Les Belle's Soeurs By Michel Tremblay

1. To what extent can Les Belles Soeurs be seen to have, directly or indirectly, a social or political purpose? Explore how it achieves its purpose.

Les Belles Soeurs, A play written in 1965 by Michel Tremblay is seen to directly and indirectly have a social purpose. The play carries out various events that occur in the lives of working class women that may shock the audience, which consists of higher class people. Tremblay finds ways to display the events in a dilemmic form and display working class women as working class women. Tremblay shocks the audience three times in the play; some of the factors that prove the showing fo working class women as working class is the use of the joual dialect, the talk about Lise’s Pregnancy and how to

Joual is usually spoken in montreal’s working-class areas. Through this technique, Tremblay was able to shock the audience, which consisted of “polite” higher class individuals that were never exposed to working class women’s language and culture for the first time in the venue of theatre. Trmblay wrote this play to protest against the oppressive English and catholic church who have dominated the culture of quebec for about 300 years. He did dare to put up working class women on stage to talk about their working class stories on upper upper middle class stage, while using a shunned dialect, which is known as the joual. The use of joual throughout the play is very aggressive and serious as it includes many swear words regarding religion that would offend the catholic church. In the play, specifically Rose, swearing words are continuously said as the women are having a conversation. She is one of Germaine’s friends who came to th aprty to help Germaine with distributing her million stamps in books. Sometimes the conversation did not need the addition of the swer words in it, butTremblay still added swear words through the dialect of Rose when she is mad while telling a life story or just a response to the other women’s stories. When Lisette and Rose are sitting in the kitchen talking about Englishmen and Frenchmen in

When the women were sitting in the kitchen having a conversation, Pierrette walks in and all of them clearly seem to be annoyed by her presence. Pierrette works at a nightclub, but is viewed negatively by all the other women, because she works at a place that could possibly take her to hell, as what is assumed in the play. Through the way Tremblay has chosen to express the women’s reaction, we can tell that all the women have abandoned the fact that Pierrette coud possibly be their friend, because they all know that she works at a nightclub. Germaine says: “what are you doing here? I told you I never wanted to see you again.” (65) Tremblay, through his wording ,clearly shows that middle class women were very pious to the fact that Germaine does not want to see her sister anymore. The reason why Tremblay had done this is to show the audience that middle class women work very hard to make money, and hence the reason why Pierrette had to leave her family when she was young and work in a club. The fact that Pierrette works at a nightclub does not mean that she is a woman of sin, because she might not be doing anything wrong; she could only be working to be able to afford a living. Although by showing the middle class women’s reaction through the play, Tremblay has