‘Golden Deportees’ and ‘Reluctant Pioneers’: The redefinition of home in Mavis Gallant’s ‘Varieties of Exile’

Abstract

This article argues that Canadian author Mavis Gallant’s short story ‘Varieties of Exile’ highlights the links between identity, perceptions of place and memory, suggesting that the notion of ‘home’ and experiences of displacement and exile for transnational or migratory individuals can be reinterpreted as a positive when placed in opposition to limited and static constructions of national identity. Gallant’s focus on marginal migratory figures allows for an interrogation of what it means to be ‘Canadian’ and ‘at home’, an interrogation that is not limited to Canadian identity and place but that Gallant leaves open for transnational, cross-cultural, global interpretations. Incorporating both modern and postmodern elements, ‘Varieties of Exile’ suggests that there is no ‘true’ self, that identity is mutable. This is linked with migration and with the things individuals choose to remember and forget in order for identities to be continually reconstructed in response to life events.