Silenced Sextet: Six Nineteenth Century Canadian Women Novelists // Review

Silenced Sextet: Six Nineteenth - Century Canadian Women Novelists Carrie MacMillian, Lorraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston Montreal & Kingston: McGill - Queen's University Press, 1992; 226 pp.Reviewed by Deena Rasky Toronto, OntarioSilenced Sextet is a study of Canadian women authors, from 1823 to 1947, which brings six writers back into the spotlight so that their neglected voices can be heard and appreciated once again. Women writers were routinely made invisible in the census - taking of their day, denying them their career and active employment status. They continue to be largely invisible today, with their writings virtually out of print.The book deals with an educated and well - travelled group of English Canadian women writers. The first, Rosanna Mullins Leprohon, is examined collaboratively by Lorraine McMullen and Elizabeth Waterston. A contemporary in pre - Confederation Canada wrote about Leprohon in sparkling terms: [S]he may become the pride and ornament of a great and rising country. As with most women writers of her time, she reflected her fear that female cleverness is dangerous, as depicted in Florence Fitz - Hardinge; or Wit and Wisdom. Leprohon also dealt directly with the issue of the cultural survival of French Canada in the face of British domination in The Manor House of de Villerai, Family Herald.The second woman examined in Silenced Sextet was the best - selling novelist, New Brunswick writer May Agnes Fleming. By the age of 20, Fleming's serialized novels were mass - published in cheap editions. Fleming's life was mirrored in her novels: The Wages of Sin, where a young woman on her wedding day falls in love with her bridegroom's cousin and runs away with him while on her honeymoon; Eulalie; or, A Wife's Tragedy which concerned a woman whose problems started with marriage, and included extortion; or Silent and True; or, A Little Queen, in which she fictionalized the subject of inheritance. She dealt with issues of working class life in Lost for a Woman, in which a kitchen maid escapes the drudgery of her existence by reading the century's equivalent to Harlequin Romances.Margaret Murray Robertson's life, in contrast to Fleming's, was ordered by religious priorities. She was a school teacher until, at the age of 42, an essay she wrote won a competition in Sherbrooke, Quebec. Robertson wrote, amongst other stories and novels, The Bairns; or Janet's Love and Service about a Scottish housekeeper who moved to North America and questioned women's lot in society and their lack of independence. The value of remaining unmarried was defended in the story, even though the novel ends with a happy marriage. With the exception of The Perils of Orphanhood; or, Frederica and Her Guardians in which a priest tried to convert a Protestant family to Catholicism because of their wealth, Margaret Murray Robertson stressed the importance of self - sacrifice, morals, honesty and hard work in her writing.One of the most fascinating authors of the six was Susan Frances or Seranus. Not only was Seranus a writer, she also composed music (including a full orchestral score for a comic opera a la Gilbert and Sullivan, called Pipandor), performed as a singer and, for 20 years, held the role of principal at the Toronto Conservatory of Music. Educated in both Toronto and Montreal, the Quebec influence permeated both her writings and musical compositions. She wrote about the concerns of Native and Metis peoples in her story The Prisoner Dubois, a fictionalized account of the Riel rebellion. Carrie MacMillan, in her description of Seranus and her writing, suggests that, Harrison legitimizes Quebec, and by extension Canada, by bestowing on it a proud past in reference to the Quebec - based The Story of Etienne Chezy d'Alencourt. Her enthusiasm for Seranus is understandable, though it calls into question the lack of inclusion of Francophone or Native women writers in this book, women who could more accurately be described as legitimizers. …