Abstract

This essay offers a chronological analysis of the progress of the short story in Canada as narrated by women writers who specifically examined the problematic relationship of the individual with the Canadian landscape. It demonstrates that whilst early narratives portrayed settler women as colonizers and tamers of the wilderness, narratives of the first half of the twentieth century chart the complexities – ethnic, political, historical and cultural – of establishing a cartography of the self. The chosen stories cover the range of recorded female experiences from 1845 to 1945.

DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-4113.2008.00587.x