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Module Title: Victorians Abroad

Module Code: 6AAEC048 (e.g. 5AABC123 )

Discuss the representation and significance of the idea of Assignment: 'wilderness' (in ’s Roughing It in the Bush and (may be abbreviated) Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life) Assignment tutor/group: Adelene Buckland

Deadline: 03 May, 2016

Date Submitted: 01 May, 2016

Word Count: 3979

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W34409

Katherine Marchant 6AAEC048 Victorians Abroad May 2016

Dweller of the Wild: Wilderness and Identity in Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life

The Industrial Revolution reshaped Britain’s infrastructure, leading to dramatic social and economic changes within the country. As technological innovation replaced traditional agricultural practices with machines and factories, Britain’s landscape morphed from one of pastoral towns and villages to one dominated by cities, where populations became condensed and grew exponentially. By the first half of the nineteenth century, it was apparent that this sudden shift in population—both in count and in location—strained resources such as food and housing for the growing working class. It was during this period of anxiety surrounding overcrowding that a fantasy of immigration arose. Britain’s numerous colonies, scattered across the stretch of the globe, promised bountiful resources—food, land, and the opportunity to escape the destitute life of the working class. Some Victorians immigrated to the colonies, either by choice or by force of circumstances, and encountered landscapes totally unlike that of industrialized Britain.

Writers Susanna Moodie and Marcus Clarke both emigrated from Britain, settling in and Australia, respectively. Though positioned on near-opposite sides of the globe, both Moodie and Clarke encountered lands that had been untouched by the Industrial Revolution. In the absence of civilization, they found wilderness—a particular geographical condition which forced them to reevaluate things they had taken for granted as British citizens, such as social constructions and personal identity. Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush, published in 1852 but written about twenty years before, features an autobiographical account of her life as an immigrant to Canada. Clarke’s novel For the Term of His Natural Life, first published between 1870 and 1872 in the Australian Journal before becoming a novel two years later, constructs the fictional narrative of a convict sent to Australia to live in a penal settlement, taking place from the 1820s to the 1840s. These two texts address the ways in which landscape—specifically, the “wild,” which lacks the comforts and

2 W34409 structure of the civilized world—affects man. Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush and Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life reveal that wilderness has the capacity to transform a person’s identity.

Before we approach Moodie’s and Clarke’s texts, we must first orient ourselves with the relevant terminology that will appear in this paper—namely, the words wilderness and identity. Wilderness refers to land that is uncultivated and, often but not in every instance, uninhabited by humans.1 The wilderness is a geographical location in which man has not cleared out the natural flora and fauna to make space for agricultural activities, which involve domesticated flora and fauna under the control of human care and influence. Civilization, or society and the presence of human cultivation, can be regarded as the binary opposite of wilderness. The second term that will be discussed in this paper, identity, refers to “Who or what a person or thing is; a distinct impression of a single person or thing presented to or perceived by others.”2 The key aspect of this definition is the idea that identity is something that requires an exchange between the individual and the outside world. Depending upon his observers and external conditions, an individual’s identity can change. In short, an individual’s identity is socially influenced. Thus, when we discuss identity in relation to wilderness, we are examining what an identity looks like when it is torn out of society and placed in an uncivilized space. Both Moodie and Clarke tackle this question of individual identity within wilderness; however, though Moodie’s memoir and Clarke’s novel both contain immigrant narratives taking place in the early nineteenth century, it is essential to note the key differences between the two texts.

First, we must take into account the conditions under which Susanna Moodie and Clarke’s fictional protagonist, Rufus Dawes, travel to their respective locations are notably dissimilar. Moodie is a settler; Dawes is a convict. While Moodie lands in Canada with the intention of cultivating the land and building a replica—or something close to it—of the society from which she has come, Dawes arrives in Australia to a pre-organized society in the form of the penal settlement. In an essay comparing these two works, John F. Tinkler writes that “Clarke sees Australia as

1 Oxford English Dictionary [online], ‘Wilderness’, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/229003 [accessed 28 April 2016]. 2 Oxford English Dictionary [online], ‘Identity’, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/91004 [accessed 28 April 2016].

