Fragmentary Aesthetics: Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill in the Canadian Bush

Abstract

Chapter Three focusses on the semi-autobiographical accounts of settlement by Susanna Moodie and her sister, Catharine Parr Traill. It argues that the sketch form as practised by Moodie in Roughing it in the Bush (1852) and by Parr Traill in The Backwoods of Canada (1836), is an attempt to counter the tall tales of success circulating in booster literature. In this way, it takes on the concerns raised in the second chapter of what form is suitable for expressing the experiences of settlement. It argues that the sketch is intimately linked to the female experience of settlement: they could be written in the small hours of the night when the day-time chores were finished and children were in bed. Sketches thus capture a sense of these snatched fragments of time and simultaneously evoke the fragmented sensibility which comes when faced with such new surroundings.