The Gothic Canadian Century

This book provides a comprehensive account of Canadian gothic literature throughout the nineteenth century, including little-known texts that were popular in their day but have since sunk into oblivion. Based on the various American Gothic subgenres discussed in detail, it establishes the Frontier Gothic, French-Canadian Gothic, Exploration Gothic, Orientalist Gothic, and Female Gothic as the major Canadian gothic subgenres. The book theorizes Canada's unhomely beginnings and traces the responding development of Canadian gothic literature, while relating textual analyses to the British and American gothic traditions. The book discusses the Canadian texts' responses to land, historical trauma, frontier experience, nation-building, colonial ideologies of conquest, rifts between Old and New World values, as well as anxieties about French and British neglect and American domination, national identity, and fears of the national and cultural 'other.' Women's texts responded vigorously to conventional gender beliefs, marriage laws, and patriarchal domination of women, while employing the gothic mode to imagine rebellious and gender-bending behavior and more egalitarian or unfettered lives for women. The book also teases out the gaps in terms of coloniality and enslavement and shines a light on the ghosts of the dispossessed Natives and enslaved Africans wherever they dared to appear.


CONTENTS


1. Introduction 1
Preface 1 · Gothic Semantics 4 · The Book 7


2. America's Unhomely Beginnings and Gothic Literatures 11
The Frontier Gothic 16 · The Exploration Gothic 22 · The Enslavement Gothic 25 · The Foundational Gothic 33 · The Domestic and the Female Gothic 35 · The Psychological Gothic 62


3. Canada's Unhomely Beginnings 70


4. Canada's Frontier Gothic: John Richardson and Catharine Parr Traill 88
John Richardson's Wacousta; or, the Prophecy, A Tale of the Canadas 88 · John Richardson's The Canadian Brothers; or, The Prophecy Fulfilled, A Tale of the Late American War 101 · Catharine Parr Traill's Canadian Crusoes: A Tale of the Rice Lake Plains 114


5. French-Canadian Gothic: Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé, William Kirby, Gilbert Parker, Susan Frances Harrison 122
Julia Beckwith Hart's St. Ursula's Convent; or, The Nun of Canada and Tonnewonte; or, The Adopted Son of America. A Tale, Containing Scenes From Real Life, By an American 123 · Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's Les Anciens Canadiens (The Canadians of Old) 128 · William Kirby's The Golden Dog 133 · Gilbert Parker's The Seats of the Mighty. Being the Memoirs of Captain Robert Moray, Sometime an Officer in the Virginia Regiment, and Afterwards of Amherst's Regiment 138 · Susan Frances Harrison's The Forest of Bourg-Marie 146


6. Canada's Exploration Gothic and Orientalist Gothic: James De Mille, John Richardson 161
James De Mille's A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder 161 · John Richardson's The Monk Knight of St. John, A Tale of the Crusades 172


7. Unhomely Beginnings of the Female Gothic 180


8. Canada's Female Gothic Set in Europe: Ellen Kyle Vavasour Noel, May Agnes Fleming, Louisa Annie Murray 196
Ellen Kyle Vavasour Noel's "The Abbey of Rathmore" 196 · May Agnes Fleming's The Baronet's Bride; or, A Woman's Vengeance 202 · Louisa Annie Murray's The Cited Curate 217


9. Canada's Female Gothic Set in North America: Ellen Kyle Vavasour Noel, May Agnes Fleming, Joanna Ellen Wood 230
Ellen Kyle Vavasour Noel's "Grace Raymond, or The Slave's Revenge" 230 · May Agnes Fleming's Sybil Campbell; or, The Queen of the Isle 238 · Joanna Ellen Wood's A Daughter of Witches: A Romance 255


10. Conclusion: The Gothic Canadian Century 273


Bibliography 279