Future Indicative: Literary Theory and Canadian Literature

Rewriting Roughing It

Rewriting Roughing It JOHN THURSTON usanna Moodie did not write Roughing It in the Bush. In fact, Roughing It in the Bush was never written. Susanna Moodie and Roughing It in the Bush are interchangeable titles given to a collaborative act of textual production whose origin cannot be limited to one person or one point in time. This activity is ongoing. It is not merely a matter of the interpretation or reception of Roughing It. The process for which this text is the focus involves its actual production. Susanna Moodie's is only one hand among the many involved in this collaborative activity. In this paper, I will endeavour to establish a perspective on the production ofthis text which frees it from the spatial and temporal limitations of author and publication date. I want to substitute a view of Roughing It as the textual focus of a process of cultural collaboration. Susanna Strickland began her literary career by writing genteel poetry and children's stories. Marriage and the decision to emigrate established a dynamic which would confront these genres with experience for which they were inadequate. Roughing It began to be written with the first letters Susanna sent to friends and family in England. It wasJohn Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie who was the acknowledged author when he and his bride came to Canada in 1832. In 1835 he published Ten Years in South Africa and the originating impulse behind Roughing It was his (Peterman 1983, 82). His publisher, Richard Bentley, was not interested , however, in the proposal made by J.W.D. in 1835 "for a work on Upper Canada." Nevertheless, Susanna began her writing of the sketches she would contribute to a Canadian book in the mid-1840s and in 1851 the Moodies sent a manuscript called "Canadian Life" to a London friend, John Bruce, who took it to J.W.D.'s publisher (Moodie 1985, 104). To compile this manuscript, the Moodies gathered up Susanna's pieces of prose and verse, four chapters and ten poems by J.W.D., and part of a chapter and one poem by Samuel Strickland, Susanna's brother S 196 and neighbour. As Michael Peterman notes, "Roughing It was a family venture" (83). It was probably Susanna who attempted to catch these fragments in a narrative net and tie them up with some thematic rope. The fragments provide the central drive of the book. A full two-thirds of the manuscript sent to Bentley had appeared in periodicals prior to book publication. In transforming these periodical fragments into the semblance of a book, Moodie shows a good deal of concern for her potential audience. Her sketches had appeared in Canadian periodicals, the Literary Garland, and the Moodies' own Victoria Magazine. Reaction from Roman Catholic Canadians to the periodical appearance of a potential chapter called "Michael MacBride" caused her to suppress it (Moodie 1985, 109). She was more concerned with her English audience, however. Peterman analyzes the "attempt on her part to write for the tastes and assumptions of the particular audience she was addressing" and finds "the language . . . more hightoned and poetic in the English edition" (84). Excisions are made from the sketches and surviving material is rewritten. Moodie allowed her audience's demands to dictate the style and substance of the family work. The next participants in the creation of Roughing It were employees at the Bentley publishing house and John Bruce. As mentioned, Bruce was the Moodie agent for Roughing It. The editors of the Moodie letters write that Bruce "also saw the work through the press, reading the proofs and making alterations and corrections" (Moodie 1985, 104). The first three so-called "editions" of Roughing It contain hundreds of variants in both accidentals and substantives. The variants in accidentals have been thoroughly documented by the Centre for Editing Early Canadian Texts. I understand that this information will be released upon the publication of their edition. The major substantive variants are apparent through a cursory comparison of any copy of the "first edition" with any copy of the "second edition with additions." I will mention only a few of the more significant changes which were made between the first two titular "editions ." A page of dialogue which is in the periodical version of the first chapter is missing from the first edition but reinserted for the second. The poems at the end of the penultimate chapter and the beginning of the last are shuffled. Much of the poetry is rewritten, to...