Title: Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the bush : a female contribution to the creation of an imagined Canadian community
Source document: The Central European journal of Canadian studies. 2011, vol. 7, iss. [1], pp. 65-75
Extent
65-75
-
ISSN1213-7715 (print)2336-4556 (online)
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/118324
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Rights access
embargoed access
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
Identities are increasingly perceived as constituted through representation, to be understood as a "coming-to-terms-with our 'routes'" (Hall). Hence not only should the routes be retaken by successive generations, but it is also imperative to stay attentive to the discursive conditionality of their production and reception. Therefore Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush is shown to reveal the regularities of the nineteenth-century colonial era: a woman writer not only struggling with the traditional masculine literary forms, but also discursively justifying its anomalous existence for which she is marginalized, yet also a woman writer very much implicated in the discourses of imperialism. It is working within those discourses that Moodie is able to progress from an exiled English lady to a Canadian settler, and conceive of Canada as "home." Hence, once it was brought into cultural circulation Roughing It in the Bush began creating an imagined Canadian community.
Les identités sont de plus en plus perçues comme constituées par la représentation construite en tant que "comingto-terms-with our 'routes'" (Hall), autrement dit comme un processus de découverte de "racines" perdues et comme la construction d'une forme nouvelle et fluide liée à nos relations sociales dans "le trajet" de notre vie. Ces trajets ne devraient pas seulement être refaits par les générations successives, mais il est aussi important de tenir compte de la conditionnalité discursive de leur production et réception. Donc, Roughing It in the Bush de Susanna Moodie révèle les régularités de l'ère coloniale du XXe siècle : une écrivaine ne se bat pas seulement avec les formes littéraires masculines traditionnelles, qui justifient discursivement leur existence anormale pour laquelle l'écrivaine est marginalisée, mais, en même temps, elle est très impliquée dans le discours d'impérialisme. Dans ce contexte, Moodie est en mesure d'avancer d'une dame anglaise exilée à un colon canadien et de faire du Canada un espace du "chez-soi". Donc, dès son entrée dans la circulation culturelle, Roughing It in the Bush commence à créer une communauté canadienne imaginée.
References
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[2] Ashcroft, Bill. On Post-colonial Futures, Transformations of Colonial Culture, London and New York: Continuum, 2001.
[3] Bennett, Donna and Brown, Russell (eds.). A New Anthology of Canadian Literature, Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2002.
[4] Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
[5] Chambers, Jennifer. "'Has Anyone A Following?': Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women's Writing, Introduction" in Chambers, Jennifer (ed.): Diversity and Change in Early Canadian Women's Writing, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
[6] Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan. The Madwoman in the Attic The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1984.
[7] Glickman, Susan. "Afterword" in Moodie, Susanna: Roughing It in the Bush, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. The Canadian Publishers, 1989.
[8] Hall, Stuart. "Who Needs 'Identity'?" in Hall, Stuart and du Gay, Paul (eds.): Questions of Cultural Identity, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1998.
[9] Kaufmann, Eric. "'Naturalizing the Nation:' The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada" in Comparative studies in Society and History, vol. 40, no. 4 (1998), pp. 666-695.
[10] McWilliams, Ellen. Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009.
[11] Mills, Sara. Discourses of Difference, An Analysis of women's travel writing and colonialism, New York: Routledge, 2001.
[12] Moodie, Susanna. Roughing It in the Bush, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd. The Canadian Publishers, 1989.
[13] Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York: Routledge, 1992.
[14] Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives," History and Theory, 24, 3 (1985), 247-272. | DOI 10.2307/2505169
[15] Thompson, Elizabeth. "’Roughing It in the Bush: Patterns of Emigration and Settlement in Susanna Moodie's Poetry," Canadian Poetry, 40 (1997), 58-73.