Shaping the English-Canadian Novel, 1820-1900 Carole

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Shaping the English-Canadian Novel, 1820-1900 Carole SHAPING THE ENGLISH-CANADIAN NOVEL, 1820-1900 CAROLE FAINSTAT GERSON B.A., Simon Fraser, 1970 M.A., Dalhousie, 1972 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of English) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April, 1977 (c) Carole Fainstat Gerson In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia 2075 Wesbrook Place Vancouver, Canada V6T 1W5 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines nineteenth-century Canadian fiction in relation to the cultural context from which it emerged. The first three chapters present the difficulties^ which under• mined the development of the novel in a conservative colonial community. Chapter I surveys the literary nationalists who called for the establishment of a distinctive Canadian literature and deplored the apathy of the Canadian public; chapter II docu• ments Victorian Canada's suspicion of the novel as a valid literary form; chapter III looks at the problem of finding valid material for fiction in a recently settled land which appeared to lack the historical and cultural associations presumed necessary for literature. The fourth and fifth chapters provide the critical focus of 1 this dissertation by analyzing nineteenth-century Canadian dis• cussions of the theory of the novel. Sara Jeannette Duncan, post-Confederation Canada's most radical literary critic, argued consistently that the romantic novel was obsolete. Despite Duncan's vigorous promotion of Howellsian realism, most Canadians remained faithful to the standard of Sir Walter Scott, and read i ii and wrote romantic fiction conforming to the moral and aesthetic principles outlined by Goldwin Smith in his 1871 address on "The Lamps of Fiction." The opposition between Duncan's realism and Smith's romanticism provides an indigenous critical frame• work in which to evaluate the work of nineteenth-century Canadian novelists. The last four chapters examine the efforts of Canadian writers to fit Canadian materials to the forms and conventions of popular romance. Chapter VI shows how John Richardson's search for e-xciting Canadian subjects suitable for the romance of high ad• venture was repeated by other writers throughout the century. Chapter VII discusses Victorian Canada's taste for historical romance as part of a movement to discover and recover Canadian history, and analyzes An Algonquin Maiden (1887) by G. M. Adam and E. A. Wetherald as a deliberate effort'to prescribe historical romance as the proper mode for Canadian fiction. Most novelists interested in history abandoned English Canada for Acadia and Quebec, however, and their work is the subject of Chapter VIII. William Kirby's The Golden Dog (1877) provided a prototype for historical fiction about Quebec; the work of Susan Frances Harrison and Duncan Campbell Scott epitomizes the imaginative importance French Canada held for English Canada. Even when nineteenth-century writers turned to everyday experience their treatment of ordinary life was tinged by their taste for romance i i i and didacticism, as Chapter IX shows. With a few exceptions, Canadian writers refrained from realism until many years after the route to modernism was indicated by Duncan Campbell Scott's stories of the North and Sara Jeannette Duncan's novel, The Imperialist (1904). TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I: BACKGROUND: THE CULTURAL COMMUNITY 10 CHAPTER II: THE VALIDITY OF FICTION 36 CHAPTER III: THE VALIDITY OF CANADA AS A LOCATION FOR FICTION 79 CHAPTER IV: SARA JEANNETTE DUNCAN AND THE PROGRESS OF REAILISM 110 CHAPTER V: THE SEARCH FOR THE CANADIAN WALTER SCOTT: REQUIREMENTS FOR CANADIAN FICTION 135 CHAPTER VI: "THE QUINTESSENCE OF NOVELS AND ROMANCES": ROMANCE AND HIGH ADVENTURE 172 CHAPTER VII: "THE HEROIC TIMES OF CANADA": ENGLISH-CANADIAN HISTORY AND ENGLISH-CANADIAN FICTION 213 CHAPTER VIII: "THE OLD WORLD OF AMERICA": FRENCH CANADA IN ENGLISH-CANADIAN FICTION 258 CHAPTER IX: "THE ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE": DOMESTIC AND REGIONAL REALISM 312 CONCLUSION 347 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 359 PERIODICALS CONSULTED: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY 400 i v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED, In the notes to each chapter, the following abbreviations are used. Detailed information about the nineteenth-century periodicals will be found in the Annotated Bibliography of Periodicals, PP. aoo-cis. AAM Anglo-American Magazine