Atwood’s Re-Creation of Pioneer Susanna Moodie in The Journals of Susanna Moodie

Mrs. Moodie is divided down the middle . . . She claims to be an ardent Canadian patriot while all the time she is standing back from the country and criticizing it as though she were a detached observer, a stranger. Perhaps that is the way we still live. We are all immigrants to this place even if we were born here: the country is too big for anyone to inhabit completely, and in the parts unknown to us we move in fear, exiles and invaders.[i]

In The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Atwood constructs a usable past of Susanna Moodie an early Canadian pioneer and diarist. Based on Moodie’s journal Roughing it in the Bush, Atwood’s poems explore Susanna’s experiences as a European settler—“a stranger”—and the relevancy of these experiences to Canada’s present search for a distinct identity. Atwood eliminates much of the detailed narrative of Moodie’s journals to emphasize Susanna’s internal struggle, but Atwood reflects Moodie’s ambivalence towards the role of the wilderness in the transformation of the settler. In The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Margaret Atwood re-creates Susanna Moodie’s struggle to establish an identity by eliminating lengthy prose, omitting specific details, and reflecting Moodie’s ambivalence towards the wilderness to achieve a coherence between Canada’s past experience of creating an identity and Canada’s present search for a distinct cultural identity.

By omitting specific names, dates, and locations originally in Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush, Atwood aims to re-create a “Susanna Moodie” who exists outside of time. In her journals, Moodie specifies names, dates, and locations to accurately portray her personal experiences. These details give Moodie’s writings a temporary relevancy to the period when she wrote them and a status as history that may or may not be applicable to the present.

Atwood eliminates almost all of these details. In The Journals of Susanna Moodie, Atwood’s poems accumulatively contain only one name, one date, and six place names. Of these details, Atwood provides only two in the body of her poems, and the rest appear in her titles. Contained in the titles, these details provide a setting or subject for a poem, but they become secondary in importance as they do not form an intrinsic part of the poem’s narrative. The two locations identified in the bodies of her poems emphasize an absence. In “First Neighbours,” Susanna yearns for England but she states that the country has vanished: “I tightened my lips; knew that England / was now unreachable, had sunk down into the sea / without ever teaching me about washtubs.”[ii]  Susanna claims that England no longer exists; thus, the reference to England extends outside of time as she yearns for the past but she is not contained in it. Susanna has moved forward, but England was temporal and now in the past. In “Solipsism While Dying,” Atwood emphasizes Susanna’s now ghost-like presence with the lower and upper case lettering of “toroNTO.”[iii]  The lettering likens Susanna’s voice with a whisper or the sound of a gust of wind. These characteristics suggest that her voice lacks weight or substance. While Susanna’s voice is present, her figure is not; thus, Atwood suggests that the message of Susanna’s experiences are still relevant to Canada’s search for a cultural identity despite the temporality of her mortal figure. Otherwise, the unnamed country and its inhabitants remain foreign. By omitting names, dates, and locations, Atwood creates a timeless Susanna Moodie and links her estranged figure to Canada’s present anxieties.

Atwood further develops the timeless nature of Susanna’s figure by replacing lengthy social critiques with concise phrasing. In Roughing it in the Bush, Moodie commonly uses dialogue to support her underlying social critique of the Canadian culture. In “The Charivari,” Mrs. O expresses the atrocities of the French-Canadian custom through a series of anecdotes. While Moodie responds to Mrs. O’s explanations, she ultimately withholds comment at the conclusion of the conversation when Mrs. O proposes that the charivari can be beneficial: “I assure you, Mrs. Moodie, that the charivari often deters old people from making disgraceful marriages, so it is not wholly without its use.”[iv] Moodie attributes this controversial evaluation of the chaivari to Mrs. O and removes herself from the comment to avoid responsibility. Moodie also asserts through dialogue that society may become civilized by eliminating the unlawful tradition, but Mrs. O’s argument of its beneficial aspects suggests that Canada’s inhabitants are unwilling to change. The lengthy evaluation of the charivari emphasizes its temporality, as it may be removed, and Moodie’s underlying critique becomes embedded in details.

Atwood’s poetry eliminates Moodie’s “discursive and ornamental” prose and attributes all critiques to Susanna.[v] In “Charivari,” Atwood summarizes the tradition’s violent nature in three stanzas. The poem continues with a note that addresses the reader. In this note, Susanna asserts that people guilty of inaction are bystanders of the violence. The note’s diction expresses an unconscious transformation of the mind and of the citizen’s appearance as a participant in a native ceremony: “take care / to look behind, within / where the skeleton face beneath / the face puts on its feather mask, the arm / within the arm lifts up the spear: / Resist those cracked / drumbeats. Stop it. Become human.”[vi] This note exemplifies Susanna’s fears of indigenization and her recognition that she cannot avoid this transformation. Furthermore, Atwood’s claim that the violent tradition is “part of the soil”[vii] suggests that, rather than being temporary, the violent nature of Canada’s past is attached to the land, and it still haunts the present. By editing Moodie’s entries and condensing them to concise phrases, Atwood emphasizes Moodie’s underlying social critique as well as its relevance to the present as an innate part of the Canadian identity.

