Gathering Up the Threads: Generic and Discursive Patterns in Catherine Parr Traill's "The Backwoods of Canada"

T o my husband, B r i a n Roach, f o r loving support and countless cups o f coffee, and t o my son, Levi Roach, who has only vague memories of when his mother wasn't writing her thesis and has grown t o be my most reliable stylistic critic.the other in the second year of life), a devastating fire which destroyed the family home and most of their possessions (including her books and manuscripts), widowhood after twenty-seven years of marriage (to which she responded by donning mourning for the next fifteen years), and the brutal murder of her son at the hands of two penitentiary prisoners (earning him the dubious fame of being the first prison guard in Canada to be killed on duty).For most of her life in Canada she faced financial hardship, and she and her family depended a great deal on the small amounts of cash she gained through writing, sewing, and preparing collections of flowers, ferns and mosses for sale.Yet, despite hardships which would have driven most people to despair, Traill remained amazingly positive and unselfish throughout her long life.Members of her extended family, including the children of her sister, Susanna, were obviously devoted to her, and the letters she wrote in her final days, at the age of ninety-seven, indicate an intense concern for others and bear witness to the vibrancy of her personality.Until the recent publication of Charlotte Gray's Sisters in the Wilderness: The Lives of Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill, extant biographies of Traill consisted of little more than rewritten accounts of material from The Backwoods of Canada, from the autobiographical essays included in her 1894 collection, Pearls and Pebbles, and from the introduction to the latter text (produced by Traill's niece, Agnes Fitzgibbon).Gray's biography, although written for a popular rather than critical audience, provides fresh perspectives on her life as well as a thoughtful, and even at times provocative, reading of the relationship between Traill and her sister Susanna Moodie.Yet, for the purpose of detailed critical consideration, Traill's extant letters continue to provide some of the richest biographical material currently available.I Bless You in MY Heart: Selected Corres~ondence of Catharine Parr Traill, edited by Ballstadt, Hopkins and Peterman, includes both a comprehensive selection of her letters and a series of detailed introductions to periods of her life.These introductory sectionswhich highlight events in her family life and writing career, presenting a multi-facetted portrait of Traill as a writer, a wife and a mother, while raising relevant biographical questionsassisted significantly in the following brief biographical overview.Catharine Pan (Strickland) Traill (1802-99) was the fifth of eight children -six girls and two boys -born to Thomas and Elizabeth Strickland into what was to become an amazingly literary family.Over the course of the nineteenth century, six of the Stricklands became published writers.Agnes, Catharine's second oldest sister, became the most famous member of the family with the publication of a twelve-volume popular history of The Oueens of England (this was actually co-authored with her sister Eliza, whom Carl Ballstadt suggests did most of the research and writing, but chose to stay out of the literary limelight) and also developed a reputation as a poet.15Jane, the fourth daughter, wrote a history of Rome and a biography of her sister Agnes, while Catharine's youngest sister, Susanna (Moodie) published poetry, novels and sketches, as well as her best-known travelhettler's narrative, Rou~hinp; It in the Bush.All of the Strickland girls, except for Sara, also worte children's stories.Perhaps inspired by the success of his sisters' publications, and encouraged by Agnes whom he was visiting at the time (Gray 215-16), Traill's younger brother Samuel also produced an account of settler life in Canada, entitled Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West.As was the case with many pre-twentieth-century women writers, the literary achievements of the Strickland sisters were rooted in their father's idiosyncratic determination to provide his daughters with the kind of solid academic education usually reserved for boys, and the controlled use he allowed the girls to make of an extensive personal library which included annotated books that once belonged to Sir Isaac Newton, a great-uncle of Thomas's first wife.16The academic programme he designed for the girls included the study of classics, mathematics, science, literature, geography and history, and probably French and Italian as well (Ballstadt, "Catharine Parr Traill" 1: 150).This "masculine" education was not conferred at the expense of more conventional feminine achievements, however: Eliza, Agnes, Jane, Sara, Susanna and Catharine were all required to study "household management, deportment, needlework, sketching, and other skills befitting a lady of the times" (Moms 18).As well as teaching their children scholarly and practical skills, the Strickland parents also insisted on a high degree of self-reliance.Rather than purchasing toys for his children, for example, their father would provide them with the materials and tools to complete a suggested project, and then leave them to "find out the right way" to proceed (Thomas, "The Strickland Sisters" 44).Catharine and her sisters also had to "learn to raise and care for their pets, and monitor their own gardens" (Petennan, "A Tale of Two Worlds" 97).While the girls were encouraged to freely discuss and debate ideas, they were l5 Ballstadt explores the professional relationship between the Strickland sisters in detail in his 1965 thesis, 'The Literary History of the Strickland Family."l6 Elaine Showalter explores the close relationships of many women writers with fathers who "supervised their daughters' education" in A Literature of Their Own (62).Traill drew a parallel between the Strickland childhood and that of the Brontes in one of her journals: "Began reading for the second time the life of Charlotte Bronte.There is so much in this book that reminds me of our own early years -were I to write a history of the childhood of the S-to family which I am often prompted to do, how many things there would be that would remind the reader of the early days of the Brontes" (Ballstadt, Hopkins and Peterman 264).Company, 1846-1862, p. 35 and 44, held in the Clowes Museum in Beccles, Suffolk (lxvi, footnote #54).' 08 One misconception frequently dispelled was the harshness of Canadian winters (Keon 127), a topic Traill addresses at the beginning of letter thirteen.In response to an unidentified correspondent, Traill writes "You say you fear the rigours of the Canadian winter will kill me.I never enjoyed better health, nor so good, as since it commenced.There is a degree of spirit and vigour infused into one's blood by the purity of the air that is quite exhilarating.The very snow seems whiter and more beautiful than it does in our damp vapoury climate" (149).

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