3 W34409 developing from an imported social institution of which stratification and conflict are the key features… The bond that [Moodie] sees holding together the independent individuals of her world is a commitment to cultural standards imported from Britain, represented especially by an ideal of education.”3 Dawes, as a convict, immigrates to a place where the only familiar institution—the only recognizable trace of the society he knows—is the prison system. Moodie, on the other hand, travels to Canada with other settlers, all of whom are committed to establishing familiar institutions to build civilization. Despite their different motivations for emigrating, it is their displacement from Britain, and, therefore, the social positions that they once knew, that we are discussing when we examine the effects of wilderness.

Second, we must acknowledge that the gender of the authors—and the gender of the main characters in their respective works—establishes two very different perspectives from which Moodie and Clarke approach the discussion of identity. In nineteenth century Britain, men and women held very different positions in society. As a result of social expectations and mores, or acceptable behavior, manners, and customs as dictated by society,4 male and female sense of identity were quite distinct. Thus, as we examine the ways in which Moodie and Clarke discuss the effects of the wilderness on a woman’s or man’s identity, it is necessary to take into account what the characteristics of these identities are within British society. In her essay discussing Roughing It in the Bush, Tihana Klepač, assistant professor of English literature at the University of Zagreb, mentions some of the lasting effects that British social roles have on Moodie, who is reluctant to abandon what she knows: Even though she eventually masters the art of milking cows and paddling a canoe, and bravely saves her children and house furniture from being burnt in a fire, [Moodie] confines herself to her socially defined female role. This is most evident when she claims that her

3 John F. Tinkler, “Canadian Cultural Norms and Australian Social Rules,” 94, Autumn (1982), p. 20. 4 Oxford English Dictionary [online], ‘More’, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/122175 [accessed 28 April 2016].

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decision to emigrate was the result of her duty to her husband and children…5 Klepač’s analysis of Moodie’s attempts to reproduce domestic life argues that her desires are not only tied to the act of settlement, but also to her gender.6 Victorian women’s lives were confined to matters in the “private sphere,”7 and so it is no surprise that Moodie’s narrative—and her efforts in Canada—center around the cultivation of domestic life. Moodie describes emigration in the introduction of her book as something of a chore: “Emigration may, indeed, generally be regarded as an act of severe duty, performed at the expense of personal enjoyment.” 8 Leaving one’s home country to settle in a foreign land is sometimes unpleasant and born from necessity. However, Moodie also adds a more optimistic note on the topic: “But there is a higher motive still, which has its origin in that love of independence which springs up spontaneously in the breasts of the high-souled children of a glorious land.”9 Moodie writes of the desire within people of great nations to travel to new countries and create new homes for themselves.

Meanwhile, Clarke’s novel focuses not on the act of settlement, or the formation of society in the wilderness, but on the act of emigration in a more swashbuckling, adventurous sense. For many Victorian gentlemen who were tasked with being the breadwinners of their families, overcrowding in Britain led to a shortage of jobs. Moodie, in fact, offers a succinct explanation behind the emigration that such economic and social strain led to: The ordinary motives for the emigration of such persons may be summed up in a few brief words;– the emigrant's hope of bettering his condition, and of escaping from the vulgar sarcasms too often hurled at

5 Tihana Klepač, “Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush: A Female Contribution to the Creation of an Imagined Canadian Community,” Central European Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 7 (2011), p. 68. 6 Klepač, p. 67. 7 Klepač, p. 67. 8 Susanna Moodie, Roughing it in the Bush: or, Forest Life in Canada, (London: Richard Bentley, 1852). Introduction. Please note the version of the text used contains no page numbers; volumes and chapters shall be supplied when available. 9 Moodie, Introduction.

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the less wealthy by the purse-proud, common-place people of the world.10 As conditions in Britain forced the Victorian working class further into poverty and destitution, many were left with no choice but to leave the country. Clarke himself, like many other young men at the time, “left England to seek fame and fortune in the antipodes.” 11 In this sense, Australia proved a sometimes temporary place of residence for Victorian men, who could make a name for themselves in scientific studies and exploration, accumulating wealth as they went, in order to return to the comforts of Britain and reenter society at an elevated position. Francis Adams, who, like Clarke, was a journalist who migrated to Australia, wrote a travel guide that summarized the country as perilous and “no place for a woman.”12 Kay Schaffer, professor of Gender Studies and Social Inquiry at the University of Adelaide, identified this Victorian male attitude towards Australia as one of conquering and claiming; women were considered too nurturing to participate in such an endeavor.13 For the Term of His Natural Life focuses on the narrative of convicts, a number of whom only inhabit Australia temporarily while they are serving their terms. These convicts, like the other Victorian men who travel to Australia, are undergoing some form of personal journey within the wilderness to better themselves so that, upon their return to society, their lives may improve. Thus, the role of the male in nineteenth century British society plays an important part in the way we understand Clarke’s—and Dawes’—attitude towards the wilderness, and the ultimate effects it has on a man’s identity.

