parents.
Finally, this famous trial demonstrated the limits of society’s awareness of the abuse inflicted on children. Judge Désy would blame Télesphore Gagnon for exercising his right to punish brutally rather than in the reasonable manner allowed by the law. The newspaper columnist Ginevra expressed the fear that if Marie-Anne Houde’s sentence were commuted on account of insanity many stepmothers would “overstep the limits in the punishment that they consider justified in inflicting on their husband’s children, and also move, imperceptibly, toward crime.”129 Thus, while the link between corporal punishment and abuse was clearly perceived, no one thought to question the legitimacy of the former.