This essay examines ways in which Catharine Parr Traill's references to
plants reveal her personal, philosophical, cultural, social, and moral
views, while conveying her own conscious and unconscious feelings about the
conflict involved in her position as a colonizing and colonized woman in
the Canadian landscape. Traill's references are introduced and
contextualized through a discussion of examples of the plants and flowers
described and used by the other "bush ladies": Anna Jameson, Susanna
Moodie, and Anne Langton.
Le prsent article examine comment les rfrences aux plantes de Catharine
Parr Traill rvlent ses opinions personnelles, philosophiques, culturelles,
sociales et morales ainsi que ses sentiments conscients et inconscients au
su] et du conflit pos par sa situation de femme colonisante et colonise au
Canada. Les rfrences de M^sup me^ Traill sont prsentes et mises en contexte
dans le cadre d'une discussion sur des exemples des plantes et fleurs
dcrites et utilises par les autres dames de la brousse : Anna Jameson,
Susanna Moodie et Anne Langton.
Catharine Parr Traill uses a literary discourse to introduce her study of
Canadian plants and landscapes:
Every plant, flower, and tree has a simple history of its own, not without
its interest if we would read it aright. It forms a page in the great
volume of Nature which lies open before us, and without it there would be a
blank,-in nature there is no space left unoccupied. (Traill 1885, 1)
Traill's language strongly encourages readers to "read" nature as a type of
text. Her vocabulary invites us to approach the "volume of Nature" as we do
the written word, treating each "plant, flower, and tree" as a single page
making up a complete work. Her belief is so explicit that it would be
negligent not to note her language and her forceful connection here and
elsewhere between the "pages" and "volumes" of nature and literature.1 Her
conviction about "reading it [plant/page] aright" foregrounds the text
itself, suggesting that there are obvious clues and signs on the plant or
page that can lead us to "correct" readings. The relationship between the
reader and the page is obviously central to the "correct" interpretation of
the text, which relies on the reader's careful attention to the details of
the single page and the connections among pages. Traill's comment that
there is "no space left unoccupied" asserts clearly the Rabelaisian
sentiment that nature abhors a vacuum. It is therefore incumbent on the
reader of nature to participate and respond, and it is this reader-text
relationship that results in the occupation of spaces that might appear
empty at first glance-bare forest floors and blank paper at the end of
chapters, for example. Empty space exists only for the unengaged reader,
who lacks imagination, knowledge, and a holistic view and who thus fails to
perceive connections and relationships. The reader must fill the empty
spaces through a type of "reader response," creating meaning based on a
relationship with the work that includes a knowledge of the surrounding
textual and natural environments. This knowledge reveals life even in the
blanks and spaces, the absence of plants and words conveying as much
meaning and significance as their presence when the dynamic position of the
reader within the textual "ecosystem" is acknowledged.
More than a century and a half ago, Traill was aware that she addressed an
interdisciplinary audience, and she attempted to appeal to the expertise
and interest of both the literary and the scientific reader. This article
today in the Journal of Canadian Studies addresses a similar readership,
giving a current relevance to Traill's explanation in her 1868 preface to
Canadian Wild Flowers:
The scientific reader may possibly expect a more learned description of the
plants and may notice many defects and omissions; while others who are
indifferent to the subject, may on the other hand think that there are too
many botanical terms introduced. It is difficult to please two parties.
(Traill 1868, 8)
She goes on to hope for the best and to wish the reader pleasure in a
volume that obviously explores both botanical and aesthetic issues. The
preface also makes it clear that while taxonomical accuracy and scientific
detachment have their virtues, the authorial perspective is a very personal
one. Our purpose here is to study this authorial perspective, concentrating
on how botanical references reveal Traill's personal, philosophical,
cultural, and social views. We argue that Traill's references to plants and
flowers are highly metaphorical and symbolic, particularly as they reveal
her conscious and unconscious feelings about the conflict involved in her
position as a colonized and colonizing woman in a patriarchal Canadian
society and landscape. If we "read it aright," Traill's thoughtful and
perceptive observations and analysis of the position of Canadian plants and
flowers within their ecosystems reveal assessments of her own position and
circumstances in the "new world."
In "'Splendid Anachronism': The Record of Catharine Parr Traill's Struggles
as a Nineteenth-Century Botanist," Michael Peterman concludes by writing:
... she is also the integrator of those literary and oral traditions (both
rural and native) that reflect and celebrate a holistic sense of nature's
divine and conservative other. The result is that, except among observers
of similar inclinations, her work as natural historian has fallen between
the disciplinary stools of botany and literature both in her century and in
our own. Recognition and understanding of her commitment and achievement
still await Catharine ParrTraill. (1990, 183)
Similarly, in her paper "Science in Canada's Backwoods: Catharine Parr
Traill," Marianne Gosztonyi Ainley suggests that "in the 1990s, it is time
to reevaluate her [Traill's] work" (Ainley 1997, 80).2 In his discussion,
Peterman provides a comprehensive summary of the assessments and treatments
of Traill's botanical work in her own time, pointing out how she suffered
from prejudice against her gender and her amateur status. Despite support,
praise, and advice from established botanists such as John Macoun and James
Fletcher, Traill remained a "natural historian" (Peterman 1990, 177) along
the lines of Gilbert White and Isaak Walton rather than a scientific
botanist or a botanical scientist. This role was partially constructed for
her by those personal circumstances that limited her opportunities and by
her patriarchal society, but it was also self- imposed to some extent by
her own preferences and inclinations. When prevailing scientific methods
did not fit or work, she discarded them, well aware that she was doing so
and even drawing her reader's attention to her rejection of an exclusively
scientific system of her day in favour of a more holistic approach.3 The
role of amateur natural historian as opposed to Darwinian scientist
provided her with the freedom to observe, order, and describe plants in an
ecological manner in a world in which she, like the soil and the air,
interacted with the plants rather than simply identified, named, and
collected them. Ainley argues that Traill falls within the tradition of
American women science writers who "challenged the paternalistic system of
western science" as "part of the emerging North American trend of long-term
life-history studies which, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
were to complement and to some extent supersede the collection-based study
of taxonomy" (1997, 93). Both Peterman and Ainley insist on an originality
and a value in Traill's botanical approach that have not yet been
thoroughly explored or understood, Peterman drawing our attention to "the
gentle way in which she blended her scientific and literary interests"
(1990, 183) and Ainley claiming that Traill's "writing provides a
postcolonial alternative to earlier western scientific texts" (1997, 93).
Indeed, a strong sense of Traill as an almost prescient ecologist and
feminist emerges from her resistance to an exclusively colonial approach to
science and nature. She insists on an interdisciplinary and ecological
style and viewpoint.
