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Roughing It in the Bush

Susanna Moodie,

Michael Peterman (Editor)

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Nov 18, 2019 Manybooks rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: history, biographies-memoirs, immigration-moving, too-whiny, book-reviews

Truth be told from an academic and literary history, cultural point of departure, it indeed needs to be pointed out that many (and in particular women) scholars do tend to now consider and approach British/Canadian author and memoirist Susanna Moodie as a 19th century (and therefore early) feminist (and yes, Susanna Moodie and her sisters certainly did seem to have had both an enviable amount of both basic and advanced education, ample opportunities for writing and even having their authorial en Truth be told from an academic and literary history, cultural point of departure, it indeed needs to be pointed out that many (and in particular women) scholars do tend to now consider and approach British/Canadian author and memoirist Susanna Moodie as a 19th century (and therefore early) feminist (and yes, Susanna Moodie and her sisters certainly did seem to have had both an enviable amount of both basic and advanced education, ample opportunities for writing and even having their authorial endeavours published at a time when this was not at all common for girls and women both in England and most likely globally, and furthermore that all of the Strickland sisters indeed presented for the 19th century quite emancipatory attitudes with regard to gender issues and slabery in particular).

However and the above having been said, I also and personally have to admit and categorically claim that I have since I first had to in detail peruse Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush (her memoirs about immigrating to and settling with her husband in 19th century Canada) for a grade eleven English term paper on early Canadian writing considered Susanna Moodie’s musings and details about her and her husband’s immigrant experiences not much more than basically and sadly just a generally constant and bickering whine-fest, a litany and laundry list of one complaint after another.

For while of course and naturally, settling in 19th century Canada (or rather in what would later become the country of Canada, and the province of Ontario) could be harsh and difficult, the recurring and overwhelming complaints and even at times angry outbursts seemingly always emanating from Susanna Moodie’s pen in Roughing it in the Bush about basically everything from the weather to the fact that her new home was not like the genteel British countryside she and her husband had left behind upon emigration, this to and for my reading eyes (both when I read Roughing it in the Bush for school and when I recently tried a reread) have certainly and very quickly become both tedious and annoying, leaving me with the indelible and sad impression that Susanna Moodie’s writing talents and her sense for and of adventure and imagination notwithstanding, she is I am sorry to say and in my opinion first and foremost a frustratingly pampered and rather spoiled British bourgeois who whines and bellyaches way way too much in Roughing it in the Bush when her immigrant and settlement experiences are not what she had assumed they would and probably should be (for it is indeed abundantly clear that Susanna Moodie obviously and wrongfully expected that her settling in the “bush” would not be all that unlike living in rural England). ...more

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