Representations of Canada's Social Prospects to British Middle-class Emigrants in Susanna Moodie's <i>Roughing It in the Bush</i> (1852)

Before migrating from England to Canada West or to British Columbia in the late 1850s and 1860s, many middle-class emigrants had read the colonial testimonies or colonial autobiographies which were then available in Britain. I will begin by studying this new popular genre and more particularly the volumes written by female middle-class emigrants who, for the first time, revealed the living conditions awaiting men and women of their own class in British North America, should they make the 'painful' choice of emigration. Then I will analyse one of the most famous colonial autobiographies, Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush. Her book, published in England in 1852, became very popular among aspiring middle-class emigrants. I will pay attention to the didactic message and representations Mrs Moodie conveys to her readers about Canada and its social prospects for penniless educated genteel families. The personal narrative of her new life as an emigrant in the New World can be read as a religious and spiritual quest for a better world, while leaving behind a money-driven Old World. In her representations of the New World, she endowed Canada with many moral virtues and definitely praised the social qualities of this new 'city upon the hill'. She even sang its meritocratic merits in patriotic overtones and heralded an age of Social Christianity for Canada, against the social and moral demons represented by the Old Mother Country. However, the representations she gives of Canada are not destined to the British reading public as a whole. She selects the emigrants she deems 'worthy' of this New (Christian) World among the 'honest sons of poverty', that is, distressed genteel families like hers, who were forced to emigrate because of social and financial contingencies. She encouraged these people to leave the Old World behind and to join other 'deserving' emigrants in Canada by promising them the Bourgeois Dream they had failed to achieve at home, only after experiencing some spiritual and physical hardship in the backwoods. Such representations must have had an impact on the emigrants' decision to emigrate and on their choice of a final destination in Canada, Canada West or British Columbia. IN THE COURSE OF RESEARCH on colonial discourses by middle-class women who emigrated to Canada after 1815, I came to study private letters written by female emigrants who had settled in British Columbia in the 1850s and 1860s. The colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island were later developments within the British Empire, as they were created respectively in 1849 and in 1858. This meant that before settling in these 'jewel(s) of the Crown' - as they were described in emigration pamphlets - English middle-class emigrants had had the opportunity to select their destination from among other Canadian colonies before heading West. In reading their private correspondence, one understands that these educated emigrants made a conscious decision to move to the Pacific coast after reviewing the pros and cons of each Eastern or Maritime colony. Men and women - as the life decision to emigrate had become a family choice for Victorian couples - mention having read several books on emigration among the large number available in England in the 1850s in order to get a clearer view of the opportunities offered in Canada.1 Unlike the previous generation of genteel families who had settled in Canada between 1815 and the 1840s, when only pamphlets and a few travel narratives were available, middle-class families considering emigration to the New World benefited in the 1850s and '60s from first-hand experience in the form of personal accounts written by emigrants. But what representation of Canada were they given in published travel narratives? Typically, between 1815 and 1840, the main literature on Canada provided for settlers had been limited to the publication of emigration pamphlets written by individuals or promoted by the Colonial Office or, in the 1830s, by publishers sponsored by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. …

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