Thirty Acres by Philippe Panneton (Ringuet) and Two Solitudes by Hugh MacLennan - Assignment Example

It will show this through evaluation of difficulties related to the effect of progress, family structure and industrialization. Difficulties related to progress In the novel Thirty Acres, Euchariste Moisan is an archetype of a French Canadian society and he is destined to lose his property, his farm and ultimately his family. Moisan was a staunch follower of French Canadian values like the attachment to the land and strong attachment to Roman Catholicism. Having been oriented to the French Canadian traditional social and religious lifestyles, Moisan is disengaged from cosmopolitan economies.

One stabling block to progress in the novel is the Roman Catholic Church; which does not encourage local people of Quebec to migrate to growing cities, and prosperous industrial towns of New England. The church feared that if French Canadian peasants moved to these liberal places, they were likely to lose their faith. It is this conservative cringing into traditions that led to the failure of Moisan because industrial progress could not be stopped. Since he remained adamant to progress, the change came radically.

Moisan is a paragon of idealization of peasant agriculturists who thrived well in the occupation in the 19th century. The writer places this thus; "The Moisans are farmers. Farming’s always been good enough for the Moisans, and they’ve always been pretty good at farming" (Ringuet 130). However, it was too difficult for the Moisans to maintain this occupation without accepting the change that came with industrialization and modernization. Difficulties related to Family structure Ringuet begins the novel by the illustration of the emerging relationship between Euchariste Moisan and his wife to be.

This sets the stage for the subjective sense of the occurrences which are to unfold as it were in the 19th century Quebec. The family, which we meet in the first instance, is not a normal one as it constitutes of people who had no blood ties at all. Moisan’s family is made up of his childless uncle Ephrem, his distant elderly cousin Amelie Carignan and himself. This structure supposedly typified "the human trinity: man, woman, child; father, mother, son" (Ringuet 20). This family set up is an illustration of the way French Canadian way of life pretended to be normal under the new lifestyle but in real it was not; change was inevitable in order to reassert the normal family.

Moisan’s entire family was burnt to death when he was only five years during colonization and French Canadian expansion. Although he holds on to the family project of settlement and community building, he faces circumstances that depict the intolerance of the new social structures to the traditional family set up. Moisans failure to accept change is reflected in the way he strictly ruled his own family. His wife bore thirteen children, and she died from child-birth fatigue. This is contrasted by the Larivieres, Moisan’s relatives from the United States; who visit for a week and Moisan is startled by the family’s small size.

He is later told, against the chagrin of his catholic expectations, that they used birth control (Ringuet 136). The final blow into the traditional family is when Moisan’s son Ephrem espouses the idea of Franco-Americans. Difficulties related to Industrialization In this novel Franco-American force is seen when Ephrem leaves