Neither the literary nor the botanical critic has seemed very willing to
take on the interdisciplinary task of closely examining the individual
literary and textual specimens within Traill's work. Elizabeth Thompson has
done so in her introductory essay to Traill's "Something Gathers up the
Fragments"; she analyzes specific passages and descriptions in order to
describe Traill's contradictory response to nature. Thompson suggests that
Traill is conscious of these contradictions that arise from clashes between
her attempts as a writer to "document and thereby indirectly to preserve
the Canadian wilderness" and her actions as a "pioneer settler," which
"helped to destroy the natural habitat" (1998, 140). Referring in detail to
Traill's "Fragments" essay, Thompson suggests that Traill "would claim that
man has a right to fashion new world nature to serve his needs, but she
also sees a stable, functioning order within the indigenous landscape, one
which is destabilized and eventually destroyed by human intervention"
(1998, 143). Thompson looks at examples from "Fragments"and elsewhere that
give voice to Traill's awareness of the dichotomy between preservation/
conservation and cultivation/civilization, concluding that "despite her
Christian faith, Traill was never entirely comfortable with an intrusively
imperial ecological role" (148). This feeling of discomfort and
contradiction is expressed in Traill's philosophical musings, but it is
also apparent when Traill describes individual plants and their habitats.
In such passages, she places herself in the ecosystem as the human agent
who, by observing the plants in order to create and communicate their
descriptions and stories, both preserves and threatens their existence.
Many references go further, however, revealing Traill's tension within a
colonial system that can restrain and limit both plants and women by
failing to see them in context and by ignoring important connections and
relationships. As Traill insists on a holistic approach to the natural
ecosystem, so we as readers need to approach Traill's text with a similar
openness to connections, relationships, and contexts.
Contextualizing Traill's Plants: The Literary Landscapes of the Ontario
"Bush Ladies"
Traill is not alone in her use of literal and literary plants to express
her own situation; she is joined by Anna Jameson, Susanna Moodie, and Anne
Langten, referred to as the "bush ladies" by Molly Thorn.4 All four writers
refer to plants and flowers in ways that alert us to their evaluations of
their own relationships with the surrounding landscape, community, and
country. Anna Jameson, for example, trying to describe her feelings of
disappointment upon seeing Niagara Falls, uses a botanical analogy,
declaring "I am no longer Anna-I am metamorphosed-I am translated-I am ...
a fat weed growing on Lethe's bank" (1838, 57). Such use of plant and
flower imagery is of course a familiar trope in nineteenth-century British
literature,5 and it is not surprising that Traill and others should fall
into such conventions. The difference in nineteenth-century Ontario,6
however, is that the plants are new, earthy, and real as well as aesthetic
and symbolicthey are rooted in the ground and entangled in the daily lives
of these writers, who must deal with them on both a practical and a
metaphorical level. Closely intertwined, the plant of the garden and the
plant of the text often describe a literal colonization of the landscape or
environment that reflects the writer's own colonized condition and
colonizing activities. These references, planted firmly and prominently by
these writers, take on layered nuances and meanings for a contemporary
reader, who is able to look back at nineteenth-century culture and
horticulture with a postcolonial perspective, noting the impact of
colonization on the landscape and the community. This is knowledge that we
cannot sweep aside or ignore as readers in the twenty-first century.
Indeed, many of these nineteenth-century botanical references anticipate
the eventual impacts of colonization in an almost prophetic way, inviting
us to take into account the changes that have occurred in the period of
time between the nineteenth-century writing of the text and a
twenty-first-century reading.
In order to contextualize Traill's references, it is helpful to look at a
few examples of the ways in which the other "bush ladies" were describing
and recording plants, translating them from the soil to the page. Anna
Jameson, a visitor to Ontario from December 1836 until August 1837, travels
through the landscape as a tourist instead of settling into it as an
immigrant. Her observations of real plants, along with her literary use of
metaphorical plants in Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, reflect
her positions as a tourist moving across an unfamiliar setting and as a
woman making a transition out of an unhappy marriage. Jameson repeatedly
comments on the prolific displays of wildflowers and plants growing "along
the margin of the forest" (1838, 174). She marvels that these lavish
displays, which are "cultivate[d] with such care in our gardens" in
England, "[flourish] in wild luxuriance in Canada" (238). It is impossible
not to notice the similarity between Jameson herself and these flowers to
which she is so strongly attracted. The unusual opportunity to travel in
the Canadian wilderness provides her with the same free environment
afforded to the wildflowers and plants, all parties breaking free from the
restraints of English cultivation and tradition, leaving behind the rules
and conventions governing the practice of horticulture and the institution
of marriage.
As Jameson works with her emerging independence and "wild" temperament, she
focusses on those elements of nature that share the condition of
"flourishing in wild luxuriance" (238) that she herself is enjoying in the
Canadian wilderness. Jameson is concerned with more than simply the
pleasing aesthetics of the flowers when she tells us that she "can hardly
describe in words" (237) the impact of the forest borders when viewed from
the road. Noting that the scenes are "all either exciting to the fancy, or
oppressive to the spirits, according to the mood one may be in" (237),
Jameson obviously responds to nature by imposing her own mood and emotions
onto the scene, and in Wordsworthian fashion receives back from nature part
of what she has invested.7 Her own feelings of freedom and "flourishing"
are duplicated in the flowers, which initially draw her attention, and are
subsequently invested even further with the qualities she is enjoying in
herself, thereby increasing their power, relevance, and attraction. The
result is more of an identification than an observation, or an
identification arising from the process of observation. It is not
surprising that Jameson, positioned temporarily between England and Canada,
notes the large populations of plants found in these margins or "edges"
that separate and differentiate contrasting environments, in this case the
forest and the road. Theories of permaculture recognize that a border or
edge, defined as the place where "species, climate, soils, slope, or any
natural conditions or artificial boundaries meet" hosts a "productive
landscape" because "the resources from both systems can be used" (Mollison
1994, 26). It is this productive landscape to which Jameson responds and
with which she identifies. Jameson, an English traveller visiting Ontario
benefits as the profuse flowers do from both systems or cultures as she
moves through the edges between them.
As Jameson is attracted to the intense activity of the "margins," she is
also drawn to various species of lichen, a plant community that works to
transform and change the landscape. Both useful and aesthetically pleasing,
the lichen draws Jameson's attention to spaces that are being transformed
and broken down in ways that parallel her own transitions and changes.
