USEFUL FORTUNE: CONTINGENCY AND THE LIMITS OF IDENTITY IN THE CANADAS 1790-1850 by LOUISE ROBERT B.A., College Marguerite Bourgeoys, 1967 Licence es Lettres, Universite de Montreal, 1970 M.A., University of British Columbia, 1988 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Department of History THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1996 © Louise Robert, 1996 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 or her 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 Vancouver, Canada Date DE-6 (2/88) ABSTRACT In this study I analyze how Lower and Upper Canadians in the period 1790-1850 articulated ideas of the self in relation to concepts provided by the Enlightenment and more particularly by the notion of self- love. Canadians discussed the importance of individual self-interest in defining the self and in formulating the ties that would unite a multitude of strangers who were expected to live in peace with one another regardless of their religious, cultural and social affiliations. Scholarly discussion about the making of identities in the Canadas has, for the most part, focussed on community-defined identities even though it has always largely been accepted that the Canadas were 'liberal' and individualistic societies. The writings of known and educated Canadians show that the making of identities went well beyond community-defined attributes. To widen the understanding of the process of identity-making in Canada, I have utilized a well- known medieval metaphor that opposes order to contingency or, as in the civic tradition, contrasts virtue and fortune-corruption. It becomes evident that those who insisted on a community-defined identity that subsumed the self in the whole had a far different understanding of contingent motifs than those who insisted on the primacy of the self in the definition of humanity. But both ways of dealing with contingency continued to influence how Canadians came to understand who they were. No consensus emerged and by 1850 the discussions of the Canadian self were rich and complex. The dissertation pays special attention to the methodological implications of utilizing binary oppositions such as the trope order vs contingency in fashioning the images of peoples and nations in ways that engage 'post-modern' notions regarding the construction of the identity of the 'Other'. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgement v INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter One Worthiness and Self-interest 13 1) Merit 17 2) Work and Education 21 3) Alteration 34 4) Controlling Circumstances 39 5) Modern Morality 46 Chapter Two Modern Sociability 53 1) Display and Appearances 56 2) The Search for Harmony 66 3) The Private Self 80 4) The Nostalgic Self 85 Chapter Three Wealth 93 1) Agricultural Wealth 95 2) Capital 105 3) Otherworldly Wealth in Modernity 118 Chapter Four Citizenship and Modern Sociability 127 1) Democracy Corrupts 128 2) The Modern Representative 138 3) Modern Political Virtue 156 iii Chapter Five National Identities 164 1) The Universal Identity 165 2) British Virtue, French Corruption 173 3) French Canadian Virtue, English Corruption 186 4) Ethnicity and Religion 195 Chapter Six The Science of History 200 1) The Science of Writing History 201 2) The Cyclical 214 3) The Linear 221 4) The Patternless 232 Chapter Seven The Metaphors of Modernity 239 1) Prose and Poetry 240 2) Animality and Sensuality 247 3) Movement 257 4) The Feminine 265 Chapter Eight Conclusion 276 Bibliography 287 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to acknowledge all those who have made this thesis possible. The endless patience and flexibility of my supervisor, Allan Smith, have allowed me to pursue a line of enquiry that took me back to the medieval period, while his editing pen saved me from countless embarrassments. Edward Hundert's sharp mind has deciphered things no one else could see. Alan Tully's academic standards have been matched only by his warmth. Others have played a great role in this enterprise. Allen Sinel's friendship has helped me through good and bad times. Peter Ward has let me talk endlessly about my various academic projects. Robert McDonald has remained the constant in my academic life: to him I owe more than even I can imagine. Tina Loo, Eileen Mak, Bonita Bray, Ben Redekop and Clint Evans have been fellow travellers, helping me along my journey. Marilyn Iwama has been the friend she is. Most important of all, thank you to my husband Robert Penny, because without him none of this would have been possible. , v INTRODUCTION The Age of Reason regarded chance as the superstition of the vulgar but, contrary to general belief, ideas associated with chance and contingency did not disappear in the 'modern' age. Indeed, they endured and even entered in the service of rationality. Nowhere is the persistence of those ideas more clearly in evidence than in the small and new societies of British North America as the inhabitants of those societies found themselves at once emerging into an era of modernity and striving to build ordered and stable communities. In the first half of the nineteenth century, those inhabitants were particularly mindful that making sense of their circumstances and their identities in the midst of the intellectual, social and political upheaval which they, in common with other western beings, were experiencing involved invoking both old and new ideas. Ian Hacking tells us in The Taming of Chance that eighteenth century thinkers had not grasped how chance had been put to work in the service of rationality and order. Claiming that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, chance, luck and randomness had been harnessed by those who devised probability mathematics and laws of chance, Hacking argues that the statistical science which emerged from this strengthened order and control in the nineteenth century. Indeed, these sciences enabled the categorization, inventorying and classification of 'normal' human behaviours which contributed to make the world a more predictable and more stable place to live. By the same token, the thrust to enumerate and to categorize defined new classes of people had "consequences for the ways in which we conceive of others and think of our own possibilities and potentialities."1 Hacking's analysis dealt with the scientific and 1 - Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, P.6. See also his earlier work that traces the passage of chance from a notion of dispersion to one that provided scientists like Leibniz and others with the basis for probability mathematics, a science that enabled the calculation of the probable outcome of things. The Emergence of Probability, a Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability. Induction and Statistical Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975. Barbara Shapiro provides a more detailed account for English society in Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England. A study of the relationships between natural science, religion, history, law and literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Suzanne Zeller studied how categorization and inventory sciences lead to a new form of Canadian identity in Inventing Canada: Early Victorian Science and the Idea of a Transcontinental Nation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. 1 mathematical aspects of contingency and provides a picture of the constructive role played by randomness. Chance and randomness were concepts that had a greater ambit than mathematical and statistical expressions. Ever since the Ancients, contingency had provided themes and ideas that were discussed by humans who longed for control over their earthly destiny. It provided them with the tapestry against which ordering and making sense of the human experience were constantly being tested. Early nineteenth century Canadians, therefore, inherited a rich baggage of notions and ideas about randomness and made use of it when they negotiated societies of self-interest. As Christians, they drew from a discourse of contingency that had roots in medieval Christianity which, in part, had settled on the notion of Fortune. Invoking it allowed contingency to be named, given a shape, a gender, a face and a multitude of attributes, allegories, symbols and associations over a millennium or more. Inherited from the Romans who revered Fortuna as a goddess that answered to no God, not even to Jupiter, Christianity both embraced her and rejected her. Studies reveal the important association between Fortune and Christianity and allow us to distinguish the themes that remained important to those who wished to make sense of their earthly passage.2 Many of these themes were still providing Canadians with a challenge to be met if their societies were to be morally and intellectually meaningful and stable. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance presented Fortune - undoubtedly a feminine force - as the Goddess of the winds and the seas because primal forces - like her - could not be controlled nor could they 2 - The following works analyze Fortune in the medieval and the Renaissance periods along with her association with Christianity. Howard Rollin Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1927; The Tradition of Boethius. A Study of His Importance in Medieval Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1935; "The Tradition of the Goddess Fortuna in Medieval Philosophy and Literature", Smith College Studies in Modern Languages. Vol.Ill, No.3(July 1922), P.131-235 and "Fortuna in Old French Literature", Smith College Studies in Modern Languages.