The third and last difference we must recognize between Moodie’s and Clarke’s works is that the two are of very separate genres and forms. Roughing It in the Bush is, essentially, a memoir. Moodie is the narrator and the main character, and is relaying an account of events that have actually happened to her—although, as is usually the case with autobiographical accounts, it is possible that some of her text is fictionalized, embellished, or otherwise distorted by memory (as she is writing

10 Moodie, Introduction. 11 John Colmer, “For the Term of His Natural Life: A Colonial Classic Revisited,” The Yearbook of , 13 (1983). p. 134. 12 Kay Schaffer, “Women and the Bush: Australian national identity and representations of the feminine,” Working Papers in Australian Studies (1989), p. 1. 13 Schaffer, pp. 3-10.

6 W34409 sixteen years after her arrival in Canada14) or exclusion of information. Her text often reads like a guidebook or advice column for those back in Britain who may be considering making the journey to Canada to join the settlement effort. In contrast, For the Term of His Natural Life is a work of fiction. Though Clarke himself made the journey to Australia, he did so under far different conditions than his protagonist, who assumes the identity of Rufus Dawes after committing the crime that sentences him to the penal settlement on an island just off the coast of Australia. Clarke’s novel has an audience in both Britain and Australia, and, as a piece of fiction, tackles themes of emigration, identity, and wilderness from a more literary perspective than Moodie’s work. Moodie’s reasons for emigrating, her gender, and her choices and intentions behind writing are very different than Clarke’s. It is perhaps for these reasons and circumstances that, while both Australia and Canada are referred to within these texts as “the bush” and are similar in their landscape, Moodie and Clarke found these wildernesses very different.

The language that Moodie uses to write about the wilderness shows reverence for the natural world, but also reveals a desire to tame it. Throughout the text, she includes poems and song lyrics that celebrate Canada, nature, and the westward settlement of the Americas. Moodie claims that it was upon her arrival in Canada that she was first struck with awe by the landscape: “I turned to the right and to the left, I looked up and down the glorious river; never had I beheld so many striking objects blended into one mighty whole! Nature had lavished all her noblest features in producing that enchanting scene.”15 Moodie often writes of the beauty she finds in a world that is untouched by the hustle and bustle of human activity; it is in this moment that she acknowledges that part of Canada’s ability to inspire awe within her is due to its sheer size and the extensive scope of nature within its borders. But while Moodie’s admiration of an untouched Canada may be strong, her love of the Canada she has begun to cultivate and become familiar with is fiercer: Every object had become endeared to me during my long exile from civilised life. I loved the lonely lake, with its magnificent belt of dark pines sighing in the breeze; the cedar-swamp, the summer home of my dark Indian friends; my own dear little garden, with its rugged snake-

14 Moodie, vol. 1 chap. XII. 15 Moodie, vol. 1 chap. I.

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fence which I had helped Jenny to place with my own hands, and which I had assisted the faithful woman in cultivating for the last three years, where I had so often braved the tormenting musquitoes, black-flies, and intense heat, to provide vegetables for the use of the family.16 Klepač argued that Moodie clung to the social role she was accustomed to and strived to domesticate the Canadian wilderness. Here, it appears she has done so, to a degree; Moodie takes great pride in the cultivation she has preformed. She simultaneously praises the beauty of the untamed world around her, and finds great joy in the small garden she has created within it, where snakes cannot enter and the land is under her control. She later includes a quote from a hunter she encounters that further suggests there is a sense of ownership in the settlers: Is it not strange that these beautiful things are hid away in the wilderness, where no eyes but the birds of the air, and the wild beasts of the wood, and the insects that live upon them, ever see them? Does God provide, for the pleasure of such creatures, these flowers?17 Moodie and the hunter are both Christians; this is a part of their identities that they have held on to from their old lives in Europe. As the hunter enquires as to whom God could make such natural beauty for, if not for man, it becomes clear that what the settlers find most appealing about the wilderness is the potential to tame the flora, domesticate the fauna, and reap rewards from the land.