Journeying down Lake Huron to Manitoulin Island, Jameson refers to
"successive ledges of picturesque rocks, all fringed with trees and bushes,
and clothed in many places with a species of gray lichen nearly a foot
deep" (1838, 492). With what she refers to as "a sort of anticipative
wisdom" (492), she gathers the lichen, which she later places on the firm
and naked rock upon which she sleeps. She refers to a second practical use
of lichen later in the journey, telling us that the party "dined on a wet
rock, almost covered with that species of lichen which the Indians call
wa'ac, and the Canadians tripe de roche because, when boiled until soft,
and then fried in grease, it makes a dish not unpalatable" (532). In
sleeping and dining on the lichen-covered rock, Jameson positions herself
with the lichens, which are "dual organisms usually composed of a fungus
and an alga" (Raven et al. 1993, 69) and classified as pioneer communities8
because they are "the first organisms to colonize bare rock" (70).
Jameson's "sort of anticipative wisdom" draws attention to a symbolic
significance in the lichen beyond its practical use as mattress and food.
Like the human pioneer community, lichens "help to break the rock apart,
beginning the process of soil formation" (Raven et al. 1993, 70). The
literal "soil formation" resulting from the interaction between the lichen
and rock is comparable to the agricultural activity of the human community,
breaking down surrounding material in order to make way for the
establishment and development of a new culture. Primary succession
initiated by lichens on rocks is remarkably similar to the human pioneer
community's effect on the Ontario environment in general:
All of these changes [initiated by lichen on rock]-increased biomass, soil
development, water retention, and an increased number of life forms-work
together to moderate the harsh conditions under which the pioneer community
has lived. (Raven et al. 1993, 70-71)
Consideration of the colony of lichen on the rock, often succeeded by moss,
raises questions about the symbiosis-"any intimate relationship or
association between members of two or more different species" (Raven at al.
1993, 67)-of this co-evolutionary system-"the interdependent evolution of
two or more species that occurs as a result of their interactions" (65).
The fungus and alga of the lichen enjoy the symbiotic relationship of
mutualism, each giving the other something that is required. The rock, as
the abiotic partner, is not separate or hostile, but is the place or space
upon which mutualism provides conditions for habitat change and succession,
resulting in the introduction of moss, ferns, grasses, and herbs. Jameson's
interest in the lichen directs us to the layered relevance of this
botanical analogy. The parallels between the lichen's colonization of the
rock and the European colonization of Ontario are clear to the reader, and
appropriately situate cultural colonization in the agricultural activity
that changed the face of the landscape.
Anna Jameson's night spent o\n the bed of lichen placed on top of the rock
becomes complex in terms of relationships and symbiosis. The campfire, out
of control, threatens to spread to the lichen bed, while the men clearing a
space to prevent the threat are seen as participating in a moment of
sublimity:
The waves, the trees and bushes and fantastic rocks, and the figures and
faces of the men, caught in the brilliant light as it flashed upon them
with a fitful glare-the rest being lost in deepest shadow. Wildly
magnificent it was! beyond all expression beautiful, and awful too!... I
never beheld such a scene. (Jameson 1838, 492)
The excitement is caused by Jameson's feelings of insignificance in the
face of the power of nature. This experience of the sublime involves an
active response to the element inspiring sublimity as she prolongs and
intensifies the experience. As landscapes are colonized, to quote Michael
Pollen's recent book, The Botany of Desire, we experience the opposite of
sublimity-"the satisfaction of having our way with nature," and we revel in
a sense of our power as we "experience the pleasure of beholding the
reflection of our labour and intelligence in the land" (Pollen 2001,
183-84). For Anna Jameson, the power of this situation lies in nature's
resistance to colonization as it ceases to reflect human labour and
intelligence. Instead, nature threatens the human presence even as it
satisfies the human observer's emotional and aesthetic desires. The ash
from the fire contains prime nutrients that will eventually help to
establish or alter the soil matrix, essentially developing the soil
directly beneath the feet of the human forms illuminated by the fire. The
result is a significant change to the inhabited space in which this
exchange has occurred, leading to secondary succession, "ecological
succession in a habitat that has previously been inhabited" (Raven et al.
1993, 71). As the borders and margins reflect Jameson's position of
transition between two worlds or states, so the lichen on the rock and the
lichen threatened by fire parallel Jameson's personal and deliberate
efforts to transform her old landscapes into new ones.
Traill's sister, Susanna Moodie, is also dealing with old and new
landscapes. Although resigned to her new home, Moodie remains divided
between Canada and England and thus finds herself intensely interested in
relationships and exchanges between the old and new world, including both
cultural and horticultural emigrations and immigrations. For example, she
sends pieces of painted fungus back to England as curiosities (1852,
443-44).9 The fungus is potentially much more than merely a backdrop to be
painted or a curiosity to be offered to readers; the sending of fungus can
be seen as an unconscious reflection of Moodie's yearning to re-root
herself in England. It is impossible to return herself, but she sends back
her art in the form of books and painted curiosities to root itself in the
minds of her audience and admirers; she seems to remain unaware of the
potential sporing and spreading of the actual fungus itself.10 We
understand that the fungus has not made a complete transformation from
nature to art and is thus not subject to the control, requirements, and
parameters of Moodie's skills and creativity. It is still a viable,
independent life form that can potentially perform and act according to its
natural properties. The fungus suggests a "re-patriation" and proliferation
of herself through the "rooting" of her art in England, and, ironically, a
potential role reversal in which the new colony colonizes the old world
colonizer.
Moodie tells us with wonder that she gathers "rare specimens of strange
plants and flowers" from the Canadian wilderness and finds the "rapid
advance of vegetation in Canada [is] astonishing" (1852, 180). She depicts
herself as becoming increasingly aware not only of the numbers and habits
of Canadian plant life, but also of the necessity of approaching the
natural world with pragmatism rather than simply aesthetic appreciation if
she is to adapt and survive. Her interest in the question asked by
Brian-the-Still-Hunter-why the "little, fat, punchy man" (Moodie 1852, 201)
prefers lichens "to fine flowers" (203)-provides Moodie with an opportunity
to let her reader know that she is aware of the potential practical value
of these lichens (Kricher and Morrison 1988, 133-34). Her movement towards
the practical is also reflected in her discussion of the dandelion later in
the text, which leaves no doubt that she herself aids in the "rapid advance
of vegetation in Canada," having become a Canadian force working with the
vegetation rather than a detached observer "gazing" at it with a purely
aesthetic appreciation. Moodie refers to the dandelion as "this neglected
but most valuable plant" (1852, 377). The dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)
belongs to the family Compositae, the largest family of flowering plants,
and one which may be "the most recent family to appear on earth" (Peterson
and McKenny 1968, xxviii). Composite flowering plants "comprise
approximately one-tenth of all plant species" and are themselves an
"unrivalled evolutionary success stor[y]" (Kricher and Morrison 1988, 108).
