Re(Dis)covering our Foremothers: Nineteenth-Century Canadian Women Writers

Esther Fisher is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and
a former food critic for The Globe & Mail.

Serious scholars of women in nineteenth-century Canada will find this
collection useful and engaging. It includes information about the
present state of scholarship, observations on research methodology, and
insights into several of our female ancestors and into the conditions
and social climate for women during the last century. This collection is
varied and eclectic.

The articles on research treat how to gather information by tracking
genealogy; and where to look for data: court records, journals of social
organizations, and records of nursing care and of social assistance.
Three articles deal with Mrs. Moodie; one of which reveals her as a more
affectionate, vibrant woman than the narrator of Roughing It in the
Bush. An essay on Canadian woman journalists treats, among others, Kit
Coleman, the first female war correspondent to cover the
Spanish-American war in Cuba. Carol Gerson deals with the
underrepresentation of woman writers in Canadian anthologies,
particularly from 1942 to 1958. Accompanying her article is a
painstakingly detailed set of tables. D.M.R. Bentley writes about the
way woman immigrants to the New World adapted to their environment, to
their relationships with men, and to new ways of thinking about
themselves. His article is structured in an intriguing manner, with
glosses on the left side of each page appropriate to the accompanying
text.

One of the most stimulating and original theories is Helen M. Buss’s
challenge to Frye’s idea of the “garrison mentality” as applied to
Canadian women. In “Women and the Garrison Mentality,” she reveals
that early autobiographers found not confinement in their relation with
the Canadian landscape, but freedom.

Generally, this collection offers new perspectives, but some aspects of
the work are unsettling. The word “writers” in the subtitle is used
in its broadest sense, meaning almost anyone who wrote, including
journalists, diarists, letter writers, and writers of juvenile
literature and of sentimental novels. Granted, some of this writing is
instructive socially and culturally, and some does have literary merit,
but just because something was penned by a Canadian woman does not
automatically confer value on it.

Cavilling aside, this is a good collection that will be of special
interest to those in women’s studies.