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Note: the following article on spatio-temporal ambiguities in John Richardson’s Wacousta is a modified excerpt from the article “The ‘New World’ Gothic Monster: Spatio-Temporal Ambiguities, Male Bonding, and Nation in John Richardson’s Wacousta”, co-authored with Matti Savolainen. Savolainen, Matti & Mehtonen, Päivi (ed & intr.). Gothic Topographies – Language, Nation Building and Race. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2013

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Scholarly work on Canadian literature has drawn attention to the Canadian landscape, and rightfully so. With the vast icy emptiness of the north and the depressing isolation of its individual settlements, it functions as a peculiar Gothic villain.

Here, nature itself becomes a monster (Atwood 3, 19, 35, 88); an “Other”, that in its sublime characteristics inspires both terror and awe, and at the same time serves the purpose of self-definition by instigating the individual’s assessing their place in this new world. This process occurs on an unconscious level, and it is here that the Gothic, as a mode, can be detected at its greatest uniqueness.

Canadianness in John Richardson’s Wacousta

In John Richardson’s Wacousta Canadianness exists primarily as a conceptual buffer zone; as an ontological wildcard, that is defined by relational patterns – which it also, in turn, defines.

In the complex political but also sociological conditions described in the novel, these relations acquire a paradoxical fluidity. Although the novel clearly separates the world into dichotomies – the New World versus the Old World, the whites versus the