The dandelion is an "alien" species in Canada, most likely entering the
country from Europe (Szczawinski and Turner 1988, 64), and according to one
account "brought to the New World by traders with the Hudson's Bay Company
at Fort Churchill" (Silverman 1977, 51); the dandelion can thus be seen as
analogous to the aggressive colonial proliferation of European culture in
Canada, as it sends down its taproots, overpowering and pushing aside other
species, both native and introduced, that are unable to compete and adapt
as efficiently.
More importantly, however, the dandelion provides an opportunity for Moodie
and others to respond to it as Canadians rather than as Europeans. Moodie
recognizes that all parts of the dandelion are useful, indeed edible. Ever
open to ways to save time and energy, she delights in discovering that if
"planted in trenches and blanched," the dandelion provides the equivalent
of an English salad "endive," but "is more hardy and requires less care"
than the English equivalent (1852, 377). She attempts to predict the fate
of the dandelion in Ontario:
the time will come ... when this hardy weed, with its golden flowers and
curious seed-vessels, which form a constant plaything to the little
children rolling around and luxuriating among the grass, in the sunny month
of May, will be transplanted into our gardens, and tended with due care.
(Moodie 1852, 377)
This passage resonates with irony. "Tended with due care" for us today
means the systemic application of a variety of herbicides designed to rid
our environment of what is considered by many urban Ontario dwellers to be
the most pestilential of weeds. Instead of "luxuriating among the grass"
with their "constant plaything," children must heed the warning signs
declaring that their natural playgrounds have been poisoned. Instead of
providing an environment and appreciation for the practical purposes and
applications of this plant, we have attacked it as a hostile "alien,"
forcing it to conform to our arbitrary standards of beauty as we position
it as an enemy and victim. In Edible Garden Weeds of Canada, the authors
lament that "there are many people on this continent who are prejudiced
against dandelions, both as a flower and as a vegetable" (Szczawinski and
Turner 1988, 66). Maida Silverman, in A City Herbal, maintains that "when
most people think of a 'weed' it is the Dandelion that most often comes to
mind" (1977, 49). Listed as a weed in Frankton and Mulligan's Weeds of
Canada (1987), the dandelion is also classified as a "landscape weed" in
the Landscape Module of the Ontario Pesticide Training Certification, which
states that "complete weed control in urban areas is often a matter of
aesthetics and the opinion of those using and managing the area" (Ontario
Ministry of the Environment 2002, 2-81). Clearly the prevailing aesthetic
is counter to Moodie's, but what is underscored is the uninformed nature of
the aesthetic. We attempt to destroy or erase the dandelion from our
"place," oblivious to warnings from Susanna Moodie and present-day urban
ecologists, who understand the futility of such attempts to control or
destroy nature. Despite the multitude of practical purposes listed by
Moodie and confirmed by present-day science (Foster and Duke 2000, 145),
the dandelion remains perhaps less understood now than it was in Moodie's
time.
Anne Langton, another of Traill's contemporaries, recorded the events of
her life on the shores of Sturgeon Lake from 1837-1846; in her writing, she
is concerned with creating a domestic space in the landscape, referring to
flowers and plants as they are tamed and cultivated in order to be brought
into harmonious existence with her Ontario life and household. She observes
with interest the successful adaptation and journey of such plants from
wilderness to home. The ox-eye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), like the
dandelion, is a composite and contains anti-inflammatory components
rendering it useful for a number of medicinal purposes (Foster and Duke
2000, 96-97). Like the dandelion, the daisy can also cause dermatological
reactions upon contact, warning perhaps that surface appearances can be
deceiving and plants are not always as innocuous as they seem. Daisies are
now one of the most familiar of all roadside and meadow wildflowers, but
Anne Langton records seeing her first Canadian daisy three years after her
arrival in the country:
The flower that has been contemplated with most delight this season was a
little daisy, which has unaccountably found its way on to our grass plot.
We had none of us seen one for years, and it was greeted by all, in parlour
and kitchen, as an old friend. (Langton 1950, 128)
Although Langton suggests that the daisy is "u\naccountably" present, its
arrival can certainly be accounted for, the daisy having made its way into
Ontario by both accident and design, coaxed and cultivated along the way."
The fact that the daisy is an "old friend" suggests its old world origins;
indeed, like Langton, it "immigrated" to Canada as an introduced species
from Europe (Niering and Olmstead 1979, 372). Unlike Susanna Moodie, who
identifies the daisy with the old world and yearns with homesickness to
"again trod the daisied meadows of England" (1852, 89), Langton welcomes
the daisy to her Ontario garden and into her home. The original aesthetic
gaze may have taken place outdoors or from the indoor parlour and kitchen
out to the grass plot, but Langton is not content to settle for a gaze
alone, as presumably the flowers are gathered and brought inside to join
"more plants in the house" (1950, 189).
For the present-day reader, there is irony in Langton's obvious delight in
her old friend. Undoubtedly, she nurtured and cultivated the plant,
although its subsequent history certainly did not make this necessary in
order for it to flourish. In doing so she introduces, or reintroduces to
her mind, the very "semi- civilization" that she foresees as dooming women:
As long as the lady is necessarily the most active member of her household
she keeps her ground from her utility; but when the state of
semi-civilization arrives, and the delicacies of her table, and the
elegancies of her person become her chief concern and pride, then she must
fall, and must be contented to be looked upon as belonging merely to the
decorative department of the establishment and valued accordingly. (Langton
1950, 128)
Perhaps the daisy is the fitting symbol for a nineteenth-century
"gentlewoman's progress." The gentlewoman's primary appeal over time came
to rest on the "elegancies of her person" (128), and as with any
"gentlewoman" in "semi-civilized" society, woe betide her if she should
step outside her "department." In the decades following its arrival, the
ox-eye daisy colonized Ontario's meadows and roadsides, becoming so
prolific that by 1892 the Ontario Department of Agriculture declared it a
noxious weed. The "Act to Prevent the Spread of Noxious Weeds" of 1911
decreed that "it shall be the duty of every occupant of land or... owner,
to cut down and destroy all Canada thistles, oxeye daisy, wild oats,
ragweed and burdock growing on his land" (Grady 1995, 159). The 1911 act
declared it to be so "troublesome" that owners responsible for having it on
their property were "liable to a fine of not less than $10 nor more than
$20" (1995, 160). Once cultivated, the daisy, like the gentlewoman, is
encouraged to decorate, but only within its prescribed place and station.12
Anne Langton notes the effect of the decaying vegetation caused by the
clearing of the forest and other forms of human interference, including
"the construction of a dam and locks at Bobcaygeon" (1950, 192). The result
of the "immense amount of new decaying matter exposed to the sun" is a
"visitation of ague intensified into fever" (1950, 193), claiming the lives
and health of many.13 Langton implies with accuracy that human interference
in nature has been thoughtless and careless, and she cannot resist the
temptation to use the situation in order to point out the indispensable
position of women: "Now the last woman about the place is on the sick list,
and it is much more difficult to let women's work stand still than men's
work. John has made up his mind that nothing could be done on the farm, but
no bread! no butter! no clean clothes!-this is another matter" (Langton
1950, 194).
