They were five: The Dionne Quintuplets revisited

Journal of Canadian Studies, Winter 1994 by Wright, Cynthia

One result of this binary approach, in which a grasping Ontario government is pitted against a stubborn but proud Oliva Dionne, is that the figure of Elzire Dionne, mother of the Quints, has remained almost completely in the shadows, except for brief references in the work of feminist historian Veronica Strong - Boag.(f.6) Indeed, the erasure of Madame Dionne was a feature of the Dionne narrative right from the beginning. The Globe and Mail's first account of the Quints' birth gave Oliva Dionne's name, but Elzire was referred to as "the little mother."(f.7) While the recent production, Million Dollar Babies, does attempt to address this erasure, it does so by elevating Elzire Dionne to the status of "perfect mother." Her house is spotless, her devotion is total and, above all, she is untainted by any hint of "the commercial." Moreover, as David Welch shows in his contribution to this special issue, the important role played by a number of Franco - Ontarian organizations, including women's groups, has been obscured.

A second tendency is to tell the Dionne story from the perspective of the actions and motivations -- greed, stubbornness, or concern for the next provincial election -- of the individual players within the drama. Structural analysis is obliterated. Thus while Berton insists in his introduction that it is not possible to tell the story of the Dionne Quintuplets outside of the context of the social history of the Depression years, in the end his book is organized around individual narratives -- hence his heavy reliance on oral testimony.

One of the aims of this collection is to rethink this binary and individual - oriented organization of the Dionne story. However, in doing so, we ourselves were faced with many interpretive problems. We did not always agree, for example, in our evaluation of Oliva Dionne and lamented the scarcity of evidence about Elzire Dionne. While all of us have harsh criticism for the state institutions which regulated the Quints' lives, the Quintuplets' own autobiography, We Were Five, raises difficult questions about whether children are always happiest or "belong" with their biological family in all cases.(f.8) Was it possible for us to criticize the Ontario government while simultaneously avoiding the trap of sentimentalizing family, childhood and patriarchal authority?

We found that once new questions were raised about custody and guardianship, it became possible to redraw the boundaries of "the Dionne story" itself to include territory which has remained unexplored. For example, Mariana Valverde questions in her article whether the Ontario government even understood the Quints as children in need of protection by the state when all evidence suggests that, in fact, the Quints' legal guardianship "managed" the five sisters "as natural resources or scenic wonders requiring nationalization."

While, the Ontario government may not have managed the Quintuplets as children, Dr. Dafoe profoundly influenced ideas about child - rearing, an influence which has received little attention. Similarly, although child - study expert Dr. William Blatz merits several brief mentions in The Dionne Years, the tremendous -- and unauthorized -- power which Blatz held in the Quints' early lives has not been scrutinized. These and other questions relating to power and the production of scientific knowledge are the subject of the separate contributions of Katherine Arnup and Kari Dehli.