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

[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.