Atwood's Modie Analysis

One particularly upfront connection between Moodie’s Moodie and Atwood’s Moodie is that of language. Although the subject of language comes up in considerably different ways language is still an important theme in both pieces of work. Susanna Moodie’s Roughing it in the Bush is meant to be a means for conveying her animosity towards the land agents. These land agents convinced her, and many English people like alike, to emigrate and give up life in England in favour of a life of supposed riches in Canada. Once moved, the English folk would come to notice that life in Canada was not all it was claimed to have been. There were certainly no riches. On the contrary, life was completely different and required dedication to sustain life. Moodie,
This, Atwood says, is Canada’s illness (Moodie 811). Throughout Roughing it in the Bush, Moodie is taken over by this violent emotional duality. Moodie, “praises the Canadian landscape but accuses it of destroying her” (faye 84). After having read Roughing it in the Bush Atwood began to explore the same illness in her Journals of Susanna Moodie. Atwood felt that Moodie was hiding certain feelings from the reader. For instance, one of her original titles for her work was, “Unspoken Poems of Susanna Moodie,". This indicates Atwood’s interest in the silence of Moodie or the fact that she refused to recognize the issue of her mental illness. Both stories suggest that this paranoid schizophrenia was going on in both of the Moodie’s heads. For example, Moodie discusses her love for Canada as, “a feeling very nearly allied to that which the condemned criminal entertains for his cell--his only hope for escape being through the portals of the grave” (Moodie 124). After discussing the tinkling brook and how (even to a small degree) advantageous their new homestead was, Moodie begins to compare her experience to that of a criminal in a jail cell. She finds joy in her new home and moments later she names herself a criminal whose only way out of their punishment is through death (in that very home or cell). These are both strong claims. It is easy to see here how divided down the middle Moodie is. Moodie’s divided mind (or her paranoid schizophrenic tendencies) arose from her perceptions of romance to reality. Moodie romanticizes all that which is around her, but then comes back to note the reality of the situation she is living in. Atwood entertains the same themes in her Journals of Susanna Moodie. Atwood’s Moodie has exhibited paranoid tendencies. For instance, she is concerned that the trees are conspiring against her. She