Gaspereau Press, 2006
Read by T. K. Murphy
In Types of Canadian Women, Volume II, K.I. Press presents us with a poetic continuation of Henry J. Morgan’s biographical dictionary, Types of Canadian Women, Volume I (originally published in 1903). Reading Press’s work, one wonders about Morgan, what kind of person he was, and why he wrote a catalogue of Canadian women.
Modern readers, I suspect, would see Morgan as a puffed-up, prudish Edwardian. The act of categorizing the female population of a country into “types” symbolizes a misogyny particular to the late nineteenth century, and many people would recognize it as such. The condescension of such acts is obvious — so obvious, in fact, that one wonders whether Press’s efforts were misspent by satirizing it.
If the satire were sharper, perhaps, or if the portraits of Canadian women less florid, the effort might seem more meritorious; however, Volume II is undermined by its limited diction. Though Press successfully suggests there was an invisible morbidity to 19th Century feminine life, the result is less like Wuthering Heights and more like an abridged screenplay to Northanger Abbey. Press’s vocabulary is spotted with words that the average Canadian might associate, in the vaguest possible way, with what is British and dated. Volume II otherwise relies on macabre understatement, grim conflations, and clichéd juxtapositions — all of which repeatedly suggest that a woman’s life circa 1903 was one of outward doilies and secret dildos, of placid social appearances and gruesome sexual realities. (“Social graces,” Press writes in “Uplifted the Home Life of the Whole Country,” include “fainting, flirting, archery, abortion… and sitting on chairs.”) All of her portraits share predictable rhetorical structures, and reflect a casual understanding of second-wave feminism better than they do any kind of human experience.
In her introduction, Press declares Typesto be “a window not merely onto the lives of… legendary women, but into their very souls.” Here Press stakes her claim: she acknowledges that a catalogue intended for public consumption will be partial, restricted by what is publicly acceptable. Press wants Volume II to complete the picture, and yet the larger problems of biographical portrait-taking remain. Without its companion volume, Types of Canadian Women II is as great a misrepresentation as the first. I suspect that some of the women whose photos appear in this volume would resent Press’s grim, sexually unorthodox descriptions as much as a contemporary woman might resent the original entries from 1903.