Langton's references to the daisy and to the ague-causing, decaying
vegetable matter draw the reader's attention to the decorative and
practical roles assigned to the nineteenth-century female in the Ontario
household. Moodie's botanical discussions often convey her determination to
interact with nature in a pragmatic manner in order to survive and adapt as
a female settler and gentlewoman in the new world, while Jameson's
identifications with plants indicate the freedom from convention that she
and other women are able to enjoy in Canada. In each case, the plants act
as indicator species within the text, much as they do in natural
ecosystems. An indicator species, according to the OED (online), is a
"group of plants or animals whose presence acts as a sign of particular
environmental conditions." Once "we recognize a species as an indicator of
a certain habitat, what we are saying is that this species is biologically
adapted to survive under the conditions imposed upon it in that area"
(Kricher and Morrison 1988, 11), and thus provides insight into those
conditions. Similarly, the textual plant offers clues about its context,
providing information about the position of the individual woman, not only
with respect to her home and family, but also within the larger cultural
and domestic context of nineteenth-century Ontario society.
"Reading It Aright"
Like Langton, Traill also notices decay and decomposition, but her
knowledge of botany and nature affords her a much more comprehensive and
accurate analysis than that resulting from Langton's descriptions. Traill
can write of the layered story of succession and evolution in a way that
takes into account relationships amongst various elements in the ecosystem
as well as the relationships between past, present, and future. In The
Backwoods of Canada and in the short essays "A Glance Within the Forest"
and "Gathering up the Fragments," Traill examines the process of succession
in the Ontario forest with an ecologist's eye, observing that "the same
plants do not grow on cleared land that formerly occupied the same spot
when it was covered with forest- trees" (1836, 168). She notes the
"distinct class of vegetation [that] makes its appearance as soon as the
fire passes over the ground," and observes that "as one generation falls
and decays, new ones of a different character spring up in their place"
(1836, 168). In "Something Gathers up the Fragments," she insists on
peeling back the layers of place and time in order to examine the material
that has yielded to and nourished what follows. She analyzes the observable:
The elements and the wood of the tree have fed the lichens and mosses. The
mosses have been a warm sheltering home for myriads of insect larvae, which
have gathered up many fragments during their infant state, all tending to
reduce the wood to the earthy condition which should enter into other
forms. (Traill 1894, 240-41)
She is also able to incorporate dynamic relationships and interchanges that
are not visually apparent, as seen in her description of the way the tree
roots provide sustenance and the way certain parts of the tree replenish
the earth and purify the air (Traill 1894, 238). Traill's awareness of the
species, relationships, and processes in the natural world demands that she
include herself as a living part of the ecosystem; such inclusions provide
textual clues about her own judgement of herself and her activities. The
textual plant in Traill's work functions as an indicator species
incorporating her presence in the ecosytem, rather than treating her as a
symbolic referent separate from nature. This is no simple or distanced
observation of an external world. Neither are the resulting metaphors tired
and overused literary conventions. Traill's immersion in the world she
observes, names, collects, describes, cultivates, preserves, and loves
imbues her text with the vitality and energy of the relationship itself,
which is complex and dynamic. The textual indicator species reflect the
range and variety of the natural species and reveal Traill's acknowledged
and unacknowledged feelings and assessments about her interaction with the
natural world she both preserves and cultivates.
Strongly attached to the plants and flowers that seem to attract her,
Traill receives but resists botanical messages of environmental integrity,
"acknowledging [the] necessity" of the "continual destruction of the native
trees" (1874, 250) that lay the groundwork for the succession that takes
place on the forest floor. The diction used in the references to the forest
floor as "a kindly nursing mother" (1874, 250) and to the after-fire growth
as "the new race of vegetables" (1874, 247) suggests European or human
colonization. Regret for what is lost in both the botanical and the human
world, such as indigenous plants and family or friends, for example, is
repressed even as it repeatedly surfaces in Traill's concern or obsession
with the process of decay and new growth. In describing the new, she pays
homage to the old-to the "mass of fallen timber, broken limbs, and decaying
branches heaped across each other in wild confusion, through which many
young saplings are thrusting up their plumy heads" (1874, 244-45).
Eventually acknowledging her position and her participation in the
succession, she refuses to allow the regret to overwhelm her, even though
her primary reactions to the plants themselves lead her in this direction.
She uses these emotions and reactions to force herself forward as she
repeatedly reacts against them and represses them to such an extent that
the reader realizes it is a continuous and deliberate process. It allows
her to resist but not ignore her responses to the botanical activity
surrounding and implicating her. This resistance constitutes the conflict
that keeps Traill in a state of tension as one who is both champion and
adversary of the plants she loves.
Although deeply involved in the forest floor of Ontario and the succession
of new vegetation over old, Traill cannot help but acknowledge Europe,
rooting her own references in the Linnean system. In "A Glance Within the
Forest," she refers to the twinflower (Linnae borealis), now the national
flower of Sweden, as the "sweet flower so dear to the great father of
botany whose names i\t bears" (1874, 249). Linnae borealis, which has low
germination rates and requires up to a decade to reach maturity, is
classified as a dominant understory or indicator species, providing
information about the ecosystem in which it is found (Kricher and Morrison
1988, 41). The placement of the reference to Linnae borealis in Traill's
essay acts as a textual indicator in that it is followed by a reference to
Mitchella repens (commonly known as partridgeberry or squaw-vine) (1874,
249). The twinflower and partridgeberry are referenced as a pair by Traill,
who emphasizes their common beauty and location; but in the Linnaen system
of classification by genus and species they would not be listed together.
