The Wacousta Syndrome : Explorations in the Canadian Langscape

The British in the book are tied by an invisible umbilical cord to their fort: 'to have crossed the ravine, or ventured out of reach of the cannon of the fort, would have been to seal the destruction of the detachment. [...] Instead, like the classic 'string of beads/ a series of discrete 'scenes' (using the word in its original, graphic sense) is deployed along the linear linkage of a flight-and-pursuit plotline; the graphic correlative for the action, in other words, is a series of clearings through the middle of a dense, shadowy forest.7 The advantages of this technique are considerable. [...] By denying both the desirability and the possibility of a true journey into the wilderness, effecting reconciliation with nature, Richardson also denies the reader one of the most important of the dramatis personae of the wilderness romance, the primitive or 'natural' man who serves as mediator between the civilized world and the wilderness 'other': the Leatherstocking figure without whose assista [...] Alexander Wyant's The Mohawk Valley (1866), 19 A View from the Fort where the serpentine river twisting off into the distance gives depth and definition to a heavily wooded valley bottom, and Thomas Cole's The Ox Bow (1808) exemplify the mode; in both of these, as in numerous like paintings, the view is along the river, not merely penetrating but laying claim to the distance, opening up the countr [...] Roberts's fictional treatment of the alternatives, however, undercuts the ultimate viability of Miranda's romantic brand of primitivism as sharply as the hostile Canadian landscape so often undercuts the pastoral diction of nineteenth-century poetry.23 For one thing - to combat the implication that the hostility of the wilderness is a state of mind, that simply 'thinking positively' can neutralize