Personal Response to Pronoun Usage in Mavis Gallant’s “Mlle. Dias De Corta” and Jennifer Swift’s “Stories We Tell Now” 

Pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘you’, and ‘we’ are used a certain number of times in a story to imply a reader, a character, or both. The important thing is that the reader can interpret this. In two short stories that I consider important, I interpret the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ as belonging to another character in the story, to my own experiences, and to a particular community. These two stories are "Mlle. Dias De Corta" by Mavis Gallant and "Stories We Tell Now" by Jennifer Swift. In “Mlle. Dias De Corta” the pronoun ‘you’ appears 139 times and in “Stories We Tell Now” the pronoun ‘we’ appears 87 times, or 88 if you count the title. In this article, I will write about how the use of the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ in these two different stories has affected me. 

Bell, Ensslin, Bom, and Smith’s study in "A Reader Response Method Not Just for ‘You’" showed how the pronoun ‘you’ has different effects on different people. They showed that using the pronoun ‘you’ connects the reader to the story. By asking the question ‘To whom does “you” refer in this screen?’ (Bell, Ensslin et al. 248) they created a scale of choices for the pronoun ‘you’, from the fictional character to the reader herself/himself. I used this scale while reading these stories and tried to understand what the pronouns ‘you’ and ‘we’ in these stories meant to me.

In “Mlle. Dias De Corta”, Gallant starts the story with ‘you’. This is a very important detail because it tells us directly from the beginning to whom the speech is addressed. She ends the sentence with "dear Mlle. Dias de Corta" (Gallant 171). So this story that starts like a letter has a reader to reach. This person is Alda Dias De Corta. The speaker, an unnamed French lady tells us many memories about this young girl in the story, from the time she came to Paris and stayed as a tenant in the French lady’s home until the French lady, owner of the house, and her son, Robert, and Robert’s wife, Anny saw Alda on television. By using the pronoun ‘you’ among the memories, the speaker also shows that she has some complaints about her tenant. But this is not a feeling of hatred, because this speaker conveys her feelings to us in an emotional way by saying at the end of the story that she misses Alda Dias De Corta very much. I was very impressed by the way this story was written. I read it as a letter and it reminded me of my memories. I felt as if this story or this letter was written to me by an old friend because I was out of a friend's life in the same way that Alda Dias De Corta was out of this speaker's life. So the use of the pronoun ‘you’ a lot made me feel as if I was alone under attack. As if for a moment I had the same responsibilities that Alda Dias De Corta had. “Wondering what you were doing there, summing you up: a thin, dark-eyed, noncommittal young woman, standing at the counter, bolting her breakfast.” (Gallant 171). With this defined sentence in the story we meet the character, often the first thing that comes into my mind is to imagine a character standing on the outside, as if I were looking at it with a third eye, that is what happened when I was reading this story, I imagined Alda Dias De Corta as a fictional character. But because I identified myself so much with this person, I felt as if it was me who was being described and standing in the kitchen. In this case, according to the theoretical study, I take it as option B. “B means it’s also a mix, but it is more a fictional character than you as reader.” (Bell, Ensslin et al. 248). I was aware that the words and memories were repeated for someone else, but as the way memories were described strengthened with the pronoun ‘you’, I could not help but consider myself as a character in the story. “I once showed you the place on Place d’ltalie where our restaurant used to be.” (Gallant 174). The atmosphere of the memory described here made me feel as if I had been shown that restaurant. As if the speaker and I had walked down that street. I saw the speaker as a friend, a friend from the past. That is why when I came to the end of the story I felt a heaviness inside me, because the expressions of longing for someone and waiting for them were so beautifully written. “I prefer to live in the expectation of hearing the elevator stop at my floor and then your ring, and of having you tell me you have come home.” (Gallant 176). For a moment I wanted my old friend to miss me like that, to write me a letter like this speaker. Because, like Alda, I had not gone back to get the stuff I left behind. “You need not call to make an appointment.” (Gallant 176).  Maybe that is why she tells Alda that she can come back at any time, maybe because she thinks Alda is afraid. And the use of the ‘you’ here gave me courage. As if such a letter had been written to me, and at the end of this letter there had been such a sentence, I would have acted immediately, without making an appointment, without calling. 

When it comes to the ‘Stories We Tell Now’, there is no connection with the other story. The only thing they are connected to is that different authors use different pronouns in the same way and that this story starts with a pronoun like other. The pronoun here is ‘we’. Every time I read this story I get a different meaning from the pronoun ‘we’. The first meaning I get is that a woman speaker is giving a speech from a high place defending women's rights and everyone is listening to her. But this story is not that simple. Because I am among the ‘we’ in this story. I am part of this group that listens, speaks, and acts. And I went through what the girls in this story went through. The second meaning I derive from the pronoun ‘we’ is that it is aimed directly at me. Whether I am part of a group or not, I am ‘we’. Every girl in this story -or outside- has been harassed by male dominance at some point in her life. So there is not so much "you" in this story, but there is ‘we’. Because even though the situations change, the feelings are the same. So when this story is read by women who have been through the same things, they can understand how powerful the pronoun ‘we’ is. “We agree… We wonder… We discuss… We remember… We know. We were there… We keep talking. We have so much more to say…” (Swift 58-59). My most interesting takeaway from this story is the transformation of the pronoun ‘we’ into the pronoun ‘I’. I wonder, I discuss, I remember, I know, I was there, I keep talking, I have so much more to say. Here we have a community, a group of people who have the same feelings, this community is made up of each individual and their common feelings make up the pronoun ‘we’. This community is everyone who reads the story with the same feelings. So for me, the ‘we’ here implies the reader. When we go back to the theory, this use of the pronoun ‘we’ fits with option E. “‘E’ means ‘you’ is me the reader, so is referring to you as the reader of the fiction” (Bell, Ensslin et al. 248). This story reminded me not only of the abuse that I have experienced in the past, but also of the abuse that people around me have experienced, and how we sat and talked about it with girls since we were little. “A few of us say… One of us says… One of us remembers…” (Swift 2-3). When I was reading the story I felt like I really have friends around me now and I'm talking to them and they talk to me back. I find the use of pronouns here more than implying the reader. The sad thing is that every woman at some point can collectively recall such disgusting memories. Like collective trauma. 

I conclude that I find something of myself in the different pronouns in both stories, whether it is personal memories or a collective trauma. This overuse of pronouns to affect the reader applies to both stories. The pronoun 'you' in "Mlle. Dias De Corta" by Mavis Gallant makes me feel directly involved in the narrative. My existence is merged with the pronoun 'you'. The 'we' in "Stories We Tell Now" by Jennifer Swift emphasizes the power of community, creating a sense of collective identity and shared experience. These findings are in line with Bell, Ensslin, Bom, and Smith’s work underlining the significant impact of pronoun usage on reader participation.

I have shared my response here, but I would love to hear your thoughts. If you have not read these stories yet, I highly recommend giving them a look. Once you do, please share your thoughts in the comments. I look forward to hearing your insights and open a conversation! :)

Works Cited

Bell, Alice, et al. "A Reader Response Method Not Just for ‘You’." Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics, 2019, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 241-262.

Gallant, Mavis. “Mlle. Dias de Corta.” The New Yorker, 28 December 1992, pp. 171-176.

Swift, Jennifer. “Stories We Tell Now” The Sun Magazine, issue 535, September 2019. pp. 57-59.