Looking at Roughing It In The Bush as a colonial memoir or work of creative fiction (Paterson), Moodie’s story is full of her experiences and reflections. Moodies interactions, feelings, interpretations of events, and actions have all influenced her understandings, and as such have been carried forward into this text.
Susanna Moodie emigrated to Upper Canada in 1832 with her husband and newborn son (Ballstadt). Though Roughing It was not published until 1852, the lingering homesickness (Thurston 64) of the “wise and revered institutions of [her] native land” (Moodie, “Introduction” n.p.) comes through within the introduction.
Moodie starts her reader’s journey with some thoughts on the emigrant’s experience: “they go forth to make for themselves a new name and to find another country, to forget the past and to live in the future, to exult in the prospect of their children being free and the land of their adoption great” (n.p.). It is within this that we are given the first glimpse into the “gift from God” (Moodie, “Chapter Two” n.p.). Canada is, at first glance, a place where the “impoverish families” (Moodie, “Introduction” n.p.) can find salvation.
Upon a second, or even third, glance, Canada is not all that it was advertised to be. Just like when Eve and Adam were cast out of the first garden, Moodie and other Canadians found themselves within this new wilderness – “sent forth into the forest to hew out the rough paths for the advance of civilization” (n.p.).
This barren, wasted land – advertised as “lands yielding forty bushels to the acre” (n.p.) offered a promise that was not to be, once again validating Moodie’s understanding that she was performing a obligation. Unlike thriving Quebec city, Moodie and her family were settled in the backwoods, where they and their neighbours suffered many hardships previously unaccustomed to in their gentile life in England.
But, the land was mapped, and required settlers to form a nation. Moodie played her part – performed her duty – and helped to create a nation from nothing.
And nothing is what there was. At least, if we were to read her introduction as a stand alone document, we would believe her. For the one experience that Moodie recounts within her story, which does not make it into the introduction is her ‘Indian Friends’ (Moodie, “Chapter Fifteen” n.p.). This exclusion, when read within this time of decolonization, screams out. It is as if they truly vanished. They were not a part of her previous life, and insignificant of a reference.
As mentioned within lesson 2:3, “the many biographical transformations of Susanna Moodie were, for a long time, motivated by literary desires to re-make Moodie into “the pioneer of Canadian Literature” (Thurston 5)” (Paterson). From a colonial perspective, this is the perfect idea: what better way to pave the way for national identity then highlight a purely Canadian experience – an experience of the ancestors of Canada coming and making our current home on this now tamed wilderness? She is doing God’s work; she is being the dutiful wife, following her husband in his search for financial security.
Moodie’s account can almost as efficiently as those who modified traditional stories (Wickwire) verify the ‘vanishing Indian’. “What was a memoir becomes a fiction and history becomes myth” (Paterson).
When Sue Moodie arrives as a character within a work of fiction – arriving with Polly Johnson in Green Grass, Running Water, we – the reader have the opportunity to see Moodie give acknowledgement to First Peoples literacy. Literacy in this sense being both ways of knowing and ‘literature’. This is a big step in changing how Canadians view the author of “chapter 1 of Canadian Literature” (paterson), and the story that Roughing It brings forth. King does not do away completely with Sue’s attitude however: Polly is still a ‘friend’.
Where King begins to incorporate his irony into this ‘resurrection’ (Paterson) of Roughing It is in Sue Moodie’s praise of the smells within the Dead Dog Cafe. Within her introduction to Roughing It, Moodie’s description of her new ‘home’ – a den “of dirt and misery, which would, in many instances, be shamed by an English pig-sty” (n.p.) – brings the reader a preview of her opinion on how her ‘Indian Friends’ lived: within “dirty wigwams” where she “never could bring [herself] to taste anything prepared” within (“Chapter Fifteen” n.p.).
Tells us how you truly feel about the smells Sue Moodie…
King has us questioning the role of Roughing It, and challenging the notion of it being a colonial memoir.
Moodie’s level of awareness of the experiences – the interactions, feelings, interpretations of events, and memories – that she brings with her into Roughing It appears high. When one looks at Thurston’s analysis, we see that Moodie “reconstructs these dialogues” (141) that she includes within her work. She modifies, and “reproduces conversations to relieve the seriousness of the surrounding prose, and sometimes to portray character” in a particular manner (141).
Moodie knows how to attract an audience, and knows what her duty is to her family, and her new country. She compiles a work of entertainment – of sketches and poetry – to capture her story; to capture a particular narrative.
Works Cited
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