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Les belles-soeurs
Few writers are fortunate enough to begin their careers with a work as resoundingly significant as Michel Tremblay's play Les Belles Soeurs. He wrote the play in 1965 but took three years to arrange a public performance. Its first production, however, was hugely successful and controversial, permanently changing theatre in Quebec. The play may be the province's most famous literary export. Les Belles Soeurs is based on a simple premise: Germaine Lauzon, a poor Québécoise woman, wins a million trading stamps in a lottery. To redeem them Germaine must glue them into the provided booklets, so she keeps her daughter home and invites her friends and relatives to join her in a "stamp party." The vitriol begins within seconds: the women bicker, steal the stamps, and recite their deprivations in a wild cacophony that is both hysterically funny and pitiably bleak.
John Van Burek and Bill Glassco have made an admirable attempt at translating Les Belles Soeurs, but this is ultimately an untranslatable play. Tremblay was among the first Quebec authors to incorporate the Québécois dialect known as joual into literary writing, and there is no useful equivalent in Canadian English idiom for the dialect's inflections and expressions. Nevertheless, the translation is an uproarious and affecting work in its own right--a testament to the power of the original. Tremblay has gone on to create a diverse and impressive oeuvre, from his Plateau Mont-Royal chronicles (beginning with The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant) to the surreal horrors of Stories for Late Night Drinkers, but Les Belles Soeurs may well continue to be his most important work. --Jack Illingworth
97 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1972
46 people are currently reading
1056 people want to read
About the author
Michel Tremblay
137 books244 followersNé en 1942, Michel Tremblay grandit dans un appartement de Montréal où s'entassent plusieurs familles. Ses origines modestes marqueront d'ailleurs ses œuvres, souvent campées au cœur de la classe ouvrière, où misères sociale et morale se côtoient. En 1964, il participe au Concours des jeunes auteurs de Radio-Canada, avec une pièce de théâtre intitulée Le train, et remporte le premier prix. C'est à peine un an plus tard qu'il écrit l'une de ses œuvres majeures, Les belles-sœurs, dont le succès perdure. La pièce est jouée pour la première fois en 1968 au Théâtre du Rideau Vert.
Michel Tremblay est l'auteur d'un nombre considérable de pièces de théâtre, de romans, et d'adaptations d'œuvres d'auteurs et de dramaturges étrangers. On lui doit aussi quelques comédies musicales, des scénarios de films et un opéra. Ses univers sont peuplés de femmes, tantôt caractérielles et imparfaites, tantôt fragiles et attachantes, qu'il peint avec réalisme et humour. Vivant les difficultés du quotidien, ses personnages au dialecte coloré ont d'ailleurs contribué à introduire dans la dramaturgie et la littérature d'alors un niveau de langue boudé des artistes : le joual.
En 2006, il remporte le Grand Prix Metropolis bleu pour l'ensemble de son œuvre.
En 2017, le Prix Gilles-Corbeil lui est décerné pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre.
Michel Tremblay est l'auteur d'un nombre considérable de pièces de théâtre, de romans, et d'adaptations d'œuvres d'auteurs et de dramaturges étrangers. On lui doit aussi quelques comédies musicales, des scénarios de films et un opéra. Ses univers sont peuplés de femmes, tantôt caractérielles et imparfaites, tantôt fragiles et attachantes, qu'il peint avec réalisme et humour. Vivant les difficultés du quotidien, ses personnages au dialecte coloré ont d'ailleurs contribué à introduire dans la dramaturgie et la littérature d'alors un niveau de langue boudé des artistes : le joual.
En 2006, il remporte le Grand Prix Metropolis bleu pour l'ensemble de son œuvre.
En 2017, le Prix Gilles-Corbeil lui est décerné pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 213 reviews
April 6, 2020
STANDARD ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION
A decent enough English language translation (I guess), still set in Montreal, and supposedly this particular version of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles Sours was the one performed at the Stratford Festival in 1991. But while it does faithfully keep to both the general and particular themes and contents of the French (Canadian) original, I sorely do miss the Joual, the sociolect or dialect of East End, working class Montreal of Tremblay's original French language text (as this rather standard English language translation really and unfortunately kind of feels a bit like having a play set in working class London, without the Cockney, without the colour and sense of place that Cockney, that the sociolect of the same represents and demonstrates). Thus, I am not in any way liking this translation in ANY way as much as I have always and massively enjoyed the French original (and am therefore much looking forward to in the near future reading the one English language translation of Les Bellles Soeurs that is actually written in a specific dialect/sociolect, namely The Guid Sisters, which is a translation of the play into modern Scots).
Now one of the primary reasons why reading Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs in this standard English translation might tend to feel like one is missing something and actually something rather major and substantial is the salient and essential truth that at least some of the social satire and humour presented and depicted is very much reliant and even dependent on the sociolect (the Joual) that Germaine Lauzon, her family and her acquaintances speak (and not just the words, but also the tone of voice, the way the words uttered are pronounced and articulated). For example, one of the individuals attending the stamp-pasting party, Lisette de Courval, tends to give herself some rather massive airs because she and her husband have visited Europe, and she thus considers herself quite above the others attendees both socially and linguistically. Well, she does in fact attempt to speak in a more refined manner, but her parlance is still and nevertheless much coloured by and with Joual, even though Lisette de Courval, herself, firmly and always believes that she is speaking polished and standard French.
