Susanna Moodie: A Life

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Susanna Moodie, the often infuriating but always intriguing author of
the pioneering classic Roughing It in the Bush, has been the subject of
considerable scholarly research in recent years. This short, clearly
written, pleasantly illustrated biography, readily accessible for the
general reader as well as the specialist in Canadian literature and
history, is a welcome result of this industry.

She is not an easy subject for a biographer, since she is herself the
only source for much of the information about her early life. Because
she was an inveterate teller of tales whose writing continually exploits
the grey area between fiction and nonfiction, Michael Peterman is often
forced to fall back on imaginative accounts for the details of the
Moodies’ perilous voyage from England, their struggles with
unsatisfactory neighbors and the challenges of the Upper-Canadian
terrain and climate. But Peterman is a careful and reliable scholar who
can be trusted to offer as judicious and plausible an account as can
reasonably be expected.

For those whose main knowledge of the Moodies is derived from Roughing
It in the Bush itself, however, the most welcome part of the book may
well be the information that Peterman has gathered about the character
and achievements of her husband, hitherto seen as a shadowy and somewhat
feckless figure. But he emerges here as a sincere man of principle
caught in a stormy political situation. Moreover, the Moodie marriage
appears now in decidedly clearer focus, and reveals itself as an
engagingly close, even warm relationship.

Sadly, however, their last days were marred by deaths and disagreements
in the family, with failing strength, lack of the recognition they had a
right to expect, and, if not grinding poverty, financial prospects that
were never without worry. This book paints a sombre but reliable picture
of the harshness of the life of early settlements in 19th-century
Canada.