SOURCE: Hatch, Ronald. “Mavis Gallant and the Fascism of Everyday Life.” Essays on Canadian Writing, no. 42 (winter 1990): 9-40.

In the following essay, Hatch regards several of Gallant's short stories as her attempt to understand and confront the dangers of fascism.

Mavis Gallant has commented that the most difficult yet necessary task of the postwar period is to reach an understanding of Fascism (“An Interview” 39-41). Although she treats this issue directly in relatively few of her stories, her fiction as a whole presents aspects of human nature that indicate the vulnerability of individuals and societies to potentially fascistic systems of thought. The crucial event leading to her concern with fascism may well have occurred while Gallant was a reporter for the Montreal Standard at the end of the war, and was shown the first pictures to be released of the concentration camps. Her reaction was disbelief. In an...