Acadian Acadian Magazine BAM British American Magazine BMM Bel ford's Monthly Magazine CIN Canadian Illustrated News CJ Canadian Journal CM Canadian Magazine CMLR Canadian Magazine and Literary Repository CMNR Canadian Magazine and National Review CRLHJ Canadi an Review and Literary and Historical Journal DAR Domini on Annual Register DJ_ Dominion Illustrated v vi JCF Journal of Canadian Fiction LG Literary Garland NDM New Dominion Monthly PAC Public Archives of Canada RBCM Rose-Bel ford's Canadian Monthly Stewart's Stewart's Literary Quarterly ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. W. H. New, for his time, advice and continual support. The other members of my committee, Drs. M. W. Steinberg and D. G. Stephens, also provided helpful suggestions and encouragement. In addition., I am very grateful to the staff of the Inter!ibrary Loans Division of the University of British Columbia Library, who zealously tracked down many obscure publications; to Mrs. AnneYandle, Head of the Special Collections Division of the University of British Columbia Library; and to the Canada Council and the University of British Columbia for their generous financial aid. Special thanks also to Lynda, who typed this dissertation; Susan, who kept telling me that theses do get finished; Kathy, who kept me company in Special Collections; and Martin, who kept me sane. INTRODUCTION Nineteenth-century Canadian fiction is the product of a particular cultural community at a particular time in history. Most Canadian novels written before the First World War excite little interest as works of art. As documents in literary and cultural history, however, they present a fascinating portrait of a colonial society, reflecting the aspirations, preconceptions and limitations of an emerging nation struggling towards self- definition and seeking its identity in part through its literature. Rather than pass easy judgment on the obvious shortcomings of most of the stories and novels written in Victorian Canada, the task of the investigative critic is to discover and define the cultural context which encouraged the growth of artificiality, didacticism and popular romanticism. In 1965, Gordon Roper re• marked that nineteenth-century Canadian fiction had suffered blanket disparagement because "historians of Canadian literature, judging by literary standards current in mid-twentieth century departments of English, have dismissed all but one or two books as less than first rate." This dismissal has meant that popular 1 2 Canadian literature has not received the critical attention which has been accorded to the less than first-rate literature of England and the United States. Studying the neglected field of nineteenth- century Canadian fiction in relation to its cultural milieu will, in Roper's words, "present information and perspectives which may help us recover our lostknowledge of that fiction and of the Canada in which it was written."^ Recovering lost knowledge about Victorian Canada's literary attitudes involves the reconstruction of a set of social and cultural assumptions which today appear limited and unsound. Nineteenth- century Canadian novelists shared their community's sincere belief that the proper model for fiction was Sir Walter Scott. In Scott's work, they found the morality, didacticism, idealism and romance which, they believed, should characterize the literary identity that was being forged for Canada. Conservative and nationalistic, Canadian writers and critics revered what they con• sidered to be the best literary traditions of the Old World. In true colonial fashion they tried to transplant in the New World the forms, characters and moral qualities of popular romantic fiction which derived from the novels of Walter Scott. The best source of information about nineteenth-century Canada's literary opinions is the host of literary and cultural periodicals which appeared sporadically and died prematurely through most of the century. In their occasional pieces of r 3 literary criticism and their book review columns, these period• icals reveal that many Victorian Canadians considered the novel a minor and often regrettable genre. To be accepted as a valid piece of literature in their eyes, a novel had to be edifying, informative and present no challenge to the status quo. In addition, many commentators questioned whether Canada, "the 2 youngest born of nations," could possibly furnish the historical and mythical resonances necessary for a national literature. Discussions of the validity of fiction as a literary genre and
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