And then, at the end of the play, Lisette de Courval, like almost everyone attending Germaine Lauzon's little "party" (except for the despised and universally criticised Pierette) tries to grab as much of the latter's prime stamp collection as possible (thus, she might consider herself socially above the other party participants, she might even claim to be ashamed of them, but in many ways, Lisette de Courval is still very much akin and alike to them in both thought and action, her marginally more polished parlance notwithstanding). But in this here translation into standard English, while Lisette de Courval's actions and general words do indeed still shine through as being akin to how she is presented and depicted in the original French dramatic narrative, the fact that she, although claiming to speak a more sophisticated French than the Joual of her neighbours, still sounds at least somewhat similar to them with regard to pronunciation especially, that is of course simply and unfortunately completely lost (something that I do hope will not be the case with The Guid Sisters, where I am sincerely praying that Lisette de Courval will be depicted as at the very least speaking a kind of standard English still somewhat coloured by nuances of modern Scots).
A decent enough English language translation (I guess), still set in Montreal, and supposedly this particular version of Michel Tremblay's Les Belles Sours was the one performed at the Stratford Festival in 1991. But while it does faithfully keep to both the general and particular themes and contents of the French (Canadian) original, I sorely do miss the Joual, the sociolect or dialect of East End, working class Montreal of Tremblay's original French language text (as this rather standard English language translation really and unfortunately kind of feels a bit like having a play set in working class London, without the Cockney, without the colour and sense of place that Cockney, that the sociolect of the same represents and demonstrates). Thus, I am not in any way liking this translation in ANY way as much as I have always and massively enjoyed the French original (and am therefore much looking forward to in the near future reading the one English language translation of Les Bellles Soeurs that is actually written in a specific dialect/sociolect, namely The Guid Sisters, which is a translation of the play into modern Scots).
Now one of the primary reasons why reading Tremblay's Les Belles Soeurs in this standard English translation might tend to feel like one is missing something and actually something rather major and substantial is the salient and essential truth that at least some of the social satire and humour presented and depicted is very much reliant and even dependent on the sociolect (the Joual) that Germaine Lauzon, her family and her acquaintances speak (and not just the words, but also the tone of voice, the way the words uttered are pronounced and articulated). For example, one of the individuals attending the stamp-pasting party, Lisette de Courval, tends to give herself some rather massive airs because she and her husband have visited Europe, and she thus considers herself quite above the others attendees both socially and linguistically. Well, she does in fact attempt to speak in a more refined manner, but her parlance is still and nevertheless much coloured by and with Joual, even though Lisette de Courval, herself, firmly and always believes that she is speaking polished and standard French.
And then, at the end of the play, Lisette de Courval, like almost everyone attending Germaine Lauzon's little "party" (except for the despised and universally criticised Pierette) tries to grab as much of the latter's prime stamp collection as possible (thus, she might consider herself socially above the other party participants, she might even claim to be ashamed of them, but in many ways, Lisette de Courval is still very much akin and alike to them in both thought and action, her marginally more polished parlance notwithstanding). But in this here translation into standard English, while Lisette de Courval's actions and general words do indeed still shine through as being akin to how she is presented and depicted in the original French dramatic narrative, the fact that she, although claiming to speak a more sophisticated French than the Joual of her neighbours, still sounds at least somewhat similar to them with regard to pronunciation especially, that is of course simply and unfortunately completely lost (something that I do hope will not be the case with The Guid Sisters, where I am sincerely praying that Lisette de Courval will be depicted as at the very least speaking a kind of standard English still somewhat coloured by nuances of modern Scots).
June 13, 2025
ORIGINAL FRENCH LANGUAGE TEXT
Both uproariously funny and indeed also really painfully heartbreaking at the same time, for me it is the Joual, the sociolect of East End working class Montreal in which Michel Tremblay's text is penned that makes his classic French Canadian play Les Belles-Sours such an absolutely perfectly shining and glowing gem (an exposé of both individual and collective corruption and manipulation, of how the Catholic Church controls all, even though both the Church and the people, the Quebecois as a whole, are generally not really in any manner all that full of actual faith, humility and love, and how in fact, the so-called seven deadly sins are really in many ways first and foremost shown as being almost "religiously" adhered to via greed, gossip, judgmentalism and petty nasty thievery, even whilst the attendants of Germaine Lauzon's stamp pasting party are kneeling down collectively chanting their Hail Marys and Novenas with false and pretend piety).
