Susanna Moodie, Samurai of the British Empire

[felis_ultharus]

So I'm nearly finished the Samurai Susanna. I wouldn't say reading it is so much good as it is character-building.

I really wanted to like her stuff. She is a big name in Canadian lit. My favourite Canadian novelist loved Moodie's work enough to write a volume of fan-poetry about her. She shows up as a hero, I've heard, in Timothy Findley's Headhunter, which promises to be a great book. On top of it all, she was very active in the anti-slavery movement.

But she is very tedious. It's that same long, drawn-out, dry prose style that has made me avoid any class in Victorian lit. The same ultra-sentimental Christian morality, the same cheerleading of British Empire, and for an anti-slavery activist, she's awfully narrow-minded. She also likes to go on for pages about how she's the only one around her who ever keeps her head in a crisis.

Oh well. Writing is continuing well and I expect to be at my first hundred pages of the new novel in the next few days. And tonight, I'm getting a Firefly education in preparation for watching Serenity tomorrow.

Comments

[infinitecomplex.livejournal.com]

I read Headhunter quite recently - it is indeed a great book. I'd be interested to know what you think of it once you read it. :)

I completely agree about the long-drawn out, dry prose of the Victorian era. It makes me want to claw my eyes out with boredom. I grew so tired of Pride and Prejudice when I had to study it for A-level English Lit that after a couple of chapters, I gave up, read the last chapter and wrote the essay based on what I assumed had happened in between. (Jane Austen is nothing if not completely predictable.) I'm not sure whether it speaks more about Pride and Prejudice or the quality of the English department at my school that I got an A regardless of the fact that I'd read less than a quarter of the book.

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

I did something similar once at UVic, though I haven't at Concordia. It's probably the quality of English departments generally, as I'm beginning to think it's impossible to fail.

I know people who love Vic Lit. It does bore me to tears, though.