Similarly, Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny's less rigid
classification, based on visual impressions, places the twinflower directly
after the partridgeberry in the section devoted to pink or red creeping or
matted evergreen plants (1968, 236), while the Peterson Field Guide to
Medicinal Plants and Herbs (Foster and Duke 2000) notes a practical
connection between the two plants that develops the aesthetic similarities
noted by Traill and by Peterson and McKenny. The practical connection
originates in Aboriginal communities, where the plant tea of both the
partridgeberry and the twinflower was used for irregular and difficult
menstruation as well as for pain in pregnancy and childbirth (Foster and
Duke 2000, 31, 173). The contemporary reader, using the information gleaned
from the indicator species within both the earth and the text, responds
with the knowledge that concentrating on a looser classification than the
Linnaen system, one based on practical applications, is perhaps the more
relevant approach in the woods of Ontario. An openness to a less rigid and
technical classification makes sense coming from a writer who prefers "the
lovely Wild Flowers," the "natives of the soil" to "the flowers of the
greenhouse and parterre" (Traill 1996, 75) and who regrets the replacement
of herbal treatment with scientific medicine.14
In this discussion, Traill also compares the Sweet Cicely of Canada
(Osmorhiza longistylis or daytont)15 with English parsley: "The shining
parsley-like leaves of the Sweet Cicely are there too, looking so fresh and
tempting that you wish it were, what it greatly resembles, English parsley"
(1874, 249). Although nostalgically yearning for English "tastes," on
almost every occasion Traill is inquisitive about the practical properties
and potential of plants in Canada. She admires the female herbalist of
times gone by, who was "skilled in the knowledge of their [flowers']
medicinal qualities" (Traill 1843, 229), and Traill includes medicinal
applications in many of her descriptions. She tells us, for example, that
the root of the Indian turnip is used as a "medicine" and an "esculent"
(Traill 1836, 174), while a "decoction" from the root of the Pitcher Plant
"has been said to lessen all the more violent symptoms" (Traill 1868, 75)
of smallpox. Although Traill does not pursue the medicinal qualities of
Sweet Cicely here, she would not be surprised to learn of them. She would
find her openness to all aspects and applications of plants in the Canadian
landscape confirmed and rewarded by the knowledge of the use of Sweet
Cicely as a poultice on wounds and boils (Foster and Duke 2000, 72). Sweet
Cicely performs a more practical task than that of English parsley used as
a culinary garnish. The practical applications demanded by the Canadian
environment emerge from both the earth and the text, pushing more aesthetic
concerns back to England. A new Canadian aesthetic, as opposed to a British
one, appears to be evolving, "rooted" in the necessity of adopting a
practical approach to the plant life found in this country. In a sense, the
English parsley and Canadian Sweet Cicely are engaging in a competition of
species within the text; natural selection could have profound implications
for these two plants. If one of these two species gains an advantage in the
text, it increases its fitness (to use evolutionary terms) in both the
literary and ecological sense. In the Preface to Canadian Wild Flowers and
elsewhere, Traill comments on the work of Pursh, "the only botanical work I
have at my command" (1836, 168), noting the long-term impact of the
botanist's choices and descriptions.16 Unlike Traill, Pursh sees the "New
Continent" as a storehouse for Europe: "Her forests produce an endless
variety of useful and stately timber trees.... All these are more or less
capable of being adapted to a European climate" (Pursh 1814, v). Despite
their differences, Traill's references to Pursh emphasize her awareness of
her own role in the promotion of individual plants and approaches. She opts
for practicality and convenience over rigid systems, a position dictated to
some extent by the plants themselves and certainly determined by the
ecosystem in which she finds herself. Traill's comments about Pursh, which
include both appreciation and frustration, reveal her awareness of the
power she wields and the responsibility she holds as a naturalist in a new
land.
Although Traill seems supremely satisfied with the perfection of the
ecological interchange that uses, shares, and wastes not, she is honest and
inclusive, and so takes into account the effects of human intrusion and
interference. She understandably divests the settler of choice if he is to
survive, maintaining that "coming to make himself a home, he must cut down
and clear the living trees and clear the ground with axe and fire" [italics
ours] (1894, 241), and she reminds readers that the land has been made
fertile by God and nature rather than through any human effort. It is at
the end of "A Glance Within the Forest," however, that Traill sees the
"continual destruction of the native trees" as "a source of regret, even
while acknowledging its necessity, for with the removal of the sheltering
woods must also disappear most of the rare plants, indigenous to the soil,
that derive their nurture from them, some indeed so entirely dependent on
the decaying vegetation of the trees beneath which they grow that they
perish directly they are deprived of it" (1874, 250). Traill recognizes
that her own pioneer activity instigates this transformation and thus
contributes to the desired but regrettable clearing of the land, wiping out
many species. She continues to repress emerging feelings of regret and
guilt for the changed environment, while stressing how important it is that
the new generation, the next growth that will eventually take over, view
plants and flowers in ways that lead beyond the specimen itself to a level
that will "refine and purify the mind" (1836, 184)." In order to counteract
personal feelings of regret and guilt, Traill constructs plants as part of
a moral universe, capable of serving far more than simply aesthetic and
practical needs.
She only arrives at this moral universe, however, after repeatedly
attempting to identify herself with the native plant life in Ontario rather
than with the force that wipes out the old growth in order to prepare for
the new. This eagerness to ally herself with Canadian flora is an attempt
to root herself in the soil of her new country, but the simplicity of the
positioning is much too nave, as she realizes. As an immigrant, she seems
to know that the adjustment to the new place is much more complicated than
a simple and sudden transplanting in the new soil. In her preface to
Studies of Plant Life in Canada, Traill refers to "a common little weed
known by the familiar name of Carpetweed" (1885, ii). She describes this
plant as "a small Polygonum, that grows at our doors" and displays
"persevering habits" and "wiry roots" (ii). Carpetweed, when "crushed by
the foot and bruised," manages to "spring again as if unharmed" and
"flourishes under all circumstances, however adverse" (ii). Serving as a
straightforward metaphorical example of resilience and inspiration, the
carpetweed gives Traill courage "when trials press[ed] hard upon her" (ii).
Enriching the obvious and consciously used symbolism, however, is our
knowledge that the carpetweed family (Aizoaceae) is believed by many to
have originated in the tropics, specifically South America, and is thus an
introduced species in Canada; like Traill, it makes its home on newly
seeded sites or disturbed soil rather than on established turf.18 According
to Eileen Woodhead, the author of Early Canadian Gardening: An 1827 Nursery
Catalogue, members of the carpetweed family "grew close to the ground out
of the wind and had shapes with the least surface possible, to avoid losing
moisture" (1998, 197). Slow germination, a strong taproot, and the rapid
spread of the plant along the surface of the earth in the hot summer
weather explain the resilience of the carpetweed, protected as well by
succulent leaves and the cuticle. Traill, by choosing this introduced
species as a metaphor and example, has chosen a plant that not only
inspires her but also seems to reflect her own evolution and
adaptation-perhaps in more ways than she intends. This information adds
layers to Traill's deliberate symbolism and invites speculation about
whether she is aware of the carpetweed as a "colonizer." One possibility is
that she becomes aware of its origins in the period of time between viewing
the plant and writing about it, but does not overtly include the later
information because it would disrupt the truth of the original viewing.
