A study of Ageism in Carol Shields’s The Stone Diaries: Narrative and Body Foregrounding the (old) self

This paper looks at the (re)presentation of ageing in Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries. In an attempt to unmask society’s ageist attitudes towards its elderly, the research attempts to analyse ageing through the prism of gender as surely ageing is worse for women than it is for men. The research sheds light on how the old person is viewed just as an old body which is also genderless and therefore expected to be devoid of any carnal desires. As the novel revolves around a narrative within the novel’s narrative, the paper also sees how Daisy, the ageing protagonist, loses her self behind her narrative. Her self is also in perpetual submersion due to her hyper-visible ageing body. Her sagging skin and wrinkles are the only assertions that the world registers from her side while her selfhood and identity are either erased or ignored. The novel’s story follows Daisy through her tumultuous life but this paper attempts to live it with her. So while Daisy composes her life story, her life composes her story which eventually begins to foreground her to the extent that she is completely submerged in her story and ultimately dies in a nursing home in Florida. Her death bringing relief to her family is the peak of ageism that the story throws in our faces. She lived as an association— a mother, a grandmother, an aunty, a wife, a widow; and died as an old woman and nothing more.

Roughing It in the Bush, The Graphic Novel

Graphic novels and comic books are no longer minor cultural artifacts which are produced to generate economic benefits, mostly consumed by young, not very literate, readers who do not hope to be educated but simply entertained. Quite on the contrary, authors such as Will Eisner, Art Spiegelman, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman or Umberto Eco has vindicated the fundamental role these artistic manifestations play nowadays. The present paper analyzes Carol Shields and Patrick Crowe 2016 graphic novel adaptation of Susanna Moodie’s seminal book Roughing it in the Bush. In order to reach this goal, a brief theoretical state of the art is introduced. Consequently, the original writer and text are equally studied. Finally, the contemporary graphic novel adaptation is considered, explaining the genesis of the project as well and the similitudes and differences it shows when compared to the original work by Susanna Moodie.

Major Authors: Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje

This chapter discusses the works of three Canadian novelists best known internationally: Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Michael Ondaatje. The careers of Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje, although overlapping chronologically, represent distinctive stages in Canada's evolving cultural traditions and publishing practices since the 1950s. Davies's novels signal the first stage in a transition from colonial to postcolonial identity in post-war Canada. Atwood in the 1970s provided the script for a Canadian cultural and literary identity separate from British and American in what Carol Shields called ‘a period of explosive patriotism’. Ondaatje's novels and family memoir epitomize the ‘refocusing and defocusing’ of Canadian literature since the 1980s, coinciding with the nation's shifts into multiculturalism and transnationalism. The chapter first provides a background on Davies, Atwood, and Ondaatje's careers before considering some of their works, including the Deptford trilogy (Davies), The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), and The English Patient (Ondaatje).

Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush by C. Shields and P. Crowe

Shields, Carol and Patrick Crowe. Susanna Moodie: Roughing It in the Bush, adaptation by Willow Dawson, illustrated by Selena Goulding. Second Story Press, 2016.The long genesis of this graphic novel began more than two decades ago, when Governor General’s and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carol Shields began collaborating with Patrick Crowe to produce a screenplay based on Susanna Moodie’s classic account of pioneer life in early Victorian Upper Canada. Shields’ death in 2003 led Crowe to abandon the project, only to revive it a decade later in this illustrated format. Story editor Willow Dawson has extracted the most significant episodes from the screenplay, and Selena Goulding has provided running illustrations that fairly reflect the landscapes, buildings, home interiors, costumes, and technology of the period 1830–1867. Her style—not inappropriately—is reminiscent of the Classics Illustrated school of comic book art. This reviewer’s only criticism is the very occasional failure of the illustrations to accurately depict things referenced in the text.Appearing at a time when Canada celebrates 150 years of nationhood, this handsome production serves to provide older children and young adults with an appreciation of the hardships overcome by Canada’s pioneering women, such as Moodie, and her sister and fellow immigrant Catherine Parr Traill, whose very survival sometimes depended upon aid from their First Nations neighbours. As a succinct précis of Moodie’s classic memoir, it may even stimulate interest in reading the longer, original text. The Introduction provided by CanLit doyenne Margaret Atwood, alongside the content attributable to Carol Shields, render the book suitable not only for public and school libraries, but also for academic libraries and all serious collectors of those authors.Highly Recommended: 4 out of 4 starsReviewer: Merrill DistadHistorian and author Merrill Distad enjoyed a four-decade career building libraries and library collections.