Now I do realise and understand that the vernacular Germaine Lauzon, her family and acquaintances are featured as speaking (and not just the words, but also the tone of voice, the way the words uttered are pronounced and articulated) is or rather can be somewhat if not majorly difficult and daunting for individuals who have only ever used standard written French (and indeed reading Les Belles-Sours in the original, in a non translated version, might actually feel rather like reading a play in Low German, a heavy Viennese street vernacular, Glaswegian Scots or Cockney). However, I for one do strongly suggest that if you are indeed interested in Les Belles-Soeurs and know French at above an intermediate level, to NOT bother with the rather lacklustre English language translations (although the one that has been rendered into modern Scots is definitely interesting), as in my opinion, so MUCH of the humour, the satire, the cultural nuggets of criticism are very much dependent on the culture and Montreal specific Joual spoken by Germaine Lauzon et al. As a shining example thereof, one of the neighbourhood women attending the stamp-pasting party, Lisette de Courval, tends to give herself some rather massive airs because she and her husband have visited Europe once or twice, and she thus considers herself above and beyond the others attendees both socially and linguistically. Well, she does in fact attempt to speak in a more refined manner, but her parlance is still and nevertheless much coloured by and with Joual, even though Lisette de Courval, herself, firmly and always believes that she is indeed and in fact speaking polished and standard "Parisian" French (but her words do show otherwise, as they present a pseudo-standard French/Joual combination still very much coloured by her social background, and this can only really be seen and experienced in and with the original French version of Les Belles-Soeurs, as the English translations just do not and really cannot adequately present this, as of course they are not presented in Joual).
And then, at the end of the play, at the end of Les Belles-Soeurs, Michel Tremblay shows that same (and oh so superior thinking of herself) Lisette de Courval, like almost everyone attending Germaine Lauzon's little "party" (except for the despised and universally criticised Pierette, the eponymous black sheep of both the Lauzon family and the neighbourhood) trying to grab as much of the former's prime stamp collection as possible (Madame de Courval might well consider herself socially above the other party participants, she might even claim to be ashamed of them, but in many if not most ways, Lisette de Courval is still very much akin and alike to them in both thought and action, her marginally more polished parlance quite notwithstanding). So yes, the Joual, the sociolect vernacular of East end Montreal is really and absolutely not only a wonderful tool for presenting to potential readers (and play attenders) cultural and societal authenticity, without it, Les Belles-Soeurs truly is but a very and sadly pale reflection of Michel Treblay's genius, which is why I ONLY really do recommend this version, the French (Joual) language original of Les Belles-Soeurs.
Both uproariously funny and indeed also really painfully heartbreaking at the same time, for me it is the Joual, the sociolect of East End working class Montreal in which Michel Tremblay's text is penned that makes his classic French Canadian play Les Belles-Sours such an absolutely perfectly shining and glowing gem (an exposé of both individual and collective corruption and manipulation, of how the Catholic Church controls all, even though both the Church and the people, the Quebecois as a whole, are generally not really in any manner all that full of actual faith, humility and love, and how in fact, the so-called seven deadly sins are really in many ways first and foremost shown as being almost "religiously" adhered to via greed, gossip, judgmentalism and petty nasty thievery, even whilst the attendants of Germaine Lauzon's stamp pasting party are kneeling down collectively chanting their Hail Marys and Novenas with false and pretend piety).
Now I do realise and understand that the vernacular Germaine Lauzon, her family and acquaintances are featured as speaking (and not just the words, but also the tone of voice, the way the words uttered are pronounced and articulated) is or rather can be somewhat if not majorly difficult and daunting for individuals who have only ever used standard written French (and indeed reading Les Belles-Sours in the original, in a non translated version, might actually feel rather like reading a play in Low German, a heavy Viennese street vernacular, Glaswegian Scots or Cockney). However, I for one do strongly suggest that if you are indeed interested in Les Belles-Soeurs and know French at above an intermediate level, to NOT bother with the rather lacklustre English language translations (although the one that has been rendered into modern Scots is definitely interesting), as in my opinion, so MUCH of the humour, the satire, the cultural nuggets of criticism are very much dependent on the culture and Montreal specific Joual spoken by Germaine Lauzon et al. As a shining example thereof, one of the neighbourhood women attending the stamp-pasting party, Lisette de Courval, tends to give herself some rather massive airs because she and her husband have visited Europe once or twice, and she thus considers herself above and beyond the others attendees both socially and linguistically. Well, she does in fact attempt to speak in a more refined manner, but her parlance is still and nevertheless much coloured by and with Joual, even though Lisette de Courval, herself, firmly and always believes that she is indeed and in fact speaking polished and standard "Parisian" French (but her words do show otherwise, as they present a pseudo-standard French/Joual combination still very much coloured by her social background, and this can only really be seen and experienced in and with the original French version of Les Belles-Soeurs, as the English translations just do not and really cannot adequately present this, as of course they are not presented in Joual).
