Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, and Mascuilinity in Early Canada

Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 12-2-2011 12:00 AM Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, and Mascuilinity in Early Canada Aaron J. Schneider The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. D.M.R. Bentley The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Aaron J. Schneider 2011 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, and the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Schneider, Aaron J., "Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, and Mascuilinity in Early Canada" (2011). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 320. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/320 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TOTAL MEN!: LITERATURE, NATIONALISM, AND MASCULINITY IN EARLY CANADA (Spine Title: Total Men!) (Thesis Format: Monograph) by Aaron Schneider Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario Canada © Aaron Schneider 2011 THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies CERTIFICATE OF EXAMINATION Supervisor Examiners _____________________________ _____________________________ Dr. D. M. R. Bentley Dr. Manina Jones _____________________________ Dr. Joseph M. Zezulka _____________________________ Dr. Patrick Mahon _____________________________ Dr. Gerald Lynch The thesis by Aaron Jacob Schneider entitled: Total Men!: Literature, Nationalism, and Masculinity in Early Canada is accepted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date:___________________________ ___________________________ Chair of the Thesis Examination Board ii Abstract: This thesis identifies the figure of the totally competent man (a model of early Canadian masculinity distinguished by an unprecedented breadth of competence) as a recurrent feature of early Canadian literary texts, and examines the development and representation of this figure with particular attention to its deployment as a model of national manhood by early Canadian literary nationalists. It argues that the production of a broadly competent model of manhood as an ideal model of national manhood by early Canadian literary nationalists was an anxious work carried out in the face of real and sensible threats to the new nation and their brand of nationalism, and that the figure of the totally competent man attained a position of prominence in their work because of how effectively this model of national manhood answered the anxieties that perplexed them. After tracing early Canadian literary nationalism’s emphasis on masculine heroism, the catholicity of the national community, and the nordicity of the nation to the new nationalism’s origins in German Romanticism, it explores the development of the totally competent man as a model of uniquely Canadian masculinity in Canadian texts preceding Confederation and the emergence of the new nationalism. The dissertation as a whole argues that the totally competent man evolved through an anxious process of adaptation that saw aspects of competing models of masculinity grafted onto genteel masculinity to produce a broadly competent model of masculinity whose heterogenous makeup allowed specific examples of this figure to serve double duty as both symbols of national unity, and active agents of social cohesion. Keywords: Canadian Literature, Masculinity, Nationalism, Early Canada, Canadian Culture, Long Poem, Thomas Cary, John Richardson, Susanna Moodie, John Galt, Archibald Lampman, Ralph Connor iii This dissertation is dedicated to my wife, Amy Mitchell. iv Acknowledgements I am profoundly grateful to my supervisor, Dr. D. M. R. Bentley, for his many thoughtful comments and suggestions, for having the patience to see this project through to its completion, and, most of all, for being so generous and gracious when I disagreed with him. Thanks also to my mother-in-law, Diane Mitchell, for helping to proof read this dissertation. v Table of Contents Certificate of Examination ii Abstract and Keywords iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 I. Introducing...The Totally Competent Man! 1 II. (Masculine) Writing the Totally Competent Man 7 Chapter 1: “An Alchemy so Subtle”: Canadian Manhood, Literature, Anxiety and the Masculine Logic of Early Canadian Nationalism 21 I. Romantic Nationalism/Canadian Nationalism: The Origins and Influences of Nineteenth-Century Canadian Literary Nationalism 33 II. Confederating a Canadian Literary Manhood, or McGee’s Young Men: Dewart, Morgan, and Haliburton 46 III. Poet, Canoeist, Professor...and Politician: Lighthall’s Roberts, and Adam and Collins’s Macdonald 76 IV. “rest with babes and slaves?”: Nationalism, Anxiety, and the Active Male Body 93 Chapter 2: “Skalping-knives to Pruning Hooks”: Violence and Manhood in Thomas Cary’s Abram’s Plains 99 I. The Poet, the Poem, and the Pax