Marie-Louise-Félicité Angers

French-Canadian Novelist and Closet Feminist

Marie-Louise-Félicité Angers, (1845 – 1924), who wrote under the pen name Laure Conan is regarded as the first true French-Canadian female novelist. She was born in Murray Bay, Canada  and was a cousin of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  She began writing historical novels in the 1870s and wrote eleven books focussed mainly on religion and family structure in Quebec (she was educated by the Ursuline nuns), with a particular interest in exploring the minds of her characters. She also was a valued contributor to Le Journal de Françoise, a bimonthly paper edited by Robertine Barry.

She remained single and lived most of her life at her family home in La Malbaie.  Although assessment of Conan's novels has emphasized traditional themes in her work -- religious devotion in the wake of love and loss,  -- recent reappraisal focuses on Felicite's resistance to Quebec's patriarchal culture. Angéline de Montbrun (1884), first published serially in La Revue canadienne, is now valued for its subversive structure and resistance to patriarchal power.

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