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A review by ldv
The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama by Pierre Berton
2.0
I believe there is a lot of space in the world for this story to be re-written. Though a journalist and under the guise of being neutral, Berton's bias as a business man, is very clear to me. For one thing, he spends a lot of the book talking about the money and contracts and endorsements relating to the Dionnes and their fame and setting it in context for a 1970s reader. In itself, I think this side of the story is a critical one because money was a strong motivator in much of what happened to the Quints. However, I felt that Berton belabours the point -- it actually makes his book more relevant as a historical resource for commercial endeavours of the 1930s. He devotes an entire paragraph to naming all the cars that were seen visiting Quintland. Feels a bit like filler, unless you're a car buff.
Another factor in my claim that Berton is biased is his presentation of people and the voices he gives them. I've not read any of his sources, so I can't know for sure what was available to him, but he gives a lot of text to other professional men, including describing their appearances, and very little to women. I know very little about the nurses and teachers who worked with the Quints, but there's background on the lawyers and any politician or ad-man who did business with Quintland. The bias here likely reflects Berton's time and general worldview of that culture, but because our perspective has changed the story could be presented again.
Further, there's a slant against the Dionne parents for being rigid Catholics and uneducated French Canadians. Berton does not come right out and criticize them, but I think there's room to look at how they behaved given the context of their worldview. What was important to them as rural staunch Catholic farmers was different than the big city Ontario journalists. How farmers raised their families, how Catholics raised their families, their attitude towards money and what should be private versus public would explain many of their actions and reactions, and then the culture clash of Blatz and the government and all the Hollywood and businessmen on their door steps would very much through things up in the air. I'm not saying I'm on the side of the Dionne parents, I just htink the explanations for their behaviours -- and the attitude of the girls as adults -- could be explained with a better lens.
Berton mentions two reporters who wrote articles that were sympathetic to the Dionnes, but he does not tell us what they said. He cites a female reporter who took Mrs. Dionne's side, but he never gives her a voice (possibly because he later includes a footnote indicating that her work was not credible, but I still think he conveniently sweeps her away).
I also think Berton's portrayal of the Dionne sisters as adults is very male-biased and unfair. He judges them for their poor money management and broken relationships. I would suggest that it would have been a miracle if they did know how to deal with money and have strong relationships with others outside of their sisterhood given their tumultuous upbringing! Going from being coddled and kept on a keen schedule until 9 years old and then thrown into a rural French-Catholic house with people you know only cursorily would be such a culture shock! A strike father who was clearly a domineering man whose authority had been undermined for 9 years by Dafoe and then suddenly gets his own way again would likely continue to rule his household out of that anger and humiliation and fear that it could happen again. So he dictates that the girls can't go out (their fame was still a big deal and likely they would be mobbed) and he is frugal and wealthy and resentful of people making more money off them than he could have, so of course he tightly controls their money, too. I don't agree with his tactics, but I think they're human reactions to an unprecedented and complicated situation. Today, the amount of counselling all of them would need to move past that mental and emotional tug of war would keep a whole office of therapists busy for years.
Berton is too nice to Dafoe. Yes, he talks about how the doctor hid his commissions and says the doctor loved the girls, but there is so much more to criticize about the man who said he was simple and humble and yet loved the spotlight and the control and who was likely also acting out of a place of childhood brokenness (never measuring up to his own father's expectations). The government of Ontario was culpable, too, though all of it was likely one of those situations that starts off as emergency damage-control and then evolves into a financial monster that is too powerful to rein in.
Berton uses the sister-in-law and ex-husbands of the sisters to paint them in a poor light as adults, with the sister saying their family was lovely so she doesn't understand their perspective. Why should I believe that she has a genuine perspective on their side of the story? She would not have seen what Papa Dionne did to them behind closed doors (whether it was physical or psychological) because theirs would be a family that showed a public face and hid the private demons -- even to someone who marries into the family. The ex-husband who sympathizes with Mr. Dionne appears to be a male chauvinist too, and that the sisters should automatically be submissive to their father. The other ex-husband might have needed to give his wife the ultimatum of "me or your sisters", but again, that's understandable that they only knew how to relate and live relative to each other and could not exclude each other in favour of a man. They never learned how to have outside friendships when they only had each other for the first nine years of their lives! Don't make them guilty for their personalities; they are victims of their birth and the people who manipulated that situation.