And then, at the end of the play, at the end of Les Belles-Soeurs, Michel Tremblay shows that same (and oh so superior thinking of herself) Lisette de Courval, like almost everyone attending Germaine Lauzon's little "party" (except for the despised and universally criticised Pierette, the eponymous black sheep of both the Lauzon family and the neighbourhood) trying to grab as much of the former's prime stamp collection as possible (Madame de Courval might well consider herself socially above the other party participants, she might even claim to be ashamed of them, but in many if not most ways, Lisette de Courval is still very much akin and alike to them in both thought and action, her marginally more polished parlance quite notwithstanding). So yes, the Joual, the sociolect vernacular of East end Montreal is really and absolutely not only a wonderful tool for presenting to potential readers (and play attenders) cultural and societal authenticity, without it, Les Belles-Soeurs truly is but a very and sadly pale reflection of Michel Treblay's genius, which is why I ONLY really do recommend this version, the French (Joual) language original of Les Belles-Soeurs.
January 16, 2022
TRANSLATION INTO MODERN SCOTS
While The Guid Sisters (a translation of Michel Tremblay's absolutely brilliant and often wildly humorous, but nevertheless always critical, even at times infuriatingly heartbreaking drama Les Belles-Soeurs into modern Scots by William Findlay and Martin Bowman) does indeed faithfully keep to both the general and particular themes and contents of Tremblay's French (Canadian) original, and while I actually do very much appreciate the sense of working class parlance that this here translation into a specific sociolect has been able to present (and much more so than the rather pale and for the most part sadly mundane and listless translations of Les Belles-Soeurs into standard English, as the Joual, the working class parlance of East End Montreal that the author, that Tremblay uses in Les Belles-Soeurs does give such colour and so much life to both the content and the presentation of the same, something that is completely lost in the standard English translations and happily retained with and by the use of modern Scots), the fact that modern Scots is of course generally spoken in Scotland (and of course as such specifically in the working class areas of cities like Edinburgh and in particular Glasgow), that salient truth and fact does tend to give an odd and at times rather troubling sense of cultural and linguistic disconnection to the reader (or if watching The Guid Sisters at the theatre, this would of course change to the observer and/or listener).
For even though the featured characters now ALL speak modern Scots in Findlay's and Bowman's translation (or with some of the characters, nuances of modern Scots), the specifics of time and of place are of course and in their entirety still totally and absolutely working class East End Montreal, Canada (in the 1950s and 1960s), and it does (at least to me and for me on a personal level) feel more than potentially disconcerting to have Germaine Lauzon and the rest of the featured characters chatter on and away in modern Scots about specific Montreal landmarks, specific French Canadian scenarios (and then to have the entire cast at the end come together at the end of the play and sing Oh Canada! really does feel so exceedingly strange, it really majorly does make me shake my head in and with some consternation and perplexing confusion).
And thus, while I certainly do in every way much and gladly prefer The Guid Sisters to the translations of Les Belles-Soeurs into standard English, it is still and remains a rather oddly bizarre reading (or potential viewing) experience (and while I do definitely and somewhat recommend The Guid Sisters, Michel Tremblay's original French Canadian version, with its Joual, with its Montreal specific parlance, is really to be preferred and massively so, in every way, especially if potential readers or theatre goers can and do read/understand French and have intermediate to advanced levels of language fluency). And frankly, with The Guid Sisters, I think I would personally actually much favour an adaptation over a simple translation, of having the time and place of the original, of Les Belles-Soeurs moved from Montreal to, say, Glasgow, as I think this would definitely lessen the potential sense of cultural and geographic, linguistic estrangement, whilst keeping, whilst retaining the spirit of Michel Tremblay's original, its contents, the themes and the presented, depicted issues, struggles etc. faced by the working classes everywhere.
While The Guid Sisters (a translation of Michel Tremblay's absolutely brilliant and often wildly humorous, but nevertheless always critical, even at times infuriatingly heartbreaking drama Les Belles-Soeurs into modern Scots by William Findlay and Martin Bowman) does indeed faithfully keep to both the general and particular themes and contents of Tremblay's French (Canadian) original, and while I actually do very much appreciate the sense of working class parlance that this here translation into a specific sociolect has been able to present (and much more so than the rather pale and for the most part sadly mundane and listless translations of Les Belles-Soeurs into standard English, as the Joual, the working class parlance of East End Montreal that the author, that Tremblay uses in Les Belles-Soeurs does give such colour and so much life to both the content and the presentation of the same, something that is completely lost in the standard English translations and happily retained with and by the use of modern Scots), the fact that modern Scots is of course generally spoken in Scotland (and of course as such specifically in the working class areas of cities like Edinburgh and in particular Glasgow), that salient truth and fact does tend to give an odd and at times rather troubling sense of cultural and linguistic disconnection to the reader (or if watching The Guid Sisters at the theatre, this would of course change to the observer and/or listener).
For even though the featured characters now ALL speak modern Scots in Findlay's and Bowman's translation (or with some of the characters, nuances of modern Scots), the specifics of time and of place are of course and in their entirety still totally and absolutely working class East End Montreal, Canada (in the 1950s and 1960s), and it does (at least to me and for me on a personal level) feel more than potentially disconcerting to have Germaine Lauzon and the rest of the featured characters chatter on and away in modern Scots about specific Montreal landmarks, specific French Canadian scenarios (and then to have the entire cast at the end come together at the end of the play and sing Oh Canada! really does feel so exceedingly strange, it really majorly does make me shake my head in and with some consternation and perplexing confusion).
