Flint and Feather: The Life and Times of E Pauline Johnson

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.

Pauline Johnson’s life was more interesting than her writing. She had,
as Charlotte Gray says, “a vibrant personality and a wonderful
appetite for life.” Half Mohawk, half English, hopelessly split
between two heritages, she saw herself as a champion of Native rights,
but, at least initially, enjoyed the comforts of white privilege. With
ambitions as a poet, she produced little or nothing of value in the eyes
of critics who emphasize style rather than content. She had, however, a
dramatic gift, and spent strenuous years as a traveling entertainer. She
would dress up in buskins, tomahawk, and even a purchased scalp, to
recite her verse with a pro-Indian message, then change into evening
dress to perform romantic poems of love and sentiment. She parodied the
absurdities of her admirers, but was often in their debt. All in all, a
colorful, contradictory life that offers great opportunities to a canny
biographer.

And Charlotte Gray is a canny biographer, capable of including
everything that is likely to make Flint and Feather (a title
appropriated without explanation from Johnson herself) a commercial
success. The basic elements of Johnson’s life are arresting in
themselves, and Gray produces a crisp narrative, stressing the romantic
sadness so characteristic of Johnson’s own writing. She emphasizes the
histrionics and the pathos of the later decline rather than her verse,
but has an eye for the academic market. In consequence, her work is
accurate (if sometimes a trifle oversimplified) and the book can qualify
as an academic study. Add the right amounts of feminist commentary,
anti-racist assertions, and the all-important impression that she is
communicating a painless dose of cultural uplift, and you have a book
appealing to a wide Canadian audience.

I enjoyed reading this book, and feel a little mean in adopting a
somewhat condescending tone in the previous paragraph. But this
championing of a second-rate writer for other-than-literary reasons is
part of the vulgarization of our times. I recommend the book as popular
social history but have reservations about its contribution to serious
literary studies.