A Woman Who Did

The Untempered Wind
Joanna E. Wood
Ottawa: Tecumseh, 1994
354 pages

In Henry James Morgan's Types of Canadian Women, published in 1903 by William Briggs, Joanna E. Wood is described as a "well known Canadian novelist."

She is not today.

She was not a half-century ago.

She was not a century ago.

"Meteor-like" is the word Barbara Goddard uses to describe Wood's career. In fact, it ended the very year Types of Canadian Women appeared.

The novelist was all of thirty-five.

Joanna E Wood was twenty-six when The Untempered Wind, her first novel, was published. Its heroine, Myron Holder, has had a child out of wedlock; she is "a mother, but not a wife," and so suffers the scorn of Jamestown, the small Ontario village in which she was born and raised. Myron's own mother is dead, as is her father. Her unloving grandmother is very much alive and shares a modest house with Myron and her baby boy.

When first published in 1894, The Untempered Wind proved a critical and commercial success, encouraging three printings, each featuring the same ten illustrations. The frontispiece was used on the cover of the Tecumseh edition:

Had I been involved in its publication, I would have chosen one of the illustrations depicting Myron. This is my favourite:

Still, I understand the selection. Myron may be the protagonist of The Untempered Wind, but more pages are given over to those so quick to pass judgement. Mrs Deans, the most prominent, leverages her employ of Myron as an act of sacrifice and charity: "I feel a duty to have her here, but it goes ag'in me, Mr. Long [the ragman] it does that; but there, we all have our cross and we must help along as well as we can." Other women of the village visit Myron's grandmother on the pretence of providing sympathy. Each hopes to be the one who uncovers the identity of the child's father, but not even old Mrs Holder knows his name.

Not everyone in Jamestown condemns Myron; some are too drunk to care, while others are oblivious to her situation. This reader was struck by young Bing White, an elfish lad who today's reader will recognise as displaying all the early interests and obsessions of a serial killer:

There was something hideously repulsive in this boy's secret cruelties, horrible to relate, sickening to contemplate. But the creatures he tormented, maimed, killed, knew neither anticipation nor remembrance; the "corporeal pang" was all.

A boy drawn to blood, including his own, Bing is unique in nineteenth-century Canadian literature, as is Jamestown. The village stands in stark contrast with the surrounding farmland as a place poisoned by an atmosphere of envy, greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy:

The Jamestown people, in making a pariah of Myron Holder, were not urged to the step by imperative feeling of hurt honor or pained surprise. Such faults as hers were not uncommon there; but never before had the odium rested upon one only. Besides, there had always been some "goings on" and some "talk" indicative of the affair. In Myron Holder's case, the Jamestown people had been caught napping. In such eases a marriage and reinstatement into public favor was the usual sequel, arrived at after much exhilarating and spicy gossip, much enjoyable speculation, much meditation upon the part of the matrons, and much congratulation that all had ended so well.

Myron is ostracised for not following that well-trod path. After a time, she comes to have a friend in Homer Wilson, by far the most intelligent person in Jamestown, whose ambitions have been crushed by manipulative, guilt-inducing parents. 

The Untempered Wind was first published the year before The Woman Who Did by fellow Upper Canadian Grant Allen. The latter, also a story of an unwed mother, was a succès de scandale. Wood's novel didn't raise as much stink, but it was a success. The three printings by original publisher New York's J Slewing Tait and Sons were followed in 1898 by an Ontario Publishing Company edition.

Together The Untempered Wind and The Woman Who Did stand as two of the most remarkable Canadian novels of the nineteenth century.

Neither was so much as mentioned in my CanLit classes.

Object and Access: A trade paperback with introduction by Klay Dyer, The Untempered Wind is the seventh volume in Tecumseh's essential Early Canadian Women Writers Series. I purchased my less than pristine copy eight years ago at London's Attic Books. Price: $2.23. It's available from the publisher at $17.95 (plus postage) through this link.

Current Literature, November 1894

The Tait and Sons first edition can be read online here, but this scan of the third printing – reproduced in the Tecumseh edition – is much easier on the eyes.

As of this writing, only the Tecumseh edition is listed for sale online.

Related post:

Getting to Know the Woman Who Did

Armand Durand; or, A Summer Project

Armand Durand; ou, La promesse accomplie

    [Armand Durand; or, A Promise Fulfilled]
Madame Leprohon [Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon;
    trans, J.-A.  Genaud], 
Montreal: Beauchemin, 1894
367 pages

In her time, Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon – Madame Leprohon – was more popular with francophones than anglophones, so does it not make sense to tackle this, her third novel, in translation? I thought so. It was my summer project. That the season ended weeks ago speaks to my inabilities, and is no reflection on the novel itself. The story is simple and has a rushed, rather predictable conclusion – but it is deftly told and is populated by fully-drawn characters who live in a Quebec the author knew well.