And thus, while I certainly do in every way much and gladly prefer The Guid Sisters to the translations of Les Belles-Soeurs into standard English, it is still and remains a rather oddly bizarre reading (or potential viewing) experience (and while I do definitely and somewhat recommend The Guid Sisters, Michel Tremblay's original French Canadian version, with its Joual, with its Montreal specific parlance, is really to be preferred and massively so, in every way, especially if potential readers or theatre goers can and do read/understand French and have intermediate to advanced levels of language fluency). And frankly, with The Guid Sisters, I think I would personally actually much favour an adaptation over a simple translation, of having the time and place of the original, of Les Belles-Soeurs moved from Montreal to, say, Glasgow, as I think this would definitely lessen the potential sense of cultural and geographic, linguistic estrangement, whilst keeping, whilst retaining the spirit of Michel Tremblay's original, its contents, the themes and the presented, depicted issues, struggles etc. faced by the working classes everywhere.
January 17, 2024
A really fantastic play - dramatic, witty, sharp, shocking and generally great.
December 29, 2020
This play put me in mind of a piano piece I played when I was growing up, entitled “Two Ladies Gossiping” by Russian composer Aram Khachaturian. Except that the title of this play could have been “Fifteen Ladies Gossiping.” With an all-female cast, the action of this play takes place on a single night when middle-aged Germaine Lauzon invites over all of her friends and relations to solicit their help in putting her recently won million department store coupons into coupon books. In other words, to gloat.
But once you get that many women together in a room, anything can happen. The farce and slapstick are laid on thick by Québécois playwright Michel Tremblay, as he shows the women interacting with each other and occasionally chanting in unison or breaking into impassioned soliloquy while the rest of the cast freezes. These women are predominantly middle-aged, working class, and Catholic. They speak with a heavy Québécois dialect. Among the farce and the humor, Tremblay draws forth both the absurdity and the pathos of their lives.
In such a short play with a cast of all women, I expected the characters to blend together somewhat. Yet this was not the case. Each woman had her own story to tell. One tells bawdy jokes one moment and then blushes the next moment over her slow-budding romance with a travelling salesman and her fear of growing old alone. Another has brought her mother-in-law along, but cuffs her over the head whenever she feels the old woman’s senility is getting out of hand. The black sheep of Germaine’s family, her younger sister Pierrette, shows up and causes quite a scandal by recognizing another woman in the group from her clandestine nights spent at the club.
The language itself is an interesting aspect of this play. It had a marked influence on Québécois theater by being the one of the first plays to use the local dialect in performance. One of the characters remarks on the tawdry and ill-bred manners of her fellow women, particularly in terms of their speech: “Puis l’Urope! Le monde sont donc bien élevé par lâ!... A Paris, tout le monde perle bien, c’est du vrai français partout… C’est pas comme icitte… J’les méprise toutes!” Yet her language is quite refined compared to some: “Ah! Te v’là, toé! Y’est quasiment temps!” It’s an intriguing read both linguistically and culturally, and I hope I have the chance to see it in performance some day.
But once you get that many women together in a room, anything can happen. The farce and slapstick are laid on thick by Québécois playwright Michel Tremblay, as he shows the women interacting with each other and occasionally chanting in unison or breaking into impassioned soliloquy while the rest of the cast freezes. These women are predominantly middle-aged, working class, and Catholic. They speak with a heavy Québécois dialect. Among the farce and the humor, Tremblay draws forth both the absurdity and the pathos of their lives.
In such a short play with a cast of all women, I expected the characters to blend together somewhat. Yet this was not the case. Each woman had her own story to tell. One tells bawdy jokes one moment and then blushes the next moment over her slow-budding romance with a travelling salesman and her fear of growing old alone. Another has brought her mother-in-law along, but cuffs her over the head whenever she feels the old woman’s senility is getting out of hand. The black sheep of Germaine’s family, her younger sister Pierrette, shows up and causes quite a scandal by recognizing another woman in the group from her clandestine nights spent at the club.
The language itself is an interesting aspect of this play. It had a marked influence on Québécois theater by being the one of the first plays to use the local dialect in performance. One of the characters remarks on the tawdry and ill-bred manners of her fellow women, particularly in terms of their speech: “Puis l’Urope! Le monde sont donc bien élevé par lâ!... A Paris, tout le monde perle bien, c’est du vrai français partout… C’est pas comme icitte… J’les méprise toutes!” Yet her language is quite refined compared to some: “Ah! Te v’là, toé! Y’est quasiment temps!” It’s an intriguing read both linguistically and culturally, and I hope I have the chance to see it in performance some day.
January 27, 2020
If you know French Canadian women then this play will speak to you somewhere in the fundamental wiring of your spine. If not, you are still bound to get a laugh or two and a voyeuristic look at humanity. Excellent as this is to read, though, it is necessary to see it on stage for full effect.
