GATHERING UP THE THREADS: GENERIC AND DISCURSIVE PATTERNS IN CATHARINE PARR TRAILL'S THE BACKWOODS OF CANADA by Suzanne James B .A., University of British Columbia, 1980 M.A., University of British Columbia, 1987 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department of English O Suzanne James 2003 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY August 2003 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL NAME: Suzanne James DEGREE: Doctor of Philosophy (English) TITLE OF THESIS: Gathering up the Threads: Generic and Discursive Patterns in Catharine Parr Traillls "The Backwoods of Canada" Examining Committee: Chair: David Stouck Professor . Carole Gerson Professor 'hzgaret I5inley Assistant Professor Mason Harris Associate Professor ~ackl~ittk Professor, History Intern+l/External Examimq Michael Peterman Professor, English Trent University External Examiner PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENCE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of ThesislProjectlExtended Essay: GATHERING UP THE THREADS: GENERIC AND DISCURSIVE PATTERNS IN CATHERINE PARR TRAIL;LIS "THE BmJOoDS OF CANADA" Author: --- - -- , (Signature) (Date) DEDICATION Tomy husband, Brian Roach, for loving support and countless cups of coffee, and to my son, Levi Roach, who has only vague memories of when his mother wasn't writing her thesis and has grown to be my most reliable stylistic critic. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Carole Gerson, without whose ongoing support and advice over the last six years this thesis would never have been completed. I am also grateful to the librarians and staff at the British Library and the library of University College London for their assistance with my research, and in particular for providing access to the early works of Catharine Parr Trail1 and to the archives of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. I would also like to thank Michael Peterman for permission to quote extensively from his introduction to the CEECT edition of The Backwoods of Canada, and for information about the annotations in an early copy of this text. Lastly, I would like to thank Rodopi Publishing House, Amsterdam, for permission to include a revised version of an essay I published in The Rhetoric of Canadian Writing. This material has been integrated into chapters one, four and six. TABLE OF CONTENTS .. Approval ........................................................................................................................................ 11 ... Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 111 Dedication .................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents............................................................................................................................ vi .. List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vii Chapterl: The Work of a "more complex writer than has heretofore been assumed" .................... 1 Chapter 2: The Backwoods of Canada as Cultural Artefact: A Reception History of the Text I. The "Horizon of Expectations" .................................................................................... 25 11. 19c Reception........................................................................................................... 28 111. 20c Reception ............................................................................................................. 45 IV.A Definitive Edition: The 1997 CEECT Edition of Backwoods................................ 65 Chapter 3: Predisposing the Reader: The Title and Introduction of The Backwoods of Canada ............................................................................................... 69 Chapter 4: "To me nothing that bears the stamp of novelty is devoid of interest": The Backwoods of Canada as Travel Narrative I. Theoretical Perspectives................................................................................................ 97 11. The Textual "I": Traill's Narrative Perspective ......................................................... 106 Chapter 5: "I cannot but dwell with feelings of wonder and admiration": Landscape Descriptions in The Backwoods of Canada .................................................................... 119 Chapter 6: Catharine Parr Traill's Encounters with the Other: Ambiguous "Yankees," Romantic Scots, Ill-mannered Irish and Simple "Indians" I. Textual Encounters with the Other .............................................................................. 139 11. "Odious manners" and "ingenious ways": Ambiguous Yankees ............................... 142 111. Romantic Scots and Ill-mannered Irish .................................................................... 147 IV. "Simplicity of heart" and "quiet apathy": Indians .................................................... 151 Chapter 7: "We begin to get reconciled to our Robinson Crusoe sort of life": J& Backwoods of Canada as Settler's Guide ....................................................................... 168 Chapter 8: "Subjects for reflection, admiration and delight": Scientific Discourse in The Backwoods of Canada ............................................................................................. 19 1 Chapter 9 Gathering up the Threads: Generic and Discursive Patterns in The Backwoods of Canada ............................................................................................. 216 Works Cited. ............................................................................................................................... .230 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: The Production and Reception of The Backwoods of Canada..................................... 219 Figure 2: The Production and Reception of Canadian Crusoes. .................................................. 225 CHAPTER 1 The Work of a "more complex writer than has heretofore been assumed" In 1836 and 1852, respectively, Catharine Parr Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie published accounts of their experiences as nineteenth-century British immigrants to Upper Canada. Both texts were popular and influential, though not commercial successes. Yet, while Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush has maintained a prominent status in Canadian literary histories and critical studies of nineteenth-century literature, and is widely taught in university survey courses, Traill's The Backwoods of Canada has received significantly less acclaim and attention. How do we account for this critical neglect of a text which is neither less significant as a cultural and historical document than Moodie's work, nor less textually rich? Undoubtedly, Traill's text has been diminished by arbitrary dichotomies frequently posited between Roughing It and Backwoods. Many twentieth-century critics valorize Moodie's work at the expense of Traill's, reading Roughing It as an appealingly emotional and "subjective" account of pioneer life while dismissing Backwoods as too "objective" and non-literary.' A typical binary opposition is suggested in W. J. Keith's comparative analysis of the two texts: "Unruffled and unassuming, she [Traill] treats herself almost as an external character, observed like everyone else, while Moodie is always conspicuously at the centre of her narrative" (Canadian Literature in English 20). Although Keith's analysis is neither irrelevant nor imperceptive, Traill's self-representation, and her text as a whole, are far more problematic and less monologic than he and many other critics imply. Establishing arbitrary dichotomies between the works of Moodie and Traill has become a reductive process, a critical cul-de-sac which glosses over textual ambiguities and sites of contestation, effectively discouraging more subtle readings of The Backwoods of Canada. 1 In her discussion of Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush, Gillian Whitlock suggests that "Susanna Moodie has been spectacularly successful in manoeuvring for a late twentieth-century readership" (42). Traill has been significantly less successful in this context. We may also account for the relative neglect of Traill's text by its failure to fit conveniently into critical overviews and literary histories of Canadian literature focusing on thematic tropes, such as Northrop Frye's highly influential concept of the "garrison mentality." As Helen Buss suggests, Frye's generalization that immigrants to Canada face the experience of "being silently swallowed by an