The Different Perspectives Of

            The Different Perspectives Of Susanna Moodie And Catherine Parr Traill.
             Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill are important 19th-century Canadian writers because their works record more minute and personal details about what it was like for pioneer women making the challenging transition from England's long established culture and landscape to Canada's instability and newness. The perspective offered by their works is one that would otherwise only be alluded to in historical documents. Born in England twenty-three months apart, the sisters became professional writers before they married. In 1832 they emigrated with their Scottish husbands to Canada in order to solve financial problems. They settled in the backwoods of what is now Ontario, near Lakefield. Catharine Parr Traill's The Backwoods of Canada (1836) and Canadian Crusoes (1852), and Susanna Moodie's Roughing It in the Bush (1852) and Life in the Clearings (1853), as well many of their other works are similar in that they aim toward the similar purpose of conveying, recording, and making sense of their experinces as female emigrants. The sisters lived and wrote in Canada until their deaths " Susanna's in 1885 and Catharine's in 1899.
             The writings of Susanna and Catherine reflect their different attitudes toward life. The bodies of work produced by Moodie and Traill reflect a difference in perspectives on God, providence and suffering. If Moodie is poetic, her sister is pragmatic. Trail's writing shows more optimism than her sister's, though her biographical information indicates that her life in the colony was even more bedecked with difficulty than Susanna's. She writes about the hardness of pioneer life like Moodie, but her accounts are written as interesting adventures to be learned from. Moodie's work frequently warns gentle-women like herself against emigrating to Canada and her stories and poems often indicate that she regretted rather than embraced her emigration.