Atwood’s poetry also reflects Moodie’s personification of the wilderness to emphasize the impact of the land on Susanna’s experiences. In her journals, Moodie presents the wilderness as threatening. In Chapter X, “Brian, The Still-Hunter,” her husband is absent and Moodie is left alone through the night. Every noise frightens her: “Oh, that unwearied brook! how it sobbed and moaned like a fretful child; what unreal terrors and fanciful illusions my too active mind conjured up, whilst listening to its mysterious tones.”[viii] Moodie personifies the wilderness as a frightful presence that surrounds her during the night. In “The Charivari,” however, Moodie draws similarities between the wilderness and the nature of human emotions through her description of the heart’s “mysterious warnings, its fits of sunshine and shade, of storm and calm, now elevated with anticipations of joy, now depressed by dark presentiments of ill” (193). In this statement, human emotions reflect the surrounding state of nature; Moodie becomes intrinsically connected to the wilderness.

Atwood’s poetry reflects Moodie’s ambivalent relationship with nature in relation to her search for an identity. In “Disembarking at Quebec,” Atwood describes nature’s elements as “barren,” “bone-white,” and “alien.”[ix] The desolate landscape ignores Susanna’s presence as the interruptions in her thoughts deny being able to hear her[x] and her reflection is absent in the water.[xi] In this poem, Atwood portrays Susanna’s fear of being estranged from the land. Her lack of connection to the country corresponds to her lack of an identity. Susanna later inhabits characteristics of nature in Atwood’s “Looking in a Mirror.” In this poem, Atwood expresses Susanna’s internal struggle for self-identification as she inhabits physical characteristics of nature, but she still feels foreign. Susanna’s “skin thickened / with bark and the white hairs of roots,”[xii] “the fingers / brittle as twigs,”[xiii] “the mouth cracking /open like a rock in fire.”[xiv] Susanna transforms into a stiff and emotionless being. She connects with nature but she still feels estranged. Atwood emphasizes Susanna’s sense of her lost identity in the final statement of the poem: “you find / only the shape you already are / but what / if you have forgotten that / or discover you have never known.”[xv] Susanna is able to blend in with the elements, but she is unable to forge an identity in this environment. Atwood’s poetry reflects Moodie’s ambivalent representation of nature as she suggests that the wilderness simultaneously becomes a part of her and makes her feel foreign and estranged.

Atwood also reflects Moodie’s animalistic portrayal of Brian the still-hunter and his internal struggles. In Moodie’s journals, Brian mirrors Moodie’s search for an identity, and his isolation fascinates her as he becomes an object of her compassion. Brian vacillates between civility and savagery. Moodie describes his eyes as hawk-like, and when intoxicated, he becomes “as savage and as quarrelsome as a bear.”[xvi] However, Moodie later describes Brian as “a man of benevolence and refinement”[xvii] when he brings milk for her child. In comparison, Atwood’s Brian also searches for his identity. In “Dream 2: Brian the Still-Hunter,” Brian explains that he hunts out of necessity: “I hunt because I have to / but every time I aim, I feel / my skin grow fur / my head heavy with antlers / and during the stretched instant / the bullet glides on its thread of speed / my soul runs innocent as hooves.”[xviii] Atwood’s Brian portrays his adaptation to the Canadian wilderness as he must become savage and animalistic to survive, but Atwood complicates this assertion by noting his willingness to die. Atwood’s Brian claims that he dies “more often than many”[xix] and emphasizes his isolation. Brian’s degree of anxiety causes him to avoid degradation through suicide. Atwood’s “Dream 2: Brian the Still-Hunter” reflects Moodie’s portrayal of Brian’s anxieties, but Atwood’s representation becomes more effective through her concise phrasing.

In Roughing it in the Bush, Susanna Moodie claims that she offers an account of life in Canada’s wilderness and suggests that her readers draw their own interpretations from her writings.[xx] Margaret Atwood answers Moodie’s call. Atwood edits Moodie’s wordy narratives to arrive at a concise portrayal of Susanna that she believes Moodie’s journals convey through the unconscious “other voice running like a counterpoint through her work.”[xxi] Atwood attempts to edit and revise Moodie’s writings to arrive at a concise and more relevant account of these experiences to the present. Atwood’s portrayal of Susanna creates a usable account of a historical figure’s struggle to establish an identity in the vast wilderness of a strange country. Atwood argues that Susanna’s anxieties are still present in Canada, however, her re-creation of Susanna Moodie’s journals become problematic through the supposition that they are a version of history. Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie is an interpretation of this historical figure’s written experiences and as such, must be read with the skeptical eye that is aware of its fictions as well as its facts.