La Corriveau, this famous woman hanged for the murder of her husband, whose body was then exposed in a cage for weeks on the Côte-du-Sud, was she a victim of domestic violence? Did it bear the brunt of a botched trial where the defendants and French-speaking witnesses did not speak the language of the new administration, English?
These are the questions posed by a new staging of this story that has been repeated by word of mouth in Quebec since the dawn of time – or rather since January 27, 1763, the fateful date when Marie-Josephte Corriveau’s second husband, Louis Dodier, is found dead, assassinated with blows to the head.
“Legend has it that it was a witch who killed her seven husbands,” says Jade Bruneau, who acts as an actress, singer, director and producer for the Open Eye Theater in this project. “With hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that it was a case of self-defense,” she adds. That being said, we can’t prove it 100%. »
The Open Eye Theater team, of which Simon Fréchette-Daoust is also artistic co-director, has built La Corriveau, the thirst of crows, a musical theater piece for which a series of 25 songs were written. “We started from the legend, but we are very interested in the real story”, says Jade Bruneau. The piece is based on these truthful elements to release “a new contemporary, committed feminist voice”, she notes.
This truth, the team found it above all in the book La Corriveau, from history to legend, signed by Catherine Ferland and Dave Corriveau published by Septentrion. From the outset, the authors plant the historical context of the drama, three years after the Conquest, in a former French colony where the British need to establish their domination. This situation could, according to the historian Ferland, explain the extremely severe punishment of the gallows imposed by the British Crown on Marie-Josephte Corriveau.
An exceptional sentence
“The penalty of confinement is quite exceptional,” says the historian, who believes that the British used it as a “show of power” in the new colony they had just won.
However, a detail deserves to be raised: initially, a lawsuit had been brought against two people, Joseph Corriveau and his daughter, Marie-Josephte, accused of complicity. When he was found guilty, at first, Father Corriveau was not condemned to the gallows. Then, he retracts, claims to be innocent, and says that his confessions rather served to cover up his daughter Marie-Josephte who is, he says, the only culprit of the murder of Louis Dodier. Marie-Josephte then confesses her guilt. In her book, Catherine Ferland argues that the sentence could have been more severe towards Marie-Josephte because by killing her husband, she was attacking someone to whom she was subordinate.
The gallows, in any case, had its effect. And the legend has done its work.
First, people began to wonder if Corriveau had anything to do with the death of her first husband, who died of a virus contracted on the battlefield against the English. It was said that she poured lead into his ears to kill him. Then, we multiplied the alleged ways in which she would have committed these murders, and the husbands to correspond to them…
A free woman
For Jade Bruneau, Corriveau was more of a free woman. “She had political views. She lit strike fires to warn the French army of the movements of the English army. She wasn’t taking her hole,” she said.
Catherine Ferland goes further by pointing out that Marie-Josephte Corriveau had remarried with a man younger than her, which may have made people jealous. His character has in any case inspired the literary, particularly in the 19th century.and century, which made him a sort of feminine Bluebeard, she notes.
The Open Eye Theater is particularly interested in the strong figures of women, underlines Jade Bruneau. We present here Clemencya sung theater about the life of Clémence Desrochers.
La Corriveau, the thirst of crows will be shown successively in Joliette from July 7 to 23, in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts from July 27 to 31 and in Victoriaville from August 4 to 20.