Embroidered Tent: Five Gentlewomen in Early Canada

by Marian Fowler

"In this widely acclaimed study, Marian Fowler explores how the experience of wilderness and frontier create a psychic tension between the gentility of old-world “embroidery” and the rugged masculinity of “tent”-dwelling in the pioneering women of nineteenth-century Canada."

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published June 26, 1994

About the author

Marian Fowler holds a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Toronto and was the recipient of the Canadian Biography Award. She has taught at York University and is the author of a number of books, including In a Gilded Cage, Below the Peacock Fan, The Embroidered Tent, Blenheim and The Way She Looks Tonight. She lives in Toronto.

Reviews

[Carolyn Harris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A joint biography of five late eighteenth and nineteenth century English gentlewoman who found new lives and literary inspiration in British North America. Fowler places Elizabeth Simcoe, Catherine Parr Traill, Anna Jameson and Lady Dufferin in the context of the expectations of women of their social stratum, analyzing how women's education and "conduct manuals" changed over time. Fowler also discusses how all five of these women pioneered new genres in Canadian literature, influencing the work of subsequent generations of Canadian women authors. Fowler is sometimes overly critical of Catherine Parr Traill and Lady Dufferin because they responded to Canadian landscapes with facts instead of feelings but overall presents a nuanced portrait of all five of these pioneering women.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read about the characters of these women and the character of the Canada they inhabited, and the clash of social conditioning and reality. As always, any history dealing with women makes me glad to be in the 21st century in a relatively socialist country!