April 13, 2019
I grew up in Montreal. I have a Québécois accent, but I do not use the Québécois dialect. Contrary to what other provinces or countries may believe, not all of Québec speaks the way the Belles-Soeurs do.
Ever since I started high school, my French teachers had been rambling on and on about Les Belles-Soeurs and how it was such a quintessential representation of "our society" and "our dialect". On and on and on they went. And I, being a typical immigrant, could not care less about this play written about Québécois, by a Québécois, in Québécois dialect.
This year, in my last year of high school, my classmates and I finally got to discover what this supposed masterpiece that we'd been hearing about for so long was all about. At first, we mostly got caught up in the language used, which is obviously not the level of French we used to reading in books. We made fun of the ridiculous women, who are caricatural and not contemporary to us and our every day lives. We couldn't quite identify with the women in this play -- how can a bunch of 17 year olds in 2015 identify with middle-aged women from the 1960s?
But as the story progressed, and as we started discussing it more and more, we started to understand their struggle. Underneath the comedy, the author reveals the tragedy of being born a woman in the middle of the 20th century. These stay-at-home, Catholic, working-class women have no future, no possibilities lying in front of them, no way to escape their situations, their lives, the value systems that have been drilled into them from their youngest age. And for us, millenials who have been raised to believe that we could do anything we wanted, be anyone we wanted in this life, the realization that women have not always had it so easy, and that many still don't... It was kind of eye opening.
The fight for equality has been a long one, and we still have work ahead of us, but if we look at how far we've come in the last decades... Well, that makes me believe that anything is truly possible.
Ever since I started high school, my French teachers had been rambling on and on about Les Belles-Soeurs and how it was such a quintessential representation of "our society" and "our dialect". On and on and on they went. And I, being a typical immigrant, could not care less about this play written about Québécois, by a Québécois, in Québécois dialect.
This year, in my last year of high school, my classmates and I finally got to discover what this supposed masterpiece that we'd been hearing about for so long was all about. At first, we mostly got caught up in the language used, which is obviously not the level of French we used to reading in books. We made fun of the ridiculous women, who are caricatural and not contemporary to us and our every day lives. We couldn't quite identify with the women in this play -- how can a bunch of 17 year olds in 2015 identify with middle-aged women from the 1960s?
But as the story progressed, and as we started discussing it more and more, we started to understand their struggle. Underneath the comedy, the author reveals the tragedy of being born a woman in the middle of the 20th century. These stay-at-home, Catholic, working-class women have no future, no possibilities lying in front of them, no way to escape their situations, their lives, the value systems that have been drilled into them from their youngest age. And for us, millenials who have been raised to believe that we could do anything we wanted, be anyone we wanted in this life, the realization that women have not always had it so easy, and that many still don't... It was kind of eye opening.
The fight for equality has been a long one, and we still have work ahead of us, but if we look at how far we've come in the last decades... Well, that makes me believe that anything is truly possible.
November 28, 2018
J’avais déjà lu et vu des extraits de cette pièce de théâtre, mais c’est la première fois que j’ai eu l’occasion de la lire en entier. J’ai été agréablement surprise!
December 27, 2022
Points bonus pour Madame Dubuc qui se fait donner des coups de poing sur la tête.
May 5, 2023
3.5 rounded up
This translated version would have been better in the original joual, but I do not have the mental energy to read it in French right now. One thing that I will say is that I have immense respect for Michel Tremblay and that this play's impact was tremendous. For those who don't know, this play revolutionized Quebecois theatre, dared to show working-class women speaking the local dialect, and put Tremblay -- and Canada -- on a national scale.
This play is part of what makes Canada Canada, and it's a shame that not many outside the francophone sphere have even heard of it.
This translated version would have been better in the original joual, but I do not have the mental energy to read it in French right now. One thing that I will say is that I have immense respect for Michel Tremblay and that this play's impact was tremendous. For those who don't know, this play revolutionized Quebecois theatre, dared to show working-class women speaking the local dialect, and put Tremblay -- and Canada -- on a national scale.
This play is part of what makes Canada Canada, and it's a shame that not many outside the francophone sphere have even heard of it.
September 22, 2013
My first encounter with "joual" and I will never forget it.
October 10, 2021
when your circle is small but yall r crazy
August 8, 2024
Toujours un plaisir de lire Tremblay. Le joual d’ici et son acuité à saisir la tension entre les générations qui ont passé de la grande noirceur à la révolution tranquille. Sans aucun doute cette oeuvre avait ses raisons de marquer le paysage littéraire et théâtral québécois, tant qu’il saisit aussi un portait saisissant des contradictions de la condition des femmes de l’époque. à lire absolument!
October 3, 2025
Pierrette c’est ma pref.
July 28, 2022
Merveilleux et impitoyable.
March 18, 2012
Billed as representing French-speaking Quebec, with their own working-class culture being stamped on the play, I really was quite intrigued. I can't say that I've read anything that was said to represent that culture, nor do I know much about it. In short, this was a pleasure to branch out and give a go.