Perhaps Traill has inklings of the appropriateness of her choice of
symbolic plant, but does not have the definitive knowledge that would allow
her the confidence to reveal its position as "colonizer." Or she may even
repress the question of the plant's origins as she tries to simplify the
complications attached to her own immigration and adaptation. Whatever the
case, the carpetweed provides an excellent example of the way in
whichplants, deliberately used by Traill as symbols, take on an added
significance, reflecting or duplicating her own situation-in this case that
of the immigrant and colonizer.
Such speculation about the degree to which Traill is aware of the parallels
between herself and the plant is inevitable in these cases where the
references to plants carry weighty symbolic relevance beyond the author's
intention. In this particular case we find another reference that indeed
suggests that Traill was probably aware of carpetweed's reputation as an
introduced species. In her later discussion of purslane (Portulaca
oleracea), a plant from a family closely connected to the carpetweed family
and sharing similar characteristics with the carpetweed described
earlier,19 Traill notes that the original is "from South America; whence it
was introduced some years ago" (1885, 89). Her acknowledgement of purslane
as an introduced species suggests that the similar carpetweed was also
viewed by her as an "alien" species introduced to the area. The reluctance
to record the carpetweed of the preface as an alien species perhaps arises
from Traill's resistance to allying herself with the status of "alien" in a
place she wants to establish as "home." Although this second reference
strengthens our sense that Traill is identifying with the unstated
immigrant nature of the carpetweed, we contend that the analogy exists
whether or not the writer is fully aware of the implications. The "organic"
text depends for its interpretation on a partnership with a reader who
brings information that can have an impact on the text, causing it to
evolve and change as that information and insight are applied.
The plants in the text, like the real plants, can be seen as organic
elements within a larger ecosystem; they must take into account all sorts
of relationships and interdependencies, and thus are both the subject of
and contributors to a literary evolution comparable to an ecological
evolution. The literary metaphor depends on the reader's relationship to
the author and the text; and the reader, as a dynamic element in the
partnerships, will work to bring about changes and new strains in the
literary landscapes or ecosystems. Although sometimes appearing to be
rooted by accident and chance, plants are more often deliberately planted
in the earth (by natural and/or human design) for both practical and
aesthetic purposes. Similarly, references to plants are often strategically
inserted in literary texts in order to perform practical and aesthetic
functions comparable to those provided by the physical plant itself.
Like the plant placed in the earth, however, the plant rooted in the
literary text tends to take on an organic and dynamic life of its own.20
The textual plant, like the real plant, is anything but static. Assumptions
about the plant's position and function in the ecosystem of the environment
as well as within the "ecosystem" of the text should be examined in a
critical manner. The activity taking place in an ecosystem, "a unit of
nature in which non-living substances and living organisms interact with a
change of materials taking place between the nonliving and living parts"
(Rowe 1990, 118), is obviously applicable to the act of reading, which
arguably involves a similar interaction between living organisms and non-
living substances. The combination of writer, reader, and text produces
dynamic interchanges between the "living" human presences and the
"non-living" words on the page, resulting in an evolution of
interpretations and meanings.
"A Ladder to Heaven"
Traill's passion for plants raises the question of the extent to which this
love acts as a shaping force in her views of other dimensions of her life,
particularly those concerned with morality. Identifying with the resilient
carpetweed inspires Traill with moral fortitude, but more commonly, she
sees plants and ecosystems as signs of a divine plan rather than simply
reflections of a personal situation and temperament. For example, when
Traill's writing in Canadian Wild Flowers develops from botanical
description to philosophical speculation, the flowers quite easily provide
a convenient and apt proof of an ordered Christian world. This view is
obviously bolstered by Traill's own "construction" of the plants through
her responses to them and her descriptions of them. The botanical
descriptions, stamped by Traill's personality, broach the boundaries
associated with her position as a traditional Victorian, Christian woman,
ostensibly placing her within the boundaries, but at the same time boldly
stretching and testing the flexibility of these conventions and limits.
Traill's moral perspective is explicit on a number of occasions, but
perhaps never more tellingly than in the Canadian Wild Flowers entry for
the Indian Turnip (Arum triphyllum), more commonly referred to as
"Jack-in-the-Pulpit." In addition to recording the botanical properties of
the plant, Traill describes the uses of the plant, primarily of the root,
which has a poisonous quality, but which, when properly prepared, was used
by Aboriginal communities as a cure for "violent colic." She also notes
that the processed root is sold as a "pleasant and valuable article of
food" (1868, 12) under the name Portland Sage or Portland Arrow-root. It is
the dual nature of this plant as tonic and food that inspires her
philosophical observance:
There seems to be in the vegetable world, as well as in the moral, two
opposite principles, the good and the evil. The gracious God has given to
man the power, by the cultivation of his intellect, to elicit the good and
useful, separating it from the vile and injurious, thus turning that into a
blessing which would otherwise be a curse. (Traill 1868, 11)
To add to the complexity, Traill recalls how several children were
"poisoned by the leaves of the Arum triphyllum being gathered and eaten as
greens in one of the early settled back townships of Western Canada" (1868,
11), and records a repetition of this "deplorable accident" when "ignorant
persons" ate the leaves of the "Mandrake or Mayapple (Podophyllin pedatum)"
(1868, 11). She concludes by describing how the cassava plant (Zanipha
manipar) of the West Indies is "another remarkable instance of art
overcoming nature, and obtaining a positive good from that which in its
natural state is evil" (1868, 11).
For Traill, then, it appears that the natural world around her is Edenic,
but not merely as it manifests the creative powers of a Christian God. It
contains also the peril of sin. According to Traill, the garden has the
potential to be a paradise or a poisoned environment just as humans have
the potential to be pure or sinful, blessed or cursed. The two opposite
principles of good and evil are at work in both the botanical and the human
realm, resulting in the parallels that Traill so often draws between the
two. Traill argues that these opposing forces must be discovered and heeded
in plants, "thus turning that into a blessing which would otherwise be a
curse" (1868, 11). It is not simply a matter of passively noting the
presence of good and evil in the world; it is necessary to participate
actively in the apprehension of the good and evil by examining and using
the world in a way that separates and raises the good. The initial comments
about the plants as a reflection of God's goodness and order are challenged
by these insights into a world in which disorder and evil potentially
threaten the divine plan. Traill draws attention to the contradiction
instead of glossing over it. Without human intention, knowledge, and
application, the inherent good can be overpowered by the bad since both
exist. God's divine plan places the onus on human thought and action to
apprehend the world in a way that "extracts" the good.
