Writing of the Self in New Brunswick and Quebec

Abstract

THE LAST DECADES HAVE WITNESSED A SURGE OF INTEREST in autobiographical writings.1 Whether one looks at this as the ref lection of a narcissistic world, or as a withdrawal from the study of structures and collective entities, there is a proliferation of literary and of scholarly works in literature and in history based on the “writings of the self”: journals, letters, memoirs, and autobiographies. In France this is largely due to Philippe Lejeune, who has been collecting unpublished autobiographical writings, analyzing them, and making them available to a wider audience. We are indebted to him for the concept of the “autobiographical pact,” where the reader must assume that the author is telling the truth.2 The mining of these autobiographical texts has given rise to some outstanding contributions to the cultural and social history of Canada and of Quebec, and especially to the history of women. The two books under review are examples of the best of this type of scholarship: Gail Campbell’s “I Wish I kept a Record”: Nineteenth-Century New Brunswick Women Diarists and Their World and Patricia Smart’s Writing Herself into Being: Quebec Women’s Autobiographical Writings from Marie de l’Incarnation to Nelly Arcan.3 Both Campbell’s work on 19th-century women in New Brunswick and Smart’s study of Quebec women from New France to the 20th century demonstrate how the same kind of sources provide historians with evidence for a range of topics. Just as the census, government reports, and newspaper columns help us reconstruct historical experiences in different periods and at different times, personal writings such as diaries and letters also provide a rich well of information on the experiences and the perceptions of people during