Of Words and Understanding in Grove's Settlers of the Marsh

CAMILLE R. LA BOSSIERE Of Words and Understanding in Grove's .Settlers ofthe Marsh But, for my part, it was Greek to me. (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, I, ii) Ah, Jarl! an honest, earnest wight; so true and simple, thatthe secretoperations of thy soul were more inscrutable than the subtle workings of Spinoza's. (Melville, Mardi, chapter 3) Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it. (Christopher Morley, Thunder on the Left, chapter 14) Michel de Montaigne, ironic assayer of perception and judgment, once observed that what may seem hot to one individual or group is not unlikely to seem cold to another. There is much in the criticism of the first of Frederick Philip Grove's published prairie novels, Settlers of the Marsh (1925), to suggest that the sceptic's ancient wisdom has worn well with time and much use. On the one hand, there is commentary such as Desmond Pacey's in the Literary History ofCanada (1965): while admitting to 'some improbabilities' in the relations of the three main characters in that fiction, he finds in favour of Grove's'acute and profound' analysis of the 'motives' of the protagonist Niels Lindstedt and praises the 'brilliant fidelity' with which the author describes the northern Manitoba bush country and the homesteader's life there.1 In 1969, Ronald Sutherland also finds great virtue in the 'psychological depth' of the novel, judging Settlers of the Marsh Grove's 'finest achievement.'2 More recently, a reader 's guide restates the value of 'the psychological realism of Grove's characterizations and the naturalistic description of the farms laid precariously upon the northern Manitoba landscape.'3 On the other hand, some commentators have found Grove's work deficient in realism or truth to life and have assessed its artistic value accordingly. Edward McCourt, for example, in the 1970 revised edition of his The Canadian West in Fiction (1949), seems equally certain that 'Grove's knowledge of human nature was not, unfortunately, as broad or as deep as his knowledge of physical environment,' and that, consequently, he was 'not equal to the task which he sets himself in Settlers of the Marsh that of making the central character ... believable.'4 Margaret Stobie's Frederick Philip Grove (1973) develops a parallel thesis, criticizing the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 2, WINTER 1984/5 GROVE'S Settlers ofthe Marsh 149 author for his 'reluctance to admit his limitations' and for his 'pretensions to experience or knowledge that he clearly did not have.' Grove's deficiences are manifested in the'often wooden and ludicrous' characters in Settlers of the Marsh, where, according to Stobie, the chastity of Niels Lindstedtborders on 'sheer stupidity.'5Itwould seem that something ofa critical tradition has raised itself up in the more than half-century of commentary on the novel. Warning of the collision of realities or understandings sketched above may be detected as early as November 1925, in some ofthe first reviews to greet Settlers oftheMarsh: G.V. Ferguson, in the Manitoba Free Press, for instance, writes of Niels's 'simplicity' that it 'passes all reasonable understanding,' while Austin Bothwell, in the Saskatoon Phoenix, distinguishes the central character's innocence or 'denseness to certain implications' from mere 'stupidity,' to conclude that 'he is drawn with skill - is consistent, is real.,6 But there is a consonance, too, discernible in the record of discordant voices. All seem agreed on the grounds for literary judgment in this case: Grove's (in)fidelity to the reality of people andlor places and things. And it is perhaps the harmony rather than the disagreement which proves the more instructive at bottom, for the commentary, taken as a whole in its broad lines, may be seen obliquely to mirror the 'problematic' of misunderstanding , understanding, and language acted out by the dramatis personae of Settlers of the Marsh and incorporated by the novel itself as linguistic artefact and investigative device. As commentators have implied , Settlers ofthe Marsh is 'about' knowledge and its articulation. Their responses help define, by extension, the fundamental issues at playin the fiction: the (in)vincibility of human ignorance and the (in)ability of words to grasp and convey whole truth. Each group of...