Pioneer dream in transition : a thematic study of selected works in Canadian prairie fiction / by Vivian Hay. --

The pioneer dream, as a romantic theme in Canadian prairie fiction, portrayed the homesteader's quest for a paradisial life of wealth, freedom and happiness on the Canadian prairie.This same theme, treated in a realistic manner, was expanded to include the harsh personal sacrifices which accompanied the pioneer's romantic quest.This thesis will concentrate upon the novels of three authors that deal with the theme of the pioneer dream: Robert Stead's The Homesteaders (1916), Neighbours (1922), and Grain (1926); Martha Ostenso's Wild Geese (1925); and Frederick Philip Grove's Settlers of the Marsh (1925).The principal concern in this study is the transition from a romantic to a realistic novel in Canadian prairie fiction: Settlers of the Marsh.Wild Geese, and Grain.Stead's The Homesteaders and Neighbours are used to illustrate the romantic traditions of prairie fiction which viewed the West as a Garden of Eden and a golden land of opportunity.This study attempts to show how Stead, Ostenso and Grove decided to recast a theme which for fifty years had fitted perfectly into the fictional mold of the regional idyll.Each author exposes and rejects the materialistic nature of the pioneer dream by revealing both the romantic promise of the prairie and the harsh consequences suffered by the pioneer.In this transition from a romantic to a realistic treatment of a familiar theme, strong new themes emerge in these three novels of 1925: isolation, the narrowmindedness of the pioneer outlook, and the disintegration of the family.The element of spiritual renewal which concludes each novel is cast within the realistic framework of the pioneer's experiences on the Canadian prairie.Vi which romantic elements to retain and which to discard in developing the new realistic thrust of the pioneer dream.Each author did so with varying degrees of aesthetic success in the thematic tension.The entire literary career of Robert Stead reveals an uneasy balance between romanticism and realism.The structure of Wild Geese projects an ironic tension between romanticism and realism which is developed effectively.Settlers of the Marsh blends realism with melodramatic characterization and the romantic dream of Niels Lindstedt for perfect happiness.Thus the term "realistic fiction" should not be applied in any purist sense to the historical watershed represented by these novels of 1925.The term, realistic fiction, when applied to the thematic direction of Settlers of the Marsh.Wild Geese, and Grain refers to the subject matter which created an ironic tension.Romantic interpretations of the pioneer dream had dealt only with the idyllic vision of the prairie as a golden land of opportunity.The novels of 1925 in addition emphasized the darker aftermath of the pioneer dream, the personal price which the pioneer paid in attempting to achieve his romantic vision.In Grove's Settlers of the Marsh, the romantic dream of an innocent young settler, Niels Lindstedt, leads to harsh tragic consequences.In Ostenso's Wild Geese, the materialistic obsession of Caleb Gare is the instrument of destruction for his own family.In Stead's Grain, an unquestioned acceptance of the pioneer dream leads to the destruction of Gander*s personal life.These harsher aspects of prairie homesteading which were virtually ignored by the romantic regional idyll, are included in the more ironic pattern of life portrayed in realistic prairie fiction.Despite the popularity of the purely romantic regional idyll, novels which provided a thematic tension between romanticism and realism did exist before 1925 among Canadian prairie novels.Even the earliest pioneer novel.Dot It Down (1871), written by Alexander Begg, is more than a sentimental love story set in the Red River Settlement as it provides "considerable accurate description of the conditions in both the Red River Settlement and the surrounding area, especially concerning the buffalo hunts, the farming techniques, the religious life, the political situation, and the dichotomy between the influences on the life of the g settlement from Canada and the United States."The lesser known pioneer novels of such early twentieth-century authors as H. H. Bashford and E. A. Wharton Gill represent the gradual shifting of the romantic view of prairie homesteading held by their popular contemporaries.Stringer, McClung, and 7 Connor, to a more realistic view.In The Manitoban; A Romance (1904), H. H. Bashford conveys the double-edged nature of the pioneer dream within the conventional sentimental love plot.The English hero expresses his romantic dream of the Canadian prairie to his beloved: *'It*s the goal of my desires.And it will be just the sort of life I love.And in time 1*11 get land, and cattle, and wheat."... [He] had been exultant as the gates of this promised land had swung open before him, with its visions of limitless prairies and its glamour of galloping and gold.®Bashford soon satirizes this romantic illusion about Canadian homesteading in an ironic encounter between Charlie, a young English immigrant, and the Canadian farmers at the prairie train station: •'Are you goin* to work fer old man Luke?" he asked."... You'll like it," he said."It*s like Heaven," said another."There's no night there," observed a third.®In a romantic Victorian scene where neighbouring homesteaders are gathered before a parlour piano, Bashford conveys Charlie's poignant realization of the dichotomy represented by the pioneer dream: And a strange and rather battered little community it was, recruited from various lonely shanties, gathered here in Jack's parlour and wrapped about by the greatness of the plains-men, who had grown proof against disappointment and content with hardship, hiding with an instinctive unselfishness their several difficulties....And poverty-how poor they were, how absolutely dependent on each year's crop for the maintenance of home and independence.And glamourhow long ago it had fled away before the stern realities of mortgaged, land and frozen wheat, debts, and folly and bad luck. . . .At the close of the song the picture [of an English garden] vanished suddenly-and there again were the white plains, frozen, empty, immeasurable, and here were Jack and Tom and the rest in the little lean-to parlour.^®Despite the harshness of prairie homesteading, one of Charlie's neighbours decides to return to Canada after a brief visit to England: What Canada offered the new settler was set out in the Dominion Lands Act first enacted in 1872, and subsequently amended, though not altered in principle.Under this legislation the settler was granted a quarter section of free land, provided he lived on it and cultivated it for a period of three years.Moreover, an additional 160 acres, adjoining the initial holding could be placed under a three year pre-emption to purchase.A settler had to become a British subject before obtaining the final patent to his land.^®This statute attracted many settlers from Europe and also from Eastern Ontario, among them Nellie McClung*s family, the Mooneys from Chatsworth in Grey County in 1880 and Robert J. C. Stead*s family from Middleville in Lanark County in 19 1882.Nellie McClung, in Clearing in the West, writes of the evening that her family listened spellbound to the tales which a young man told of his farming experiences on the Canadian prairie where "strawberries were so plentiful and luscious that his oxen's feet were red with them as he 20 ploughed the willing sod."According to McClung, this romantic vision of a golden land of opportunity incited her parents to pack up and move West.Such unbounded optimism about the potential of prairie homesteading was supported by Clifford Sifton, the federal Minister of the Interior, who promoted the pioneer dream through North American newspaper advertisements and pamphlets.The titles of these pamphlets from the Department of the Interior were meant to entice Canadians who were farming unproductive land, Americans whose frontier lands were rapidly disappearing, and Europeans whose rigid class ^^Ibid.■p. 83.

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