SOURCE: "Shared Concerns," in The Canadian Forum, Vol. LVI, No. 665, October, 1976, pp. 33-4.

In the following excerpt, Socken examines the major themes in Wild Roses.

In Wild Roses, Jacques Ferron explores the topography of the land inhabited by the sane and the mad and raises questions about some of our society's most fundamental assumptions about those two states. The result is a novel which implies that no map can be drawn to distinguish the two areas, no clearly-defined borders can be established, for they are part of the same country, the uncertain country of the human mind.

The story centres on the Baron, a man whose wife bears him a daughter, goes mad shortly thereafter and commits suicide. Totally devoted to the daughter, Rose-Aimée, the Baron decides to leave her with a good Acadian family and to visit her every spare moment. He is described as a...