Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940 by Barbara E. Kelcey (review)

humanities 409 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 Seeber certainly pays attention to aspects too often excluded from discussions of the novels. But if Aunt Jennifer calls up images of gentle Jane waving despairingly from the attic, this Bakhtinian valorization of >unresolvable dialogues= prevents Seeber from declaring whether Austen is ultimately conservative or subversive. I=d like to know. Of course readers no longer merely decode what the author >meant,= because a book does not say only what an author thought it did, nor should we diminish the play of possibilities. But once Seeber replaces the author by Foucault=s >author-asfunction -of-discourse,= the narrative itself, or elements of it, bizarrely become the creative agents. Passives and personifications can elide the author=s role altogether, as in >the violence and coercion that is used to transform Marianne,= or >the main narrative=s memory is selective, but the cameo does not permit such forgetfulness for the novel as a whole.= Likewise, to overlook Austen=s intertextualities is to erase her own responses as a reader. Episodes concerning the two Elizas, Mrs Smith, Wickham and Georgiana, which Seeber identifies as >cameo appearances,= may sit lumpily in the text because they derive primarily from elsewhere. I endorse the idea that texts are to an extent produced by readers, but if you obliterate the author altogether, what is the original location of readings against the grain? Austen=s unconscious practice or Austen=s conscious art? Does Seeber really mean that Austen sleepwalks as a writer, that her narratives and subtexts intersect more radically than she knows? Or does Austen design these clashes in order to bring her self-constructed edifices down? What about the idea that great works contain their own criticism? Or is she arguing that Austen clamps down on her own subversive thoughts, even as she leaves them intact in the text? Although I accept that authors can no longer claim sole authority, as a feminist (>how can one not be?= said Angela Carter), I regret any reading that denies agency to a woman author. Perhaps the relationship between author, reader, and text needs to be seen for what it is: a site of power and struggle. It may be time to invite the author back into the arena. (JOCELYN HARRIS) Barbara E. Kelcey. Alone in Silence: European Women in the Canadian North before 1940 McGill Queen=s University Press. xx, 228. $75.00, $27.95 The author of this fascinating volume is not insensitive to the irony of discussing a group of women who were not a group and about whom the major source capable of making any collective sense of their impact B the Inuit and Dene whose space they invaded - is documentarily silent. Furthermore, speculations about any collective feminine (note my italics!) experience has been rendered an uncomfortable activity since the coining xxxxxxx 410 letters in canada 2001 university of toronto quarterly, volume 72, number 1, winter 2002/3 of the phrase >essentialism.= So, what does Barbara E. Kelcey have here, other than a ragged collection of individual stories, pieced together patchwork? One thing that she has is a subtle investigation of the art of imperialism, played out at the level of the individual. True, many of these women were just following a pair of pants, but nonetheless they had a sense of themselves as sacred vessels of civilization. Else, there is simply no rational explanation whatsoever for all the washing, ironing, and other forms of housekeeping they felt compelled to undertake. In terms of the lady travellers, especially those who went north as some form of travel writer, the imperialism is documented in their comparisons to wherever home was for them and their readers. In terms of the missionaries, imperialism is the blatant agenda: they are there to save souls and saving souls is at least partially measured in change in daily habits. In her introduction, Kelcey provides us with two riveting illustrations of the difficulties she faced in doing this research. One is that she assembled enough fly miles to become a treasured client of the airlines. The other is that her early dedication to keeping a list of all >European...