The novel begins with Paul Durand, descendant of the earliest settlers of New France, who has come to inherit a large and profitable farm in "the seigneurie of — Alonville we will call it — on the banks of the St. Lawrence."* Handsome and hardworking Paul has put off marriage so as not to impose upon his mother, who had lived many, many years in the Durand family farmhouse... until she didn't.

I shouldn't be so flippant. Mère Durand is depicted as a fine woman. After her death, son Paul looks to be in no hurry to take a bride — but then he encounters Geneviève Audut. Newly arrived from France, delicate Geneviève is employed as governess to a pair of thoroughly dislikable children related to the seigneur. Geneviève herself is a relation —a poor relation — whom no one treats her particularly well. Her charges are the worst: "Mamma says we will never learn anything till we have a tutor, and that she would get us one to-morrow, only she does not know what to do with you. No body will marry you as you have no dot."

After overhearing this little shit, Paul proposes to Geneviève, which in turn sends the women of Alonville into a tizzy:

What could he see in her, indeed, a little doll-faced creature with no life or gaiety in her, to bewitch him in such a manner? What made him marry a stranger when there were plenty of smart handsome girls in his own village that he had known ever since they wore pinafores?

Much to their delight, Geneviève proves a disaster in keeping a farmhouse, but Paul Durand loves her to the end... which comes when she gives birth to the titular character. 

Again, I shouldn't be so flippant. Though I could see it coming, Madame Leprohon's description of Geneviève's death touches the heart.

Believing that his infant son is in need of a mother, Paul marries spinster Eulalie Messier, a plain-featured woman of good character, who had been generally recognized as Alonville's youngest spinster. His new bride loves and cares for the infant Armand Durand as her own, and Paul comes to love her as a result. Eulalie wasn't so old an old maid that she couldn't provide her husband with another son. They name him Paul, after his father.

And then, she dies.

I fear I've made Armand Durand seem gothic, when it is really a mélange of melodrama and literary realism. Its depictions of French Canadian traditions and society, which Mary Jane Edwards suggests is the reason behind Madame Leprohon's popularity, was just one element that kept me reading.

With Eulalie's death, focus shifts to the two Durand boys and their schooling at "the old Montreal College." Armand, the more retiring of the two, is the intellectual. Paul, though younger, is both literally and figuratively the bigger brother. He has confidence and brash. Poor Armand, so pretty and slight, becomes a target of his fellow classmates. "Miss Armand," as he's called, is bullied to a point at which he lashes out, bloodying the brute Rodolphe Belfond, after which the two become fast friends.

As the title suggests, Armand comes to take the place of the main character. Paul fis begins to fade with the end of their schooldays, returning to Alonville to help run the family farm. Armand remains in Montreal, working for a lawyer, with the goal of becoming one himself. It all makes sense, and works well until jealousy rears its ugly head. On visits to Montreal, Paul feels like a country bumpkin, and comes to resent the money their father sends to help support Armand. He begins a campaign of lies, implying that the funds are wasted on drink and dandyism. The scheming reaches its apex when Paul Durand pere lies in his deathbed as Paul fis intercepts letters addressed to his older brother. The upshot is that Armand Durand is disinherited.   

Madame Leprohon's greatest challenge in writing this novel must surely have had to do with events following the father's death. Armand marries Delima Laurin, his landlady's niece. Written this way, the decision seems so rash, and yet this reader understood the proposal of marriage and its timing. Sadly, Armand and Delima soon prove themselves ill-suited. 

I'll write no more for fear of spoiling things... and because I'm hoping you'll read it.

I found Armand Durand to be one the finest Canadian novels of the nineteenth-century.

Am I wrong?

Was something gained in translation?

* All quotes come from Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon's original text.  

Object: A fragile volume printed on thin paper, bound in embossed scarlet boards, my copy once belonged to the Bibliotheque de Chénéville. It was purchased earlier this year from a Gatineau bookseller. Price: C$19.41. I see no evidence that it was a discard. Should I be concerned?

Access: Armand Durand first appeared as a serial on 1 October 1868 in the Montreal Daily News. That same year, the novel was published in book form by John Lovell. That edition can be read — gratis — through this link at the Internet Archive.

The novel is in print today, with introduction by Loraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston, as part of Tecumseh's Early Canadian Women Writers Series. It can be ordered here, thorough the press.

Pay no heed to print on demand vultures. Take it from a Montrealer, this isn't Quebec:

The Tecumseh edition aside, I see no copies of Armand Durand — English or French —listed for sale online.

As might be expected, this once-popular novel has come to be the stuff of academe. The only copy I see in a public library can be found in Toronto.