Raising Consciousness and Raising Hell: Ladies and Gentlemen on the Canadian Frontier

Review article Raising Consciousness and Raising Hell: Ladies and Gentlemen on the Canadian Frontier ELIZABETH HOPKINS Marion Fowler, The Embroidered Tent. Five Gentlewomen in early Canada. Toronto: Anansi, 1982. 239 pp. Patrick A. Dunae, Gentlemen Emigrants. From the British Public Schools to the Canadian Frontier. Vancouver: Douglas and Mcintyre, 1981. 276 pp. Marion Fowler's The Embroidered Tent is one of the most amusing and readable examples of historical biography to appear in recent years. Her lively portraits of five women, who often are only given official status as grandes dames of Canada's cultural past, reveal them as active and colourful human beings. Furthermore, Fowler presents the five women as prototypes for twentiethcentury Canadian womanhood, a theme that is both topical and appealing to many contemporary readers. Patrick A. Dunae's Gentlemen Emigrants does much to rescue some of our frontierforging forefathers from the oblivion of archival vaults. His study of the eccentric, sometimes pathetic, characters who tried to recreate the milieu of the British gentleman from the backwoods of Upper Canada to the gold fields of British Columbia is full of names and anecdotes that will delight regional history enthusiasts. Dunae unifies his wide-ranging study by suggesting that these figures were the architects of much that we still revere in the structure of Canadian society. The roots of our legal, administrative, business and cultural institutions is a compelling subject at this time of transition for so many of them. The reading public's enthusiasm for Canada 's past is being nurtured by new hybrids like these in the fields of social history and·literary biography. Wishing to appeal to a wider readership than specialists in these fields, writers and publishers are creating 158 contemporary angles to make their studies of our heritage obviously relevant to our here and now. The past, a product of its own times and conditions, is presented in terms of present values and issues. Unfortunately, the result is sometimes a confusing version of history and a shaky explanation of modern conditions, leaving the reader ultimately frustrated and disappointed. For example, Fowler's thesis that the five gentlewomen she discusses share with their present-day descendants the desire and opportunity to free themselves from restrictive behavioural stereotypes is a fascinating idea, and the book is likely to be read by those with an interest in the women's movement as well as by those interested in history, literature and biography. But her treatment of historical biography in the light of this thesis may mislead the first group and disappoint the second one. A book with an awkward thesis can contain originality and depth in its research and revelation of historical fact. Fowler, however, has limited herself primarily to standard published works and obvious archival material in recreating the stories of her five gentlewomen. Unpublished letters, diaries and journals from which their published works were selected exist for each of the five women and would seem to be fair sources for revelation of their private reactions to their Canadian experiences. But Fowler gives no new facts about Elizabeth Simcoe, Catharine Parr Traill, Susanna Moodie, Anna Jameson and Lady Dufferin. There are some interesting references to eighteenth - and nineteenth-century courtesy and conduct books in Fowler's recreation of the early education of these women, but the real significance of such role learning in the nineteenth century is not discussed. (Could this be because such an examination would reveal its value in its own time, no matter how restrictive it appears today?) What seems to be new is really the result of speculation: Did Elizabeth Simcoe and Thomas Talbot have a secret romance? What were Thomas Traill and J.W.D. Moodie really like? Was Anna Jameson's summer ramble really the psychological turning-point of her life? Can Lady Dufferin be considered as a prototype of Canadian womanhood? These questions make Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 18, No. 3 (/111/omne 1983 Fall) the book controversial rather than historically interesting, and seem to be attempts to animate otherwise mundane evidence. If the latter is the case, then Fowler should have trusted her own energetic and humorous treatment of the facts concerning her subjects to guarantee...