What Necessity Knows

Elisabeth Anne MacDonald teaches English at the University of Western
Ontario.

This novel, which originally appeared in 1893, has now been published as
part of the Early Canadian Women Writers Series, a project that seeks to
reintroduce a much-neglected area of the Canadian literary canon. Born
in Montreal in 1858 and educated in Canada and Great Britain, Lily
Dougall was a popular author at the turn of the century, and What
Necessity Knows, her second novel, is remarkable for its then-unusual
choice of subject and audience: it is written for and about Canadians.
Dougall’s particular focus, as she states in her preface, is on the
experiences of recent immigrants to Canada, “most of whom are slow to
identify themselves with their adopted country.”

This new edition is based on the 1893 text, originally published by
Longmans of London, and is preceded by a perceptive and informative
introduction by Victoria Walker. Walker not only places Dougall’s work
in literary context with other early Canadian writers, such as Susanna
Moodie and Sara Jeannette Duncan, but she also provides important
biographical information that assists the reader in situating a
century-old work within its historical niche. Her discussion of the
novel itself highlights the specific strengths of Dougall’s writing:
strong characterization (especially of women) and intriguing moral
dilemmas.

While the writing style of a Victorian novel, with its melodramatic and
even occasionally gothic elements, may seem awkward and overblown to a
modern reader, Dougall’s attempt to address important social issues of
her day—Canadian identity, the role of women in society, the
experience of immigrants—remains remarkably fresh a century later.
Above all, this is a story about women, and Dougall’s views on
marriage and male–female relationships are as surprisingly modern as
her views on class and religion. Marriage becomes in this novel a
powerful symbol of creative union, not only between man and woman but
also between classes and cultures.