A 21st, Me-Too perspective is likely going to be much more sympathetic to the Dionne sisters and forgive them for their adult "eccentricities" and privacy and broken marriages. It could be more forgiving of people who did what they could and thought was best in a time and location of limited perspectives. Their story could be re-told in a much different way using today's lens.
Another factor in my claim that Berton is biased is his presentation of people and the voices he gives them. I've not read any of his sources, so I can't know for sure what was available to him, but he gives a lot of text to other professional men, including describing their appearances, and very little to women. I know very little about the nurses and teachers who worked with the Quints, but there's background on the lawyers and any politician or ad-man who did business with Quintland. The bias here likely reflects Berton's time and general worldview of that culture, but because our perspective has changed the story could be presented again.
Further, there's a slant against the Dionne parents for being rigid Catholics and uneducated French Canadians. Berton does not come right out and criticize them, but I think there's room to look at how they behaved given the context of their worldview. What was important to them as rural staunch Catholic farmers was different than the big city Ontario journalists. How farmers raised their families, how Catholics raised their families, their attitude towards money and what should be private versus public would explain many of their actions and reactions, and then the culture clash of Blatz and the government and all the Hollywood and businessmen on their door steps would very much through things up in the air. I'm not saying I'm on the side of the Dionne parents, I just htink the explanations for their behaviours -- and the attitude of the girls as adults -- could be explained with a better lens.
Berton mentions two reporters who wrote articles that were sympathetic to the Dionnes, but he does not tell us what they said. He cites a female reporter who took Mrs. Dionne's side, but he never gives her a voice (possibly because he later includes a footnote indicating that her work was not credible, but I still think he conveniently sweeps her away).
I also think Berton's portrayal of the Dionne sisters as adults is very male-biased and unfair. He judges them for their poor money management and broken relationships. I would suggest that it would have been a miracle if they did know how to deal with money and have strong relationships with others outside of their sisterhood given their tumultuous upbringing! Going from being coddled and kept on a keen schedule until 9 years old and then thrown into a rural French-Catholic house with people you know only cursorily would be such a culture shock! A strike father who was clearly a domineering man whose authority had been undermined for 9 years by Dafoe and then suddenly gets his own way again would likely continue to rule his household out of that anger and humiliation and fear that it could happen again. So he dictates that the girls can't go out (their fame was still a big deal and likely they would be mobbed) and he is frugal and wealthy and resentful of people making more money off them than he could have, so of course he tightly controls their money, too. I don't agree with his tactics, but I think they're human reactions to an unprecedented and complicated situation. Today, the amount of counselling all of them would need to move past that mental and emotional tug of war would keep a whole office of therapists busy for years.
Berton is too nice to Dafoe. Yes, he talks about how the doctor hid his commissions and says the doctor loved the girls, but there is so much more to criticize about the man who said he was simple and humble and yet loved the spotlight and the control and who was likely also acting out of a place of childhood brokenness (never measuring up to his own father's expectations). The government of Ontario was culpable, too, though all of it was likely one of those situations that starts off as emergency damage-control and then evolves into a financial monster that is too powerful to rein in.
Berton uses the sister-in-law and ex-husbands of the sisters to paint them in a poor light as adults, with the sister saying their family was lovely so she doesn't understand their perspective. Why should I believe that she has a genuine perspective on their side of the story? She would not have seen what Papa Dionne did to them behind closed doors (whether it was physical or psychological) because theirs would be a family that showed a public face and hid the private demons -- even to someone who marries into the family. The ex-husband who sympathizes with Mr. Dionne appears to be a male chauvinist too, and that the sisters should automatically be submissive to their father. The other ex-husband might have needed to give his wife the ultimatum of "me or your sisters", but again, that's understandable that they only knew how to relate and live relative to each other and could not exclude each other in favour of a man. They never learned how to have outside friendships when they only had each other for the first nine years of their lives! Don't make them guilty for their personalities; they are victims of their birth and the people who manipulated that situation.
A 21st, Me-Too perspective is likely going to be much more sympathetic to the Dionne sisters and forgive them for their adult "eccentricities" and privacy and broken marriages. It could be more forgiving of people who did what they could and thought was best in a time and location of limited perspectives. Their story could be re-told in a much different way using today's lens.