Perhaps it is the discovery of this religious and moral rationale that
enables Traill to straddle the antagonistic worlds of botanist and pioneer,
justifying to some extent the development and cultivation as a way to
discover and redeem the evil and sin that were present even in the most
ideal garden of Eden. Her defensive protestations, however, are not
entirely convincing. This balancing of ecologist and settler is apparent in
much of her writing, as Peterman and Ballstadt note in their introduction
to Forest and Other Gleanings: The Fugitive Writings of Catharine Pan Traill:
As a British pioneer and colonist she was of necessity committed to the
project of colonial development; however, as a naturalist and a believer in
an ordered but inscrutable universe, she wished above all else to celebrate
and preserve the fragile and precious elements of the natural world she
encountered in Upper Canada. (1994, 12-1 3)
As a botanist she loves the natural world and often repeats her lament that
"a time will come when these rare productions of our soil will disappear
from among us" (Traill 1868, 61). She foresees that these native plants are
"destined sooner or later to be swept away, as the onward march of
civilization clears away the primeval forest" (8) and that "the cultivation
of the tracts of forest land and prairie destroys the native trees, ...
plants, ... flowers, shrubs and ferns" (1885, ii). At the same time, she
regards the process of civilization as inevitable and as promising a return
to a more ideal relationship with God, as man "reclaims the swamps and bogs
and turns the waste places into a fruitful field" (1868, 8). The dynamic of
this tension within Traill's writings suggests an inner conflict that,
while "managed," is never wholly resolved. The "use" of plants and flowers
as rungs on "a ladder to heaven" (Traill 1836, 184) or as ways to reclaim
spiritual fruitfulness does not invest the plant itself with enough
importance or value to satisfy Traill, despite her attempts to convince
herself. The blatant human "use" of plants for botanical, literary, or
religious purposes fails to acknowledge or \respect their power and
vitality. Such "use" also separates the user from the ecosystem in which
she and the plant live.
In one example of this separation, Traill draws attention to the
pitcher-plant or "soldier's drinking cup" (1836, 182) as a strange
specimen. It contains "a full wine-glass of water" (182) and is thus a
plant capable of offering refreshment to those who come across it. She
provides the story of the emigrant pensioner, who compares the Canadian
pitcher plant with the Egyptian Soldier's Drinking Cup, viewing both as
symbolic:
... he always thought that God in his goodness had created the plant to
give drink to such as were athirst on a hot and toilsome march and so he
looked with gratitude and admiration on its representative in Canada.
(Traill 1868, 74)
Planting this reference in the text, Traill translates the symbolism from
the earth to the page, offering her readers an image that has grown from
the botanical to the moral, as she admonishes that "Many a lesson may we
learn from the lips of the poor and lowly" (74). The plant's role in this
interchange is not lost on Traill, who comments that it is "remarkable in
its appearance" (65), playing its own major part in attracting our
attention. The pitcher plant attracts insects through the reddish colour
and musty smell of its leaves. The plant traps the insect in the leaf
tubes, which have hairs that point downward, preventing the insects from
escaping. Ironically, our "drinking cup" becomes the insect's drowning
pool, and eventually the plant digests the decomposed insect. Traill
follows the reference to the pitcher plant in The Backwoods of Canada with
a description of her own strong attraction to the aromas of certain plants,
particularly wild roses. The positioning of these two episodes outlining
the power of the plant's ability to attract life calls into question our
assumptions about our role and position in our relationships with plants.
We are attracted to plants and flowers, but we assume that we, unlike the
insect trapped in the pitcher plant, use and control them for our own
purposes. Is it possible that plants could be, through their methods of
attraction, controlling us to a certain extent?
Michael Pollen, in The Botany of Desire, suggests just that. Using examples
from American landscape and culture, he convincingly argues that "our
grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive
objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an
object, every object a subject" (2001, xxi). He proposes that agriculture
could be defined as "something the grasses did to the people in order to
conquer trees" (xxi) and suggests that domestication is perhaps not
"something we do to other species," but is "something certain plants and
animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their
own interests" (xvi). It is not too far-fetched to speculate that the
plants attracting Traill are using her as a means to advance the
evolutionary drive of individual species, ensuring their botanical and
cultural survival and evolution when much of the wilderness is transformed
into a garden and when the Canadian experience is "translated" into
literature. The symbiotic relationship between the wilderness and the
writer ensures the evolution of an interdependency between horticulture and
culture.21 To take Pollen's thesis into literature, we could ask if
evolutionary forces, such as natural selection, adaptation, mutation, and
hybridization, are strategies of nature used to attract, motivate, and
shape the human choices of symbols, motifs, and tropes that inform our
literature and culture, and thus record or promote certain plants through
those records. The idea that humans use plants as rungs on a ladder to
heaven should be tempered by an acknowledgement of the possibility that
plants, in their drive to survive, may use humans.
Traill's metaphorical references to plants and flowers reveal the internal
conflicts that result from her attempt to situate herself as a female
naturalist in Ontario. The polarities include botany and literature,
science and art, progress and conservation, modern medicine and herbal
treatment, Christianity and feminism, and pragmatism and aestheticism. When
her attempts to reconcile her ambivalence are abandoned, surprising
insights are offered through deeply felt impulses and admissions: she
acknowledges, for example, that "As much of the botany of these unsettled
portions of the country are unknown to the naturalist, and the plants are
quite nameless, I take the liberty of bestowing names upon them according
to inclination and fancy" (1836, 102). She continues to draw attention to
this unscientific practice, promoting herself as the one bestowing names
and identities:
I suppose our scientific botanists in Britain would consider me very
impertinent in bestowing names on the flowers and plants I meet with in
these wild woods; I can only say I am glad to discover the Canadian or even
the Indian names if I can, and where they fail I consider myself free to
become their floral godmother, and give them names of my own choosing.
(Traill 1836, 120)
An impertinent godmother taking liberty, Traill simply abandons the Linnean
system, and even aesthetic classification and herbal applications, in her
delight in the complete freedom from established systems and conventions.
"Our scientific botanists in Britain" are as distantly removed from this
new-world floral godmother as they can be. The godmother is responsible for
the baptizing and naming of these flowers and for their upbringing in a
natural world. Rather than feeling limited by or submitting to the
hierarchies of science and religion, Traill simply climbs the rungs of the
ladder itself, moving beyond and above the constraints of the patriarchal
systems.
Of course any individual in Traill's position would face the challenge of
fitting into a new landscape and a new life.
E-mail this to a friend Printable version
a d v e r t i s e m e n t