Through cultivating the land, Moodie attempts to hold on to the identity she possessed in Europe; however, she finds that the wilderness has changed her irreversibly. Upon leaving the backwoods of Canada, Moodie became afraid that her new identity would not be in harmony with the civilized world she had left behind: [That] was the last night I ever spent in the bush–in the dear forest home which I had loved in spite of all the hardships which we had endured since we pitched our tent in the backwoods…. Nor did I leave it without many regretful tears, to mingle once more with a world to whose usages, during my long solitude, I had become almost a stranger, and to whose praise or blame I felt alike indifferent.18

16 Moodie, vol. 2 chap. XIV. 17 Moodie, vol. 1 chap. X. 18 Moodie, vol. 2.

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After many years living in the Canadian wilderness, working to develop the labor skills necessary to create a sustainable life for her family, Moodie has grown attached to the landscape. This is not to say that she claims to prefer life in the wilderness to life in society. Indeed, as Tinkler notes of Roughing It in the Bush, “Moodie’s title belongs to the vocabulary of a particular class and mental outlook, and indicated a refusal to relinquish the distinctions between ‘rough’ and ‘smooth’ even while living in the rough.”19 Moodie labors to retain her identity from her pre-Canada life, and often compares life in Canada to life in England with notable nostalgia for the more comfortable existence she once led. Moodie struggles with her connection to her new home: “Many a hard battle had we to fight with old prejudices, and many proud swellings of the heart to subdue, before we could feel the least interest in the land of our adoption, or look upon it as our home.”20 Moodie has undergone a long, difficult journey to accept her new identity. She now possesses mannerisms that fit in not with the mores of British society, but instead with the demands of the Canadian wilderness. Just as Moodie identifies this transformative power, Clarke, too, sees the ways in which the wilderness can shape a man.

The language Clarke uses when discussing the Australian wilderness acknowledges the hostility he finds in such a landscape, which he believes has the ability to transform men to savages. Clarke refers to Australia as a place of “barbarous wilderness,”21 and names the eighth chapter of the second book of the novel “The Power of the Wilderness.”22 There is a sense that the wildlife and rugged landscape of Australia are a kind of beast, capable of snapping its gnarly teeth at those who attempt to establish civilization within its untamed land. Schaffer argues that “Man’s identity, which might be secured heroically by his possession and control of the land as a primary object of desire, was called into doubt by the threat of the bush.”23 The main characters in For the Term of His Natural Life are men. As discussed earlier in this paper, the Victorian male adventurer was often in search of a new social status through his conquering of a foreign land. One might assume that Rufus Dawes, who

19 Tinkler, p. 12. 20 Moodie, vol. 1 chap. XI. 21 Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life (Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, 2014.), p. 116. 22 Clarke, p. 113. 23 Schaffer, p. 4.

9 W34409 undoubtedly devolves into an increasingly morally corrupt being over the course of the novel, becomes a monster because he is in the wilderness of Australia. But Rufus Dawes is a convict, not an adventurer, and it is the prison system which causes this shift in his identity: “…and were these convict monsters gifted with unnatural powers of endurance, only to be subdued and tamed by unnatural and inhuman punishments of lash and chain?”24 Clarke writes that the penal settlement is a place of both unnatural and inhuman activity. It is here that he becomes a monster, surrounded by other monsters in the form of criminals and corrupt prison staff. It is not wilderness that changes Dawes’ identity in this way, but rather the man-made penal settlement within the wilderness.