Germaine seems like an image of a 1950's housewife, with her desire to redecorate her home and do it all on the trading stamps she won from the local department store. I suppose that I imposed my own cultural image on the play, as I pictured my own grandmothers and their green stamp coupon books. In fact, I would bet that we could find a half-filled book or two stashed in boxes or somewhere in their homes. Those stamps offered a payback to their loyal customers, and my grandmothers kept their own stash.
The one thing that I found interesting about this play, however, was the way that Tremblay gave a wider snapshot of these working-class women and their little neighborhood through the captured scene around the table as they filled books with stamps. When one or another made a little dig or put on airs above their peers, that's when the passive-aggressive claws came out. In the airs they put on, you could see the truths they were hiding of regret, misfortune, and unmet desires. You had to feel for all of the characters. And really, how cruel was it to ask these women to help her, Germaine, to fill all her coupon books with her mass winnings. Of course they would be jealous and catty.
This was a fun, quick, and interesting little play. It is deceptively light on the surface, with plenty of depth to keep you thinking. If you haven't read a play in awhile, I definitely recommend you give this one a try.
Germaine seems like an image of a 1950's housewife, with her desire to redecorate her home and do it all on the trading stamps she won from the local department store. I suppose that I imposed my own cultural image on the play, as I pictured my own grandmothers and their green stamp coupon books. In fact, I would bet that we could find a half-filled book or two stashed in boxes or somewhere in their homes. Those stamps offered a payback to their loyal customers, and my grandmothers kept their own stash.
The one thing that I found interesting about this play, however, was the way that Tremblay gave a wider snapshot of these working-class women and their little neighborhood through the captured scene around the table as they filled books with stamps. When one or another made a little dig or put on airs above their peers, that's when the passive-aggressive claws came out. In the airs they put on, you could see the truths they were hiding of regret, misfortune, and unmet desires. You had to feel for all of the characters. And really, how cruel was it to ask these women to help her, Germaine, to fill all her coupon books with her mass winnings. Of course they would be jealous and catty.
This was a fun, quick, and interesting little play. It is deceptively light on the surface, with plenty of depth to keep you thinking. If you haven't read a play in awhile, I definitely recommend you give this one a try.
March 11, 2008
In my continuous efforts to understand Québec, I bought this play. Michel Tremblay is the quintessential québécois writer, and this is one of his most important pieces. Written in the joual of Montréal, it tries to capture how people actually speak. Like the Irish of J.M. Synge or that weird New England accent of Eugene O'Neill. I would have loved to have my roommate read it to me because I can't hear the accent always in my head, but I don't know if that would have been considered weird.
There are some beautiful monologues in it and some very funny chorus numbers, particularly the "Ode au Bingo." (Yes, it translates the same.) But, I guess, like most plays, it would have been better in performance...
There are some beautiful monologues in it and some very funny chorus numbers, particularly the "Ode au Bingo." (Yes, it translates the same.) But, I guess, like most plays, it would have been better in performance...
September 18, 2008
Great for learning/analysing Quebecois slang.
March 7, 2024
3.5!
Ayant lu et adoré « À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou », il me fallait lire ce classique du théâtre québécois!
Le début est un peu long et j’ai trouvé difficile à entrer dans l’histoire, mais quand t’arrives dans les sujets juteux, ooh lala c’est dur de décrocher!
J’aime tellement que Michel Tremblay utilise le jargon québécois dans ses pièces de théâtres! Je suis habituée d’en entendre mais le lire c’est encore mieux! Je lis à haute voix et je me rend compte que finalement squ’on dit peut bein pas avouère de l’allure pour ceux qui sont pas québécouas!🙊
Humour et drames de femmes qui sont mémères, j’adore!
Ayant lu et adoré « À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou », il me fallait lire ce classique du théâtre québécois!
Le début est un peu long et j’ai trouvé difficile à entrer dans l’histoire, mais quand t’arrives dans les sujets juteux, ooh lala c’est dur de décrocher!
J’aime tellement que Michel Tremblay utilise le jargon québécois dans ses pièces de théâtres! Je suis habituée d’en entendre mais le lire c’est encore mieux! Je lis à haute voix et je me rend compte que finalement squ’on dit peut bein pas avouère de l’allure pour ceux qui sont pas québécouas!🙊
Humour et drames de femmes qui sont mémères, j’adore!
October 18, 2022
not a big fan of plays, especially french plays, but honestly i really enjoyed this
November 28, 2018
I would have given it one star, but, with that ending, it deserves another one.
November 11, 2024
school book. insane with no plot but ending redeemed it
November 20, 2025
Angéline ma goat
June 21, 2017
I'm not really a fan of québécois slang, but this was okay.
October 11, 2024
It only gets a star because it was quite funny at some times. If not, I think this was the most pointless book I’ve ever read. They just fight over stamps the entire time.