Britanica: Colonial Society and Manhood in Abram’s Plains 102 II. “Britannia’s Conqu’ring Sword” to “a Grey-goose Quill”: The Management of British Masculine Violence in Abram’s Plains 106 III. “Skalping-knives” to Poets’ Pens: The Management of Native Canadian Violence in Abram’s Plains 116 Chapter 3: His “Active and Athletic Limbs”: Wacousta, the Aggressive Masculine Body, vi Readerly Pleasure, and the Possibility of a Just and Active Man 140 I. Passive Objects vs. Active Objects: Manliness, Effeminacy, and the Male Body in Wacousta 141 II. Just a Body, but What a Body!: Reading Wacousta’s Body as an Object of Readerly Pleasure 150 III. “Enemy of Man”: Wacousta’s Body, Readerly Pleasure, and Readerly Antipathy 159 IV. Genteel Readers and Genteel Giants: Managing the Aggressive Masculine Body, and Imagining a Just and Active Man 165 Chapter 4: A Man of Fearful Proportions and Comforting Productivity: Roughing It in the Bush and Moodie’s Management of Lower Class Masculinity 179 I. A Disconcerting/Ridiculous Jontleman: Defining and Disabling the “Fellow of Gigantic Proportions” 180 II. Jontlemen Making a Nation of Gentlemen: Imagining the Development of a Genteel Country 187 Chapter 5: “What [She Did] to While Away the Lagging Hours”: Managing the Aggressive Masculine Body in Susanna Moodie’s Flora Lyndsay 210 I. Too Genteel for Trade, Too Mercenary to be Genteel: Flora and John Lyndsay’s Vulgar Doubles 212 II. (W)Righting Her World: Flora Lyndsay, Susanna Moodie, Class Anxiety, and the Aggressive Masculine Body 222 III. Managing Hercules’ Labour 241 Chapter 6: Making One Man Out of Two: Doubling the Merchant with the Gentleman and Vice Versa in Galt’s Lawrie Todd and Bogle Corbet 244 I. For Love or Money, but Not Both: Todd and Corbet’s Many Marriages 249 II. Poorer Together, Happier Apart: Corbet, Todd, and Community 271 III. Their Better and Worse Selves: Todd and Corbet’s Doubles 284 vii Chapter 7: Totally Competent/Totally Communal Men: Richard Stahlberg, Ranald Macdonald, and the National Community 309 I. From Self-Improver to Social Improver: The Socialization of Richard Stahlberg 310 II. Making a Great Man Good, and a Good Nation Great: The Development of Ranald Macdonald 338 III. Comprehending the Country/Comprehending the Totally Competent Man 364 Works Cited 367 Vita 374 viii List of Abbreviations Bogle Corbet; or, the Emigrants BC Flora Lyndsay; or Passages in an Eventful Life FL Lawrie Todd; or, the Settlers in the Woods LT Roughing It in the Bush; or Life in Canada RB The Story of an Affinity SA ix 1 I Introducing...The Totally Competent Man! Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian literature is filled almost to bursting with male characters who do extraordinary things, accomplishing with ease often unbelievable feats of heroism, endurance, strength, cleverness, generosity, education. and development. Consider these examples: Max of Isabella Vallancy Crawford’s Malcolm’s Katie (1884) survives being pinned under a felled tree to return to his love, Katie, and, despite being “gaunt as prairie wolves in famine time, / With long-drawn sickness” (6:122-23), saves the man who left him to die and tried to steal Katie from drowning in a log slide. The Herculean Richard Stahlberg of Archibald Lampman’s Story of an Affinity (1900) transforms himself from an ignorant, brooding and violent adolescent into a man who is as – possibly even more – intellectually accomplished as he is physically formidable. What is more, he manages this wholesale renovation of his character with a rapidity that strains credulity, charging like a late Victorian Billy Madison from “grade to grade” until . passing beyond the scholar’s rank, Replete with many honours, he bec[comes] Himself a teacher, first in lowlier sort, And then, ere many busy months had passed, A lecturer in a famous college hall. (Lampman SA 2:650-58, emphasis added) The less ideal, but equally capable, Josh Smith of Stephen Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912) overcomes legal threats to his business, saves the town’s Anglican parish from debt and wins the Mariposa election, transitioning over the course of his life from the logging camps of the north to small town prominence and, finally, to the corridors of power in Ottawa. But arguably one of the oddest, most incongruous, and most revealing of the feats accomplished by Canadian protagonists is Ranald Macdonald’s victory at cards in Ralph Connor’s The Man from Glengarry (1901). At a game in the back room of one of Quebec City’s taverns, the young Ranald watches Lieutenant De Lacy maliciously and capriciously strip the logger Rouleau of his 2 entire season’s worth of earnings.1 Enraged by De Lacy’s vicious behaviour and the mockery of one of the other players, Ranald joins the game intent on winning back Rouleau’s money, and does just that.

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