When the demands of the wilderness force Dawes and other characters to abandon the remnants of British civilization they cling to, a much different transformation of identity occurs. In the first half of For the Term of His Natural Life, there is a moment in which Sylvia—still a young girl, at this point in the narrative—inquires about a piece of information she reads in a book, a “Child’s History of England.”25 Through his characters’ dialogue, Clarke draws a comparison between the words curricle and coracle—one a two-wheeled carriage, popular during the early nineteenth century, and the other a small, crudely made, lightweight boat that had been used for centuries in Wales, Britain and Ireland.26 The curricle, a work of modern innovation to Victorians, and was reserved for the transport of noblemen and royalty.27 The coracle, on the other hand, was used by the ancient Britons, who, according to Sylvia’s book, “were little better than Barbarians… [and] must have presented a wild and savage appearance.” 28 A curricle is something out of civilization; a coracle belongs in the wilderness. In Victorian England, Richard Devine—this, of course, is Rufus Dawes’ original identity—might ride a curricle. In Australia, he and the others are forced to build a coracle in order to survive the harsh landscape of the wilderness. Additionally, the group is forced to burn Sylvia’s book as tinder: “Rufus Dawes seized upon the English History, which had already done such service, tore out the drier leaves in the middle of the volume, and carefully added

24 Clarke, p. 240. 25 Clarke, p. 120. 26 Clarke, p. 120. 27 Clarke, p. 120. 28 Clarke, p. 120.

10 W34409 them to the little heap of touchwood.”29 It is no simple coincidence that the book Dawes burns is one on the history of the English people, detailing their transformation from a race of barbarians to one of industrial innovation and civilization. Dawes and the others, alone in the Australian bush, have to resort to primitive forms of construction and burn the pages of a history book in order to survive. Richard Devine must, in multiple ways, give up his identity—his name, his status, and his habits and mannerisms—in order to survive the wilderness.

But while Clarke makes it clear that wilderness has the power to strip an individual of his identity, he also indicates that there is something beneficial to this kind of rebirth of the barbarian. Dawes, confronted with the choice to return to the penal settlement or remain in the bush on his own, draws a conclusion about the perks of stripping away the civilized man and leaving only a barbarian: Suppose he did not go back at all, but wandered away into the wilderness and died? Better death than such a doom as his. Yet need he die? He had caught goats, he could catch fish. He could build a hut. In here was, perchance, at the deserted settlement some remnant of seed corn that, planted, would give him bread. He had built a boat, he had made an oven, he had fenced in a hut. Surely he could contrive to live alone savage and free. Alone!30 Dawes discovers that, in letting the wilderness strip him of the effects of his social role back in Britain, he has become self-sufficient. Much like Moodie in the Canadian wilderness, Dawes has nurtured the skills necessary to support himself in a landscape free of comforts civilization provides. He is capable of living alone—and, more importantly, free.

Both Moodie and Clarke tell stories of the wilderness’ effects on individual identity, and the ability of wilderness, as a physical location, to strip a person of their learned behaviors. Roughing It in the Bush and For the Term of His Natural Life can be read as calling into question which aspects of a person’s identity are inherent—or natural—and which are socially constructed, as well as dealing more widely with the identity transformations of emigrants. Both texts became important staples in the canons of Canadian and , respectively. Moodie’s and Clarke’s

29 Clarke, p. 171. 30 Clarke, p. 166.

11 W34409 works deal with the narrative of the emigrant to an uncivilized land, and are thus important to the larger narrative of the struggle to find a national identity for these new countries. Moodie and Dawes, as representatives of Canada and Australia, have their differences; but they also share similarities—especially in their breaking from Britain to achieve independence and self-sufficiency.

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Bibliography

Clarke, Marcus. For the Term of His Natural Life. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, 2014. Accessed April, 2016. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/clarke/marcus/c59f/index.html

Colmer, John, “For the Term of His Natural Life: A Colonial Classic Revisited”, The Yearbook of English Studies, 13 (1983). pp. 133-44.

Klepač, Tihana. “Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush: A Female Contribution to the Creation of an Imagined Canadian Community.” Central European Journal of Canadian Studies, vol. 7 (2011). pp. 65-75.

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush: or, Forest Life in Canada. London: Richard Bentley, 1852. [Second edition.] Accessed April, 2016. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/moodie/roughing/roughing.html

"more, n.5". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/122175 (accessed April 28, 2016).

Schaffer, Kay. “Women and the Bush: Australian national identity and representations of the feminine.” Working Papers in Australian Studies (1989)

Tinkler, John F. “Canadian Cultural Norms and Australian Social Rules: Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush and Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life.” Canadian Literature no. 94, Autumn (1982). pp. 10-22.

"wilderness, n.". OED Online. March 2016. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/229003?redirectedFrom=wilderness (accessed April 28, 2016).

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