December 9, 2016
169. The Guid Sisters by Michel Tremblay
This is a rendering of Les Belles Soeurs into Scottish brogue and it is even funnier than the original. One of my friends and I read it out loud and we could barely stop laughing. When one of the women, Germain Lauzon, wins a million trading stamps and they need to be put into books to be redeemed, she calls on her friends to help her do it. But not everyone is happy about her win, and soon the books of stamps start disappearing into bags, purses, pockets and underneath a nearly comatose woman in a wheelchair. Then the black sheep of the family, Pierrette, shows up. I have seen Les Belles Soeurs on stage and it is wonderful, but I don’t think that it would be very easy to understand it in the dialect because it moves so fast and with fifteen characters on stage, there can be a lot of chaos. Even though we no longer have saving stamps, the play still stands up.
This is a rendering of Les Belles Soeurs into Scottish brogue and it is even funnier than the original. One of my friends and I read it out loud and we could barely stop laughing. When one of the women, Germain Lauzon, wins a million trading stamps and they need to be put into books to be redeemed, she calls on her friends to help her do it. But not everyone is happy about her win, and soon the books of stamps start disappearing into bags, purses, pockets and underneath a nearly comatose woman in a wheelchair. Then the black sheep of the family, Pierrette, shows up. I have seen Les Belles Soeurs on stage and it is wonderful, but I don’t think that it would be very easy to understand it in the dialect because it moves so fast and with fifteen characters on stage, there can be a lot of chaos. Even though we no longer have saving stamps, the play still stands up.
July 20, 2021
Il était un peu triste de ne jamais avoir lu ou vu ce grand classique culturel québécois et j'étais curieux de voir pourquoi c'était une oeuvre aussi connue et populaire. Sous le format livre, la pièce ne fait à peine qu'une cinquantaine de pages, mais pourtant c'est vraiment un morceau important de notre histoire.
Pourquoi? Parce que c'est une image réaliste du Québec d'avant, celui des femmes à la maison, des maris absents, du potinage entre voisines, du rêve d'une vie meilleure et plus encore. Au premier degré, la pièce peut sembler morne, voire plate, puisqu'il ne s'y passe rien de majeur. C'est plutôt un assemblage des petites et grandes tragédies du Québec ouvrier du tournant du siècle dernier, croqué dans des dialogues francs, honnêtes et selon la langue française de chez nous.
Bref, j'y donne 5 étoiles, non pas pour l'oeuvre en elle-même, mais pour tout ce qu'elle représente.
Pourquoi? Parce que c'est une image réaliste du Québec d'avant, celui des femmes à la maison, des maris absents, du potinage entre voisines, du rêve d'une vie meilleure et plus encore. Au premier degré, la pièce peut sembler morne, voire plate, puisqu'il ne s'y passe rien de majeur. C'est plutôt un assemblage des petites et grandes tragédies du Québec ouvrier du tournant du siècle dernier, croqué dans des dialogues francs, honnêtes et selon la langue française de chez nous.
Bref, j'y donne 5 étoiles, non pas pour l'oeuvre en elle-même, mais pour tout ce qu'elle représente.
January 18, 2024
Je comprends que c’est la base du théâtre québécois mais c’était vraiment horrible. Ils ne font que s’engueuler tout le long du livre.
April 30, 2025
Didn't really get the appeal of it. It may have been because the French was pretty difficult for me due to the dialect and so the jokes didn't land quite as well but it felt like a slog to read through as not much really happened. It's mostly a group of people sitting around a table gossiping and bickering. There were some comedic and touching moments, but overall I found it pretty boring. Probably a great read if you want to practise understanding Québécois French since it's written phonetically and I'll probably reread it while watching a play to help me practice my listening comprehension.
November 29, 2020
I read the English translation, and because I'm from Montreal and I used to have grandparents in the East End, it was easy for me to imagine how much better and funnier the original play in dialect French would have been if I had read that one. The play is very specific to a time and place and very dependent on the dialect, and it definitely shows a satirical version of this world.
I picked up this book because I was interested in reading a Canadian author and one so specific to where I have lived my whole life. What I like about this play is the subtle dark undertones and how every now and then, a monologue would surprise me with its social commentary, and the ending of the play was quite sad though kind of expected. Tremblay led up to it really well and it tied the whole play together. Although there is a lot of word choices that make me cringe and a lot of toxic ideals spewed about women, I understand that this could be a translation issue and that some of it is there for the reason of social commentary, so I can ignore parts of it. The book is worth a read and I thought the story was well done, considering the simplicity of the plot.
I picked up this book because I was interested in reading a Canadian author and one so specific to where I have lived my whole life. What I like about this play is the subtle dark undertones and how every now and then, a monologue would surprise me with its social commentary, and the ending of the play was quite sad though kind of expected. Tremblay led up to it really well and it tied the whole play together. Although there is a lot of word choices that make me cringe and a lot of toxic ideals spewed about women, I understand that this could be a translation issue and that some of it is there for the reason of social commentary, so I can ignore parts of it. The book is worth a read and I thought the story was well done, considering the simplicity of the plot.
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