Claire Martin's pseudonym itself proclaims two elements central to her work and its place in the history of French-Canadian literature. Asserting the continuity of the Female line through her use of her mother's maiden name Martin, she also signals her commitment to the exploration of the varieties of women's experience within a male-dominated culture. As she writes in her 1966 volume of memoirs, La Joue droite , her interest is in the possibilities of women's lives beyond the traditional rhythm of "yearly maternities, sleepless nights and dreary days, nursing children, washing, cooking, finished off with eclampsia or puerperal fever." She has made a significant contribution to French-Canadian literature through her willingness to move beyond the conservative stereotypes of Catholic Quebec in order to investigate the meaning of love, whether in terms of familial bondage or of erotic and emotional involvement.

On 18 April 1914 Claire Martin was born in Quebec to Ovila...