She’s a pioneer. One of the first to take an interest in the history of women in general, and in the history of women in Quebec in particular. Nevertheless: it will have taken 40 long years for Micheline Dumont before calling herself a feminist.
Posted at 1:00 p.m.
We are not born a feminist, therefore, we become one, then we realize it, dare we add, on reading the aptly named such long rootsautobiography published by Éditions du remue-ménage and launched this Tuesday evening, at the feminist bookstore l’Euguélionne, in Montreal.
Professor of history at the University of Sherbrooke for 30 years, Micheline Dumont, to whom we owe the first reference work on the history of women in Quebec (a collective published in 1982), but also Quebec feminism told to Camille (popular work) via No history, women! Reflections of an indignant historian, is told here without filter, from its birth to today. A journey over nearly a century, halfway between the novel and the history book, so eloquent the anecdotes, reflections and other illustrations (and photos there are, in quantity and more). Without forgetting some “traumatic events”, buried far away, which came back to him during the #metoo wave. A true witness of an era, what.
“I was not bad, let’s say it, silly! “, immediately confides the main interested party, met on Monday to tell her story.
It gives you an idea of the tone, and the complicity, of a great lady who broke down the doors of the University of Montreal when few women entered (with short hair cut at home and without nylon stockings, for- above the market) and dug a discipline that no one was interested in.
The youth
In her story of “the life of a young girl from a good family in the 1940s and 1950s”, Micheline Dumont recounts her family (“severe”, in particular her father, who did not want her to study, what good is an educated girl?), her years at boarding school (which she “adored!”), thanks to a scholarship, and finally her education, admittedly too pious, although enlightened.
Along the way, she slips in her almost “total” ignorance of boys “and of adult life” (we didn’t talk about those things), to her great displeasure, and her greatest regret. “I would have liked to be more free, more free”, confides the one who ended up kissing a boy only at the age of 23, and not without difficulty, she laughs, her eyes in the sky.
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, THE PRESS
Micheline Dumont taught history at the University of Sherbrooke for 30 years.
No, but the ignorance in which we were!
Micheline Dumont, historian
At university, therefore, and in her literature classes, Micheline Dumont remembers having studied only men (“but why this frenzied bias for what men do?”, she wonders at this day), while in history, she understands that the matter is ultimately only “interpretation”. And it’s a revelation.
“The story, you think it’s there, written in the books, written in the memory, then I realize that the English have a completely different interpretation. That it should be the same for all countries. This opens up an absolutely extraordinary intellectual horizon for me. »
” That’s it “
Through all these years of study and discovery, Micheline Dumont still dreams of a life together. She also feels torn between her family and professional aspirations for a long time. It must be said that at the time, the combination of the two was simply unimaginable. “You don’t even think about it! »
This is how when she reads Simone de Beauvoir, she feels challenged (“she’s right, […] that’s it ! […] the theory of the social inferiority of women! “), but no more. “Not enough to get me into action. His priorities are elsewhere, we understand, in his studies and research. Then when she reads Betty Friedan, she does not identify further. The Mystified Woman? “It’s not me, it’s the others,” she believes. Me, I teach! Ditto when she immerses herself in Germaine Greer. Why so, in fact? “But because I don’t know what happens to other women!” “, she answers quite simply.
It was only after submitting her thesis, having taught, having married, and having given birth a few times, that Micheline Dumont finally realized this. The story of his epiphany, a few pages from the end of the book, is a delight. In two hours, and this time reading Benoîte Groult, “that’s it, she writes, I’m a feminist! She is 40 years old. “I have to act, let’s go!” »
We know what happened next, the publications, conferences and other research carried out. But it is the past that Micheline Dumont wants us to remember here. “I want to talk to young women, so that they know how we lived, that they understand […] the ignorance in which we were! “, she hammers.
such long roots
Micheline Dumont
Editions of the stir-up
269 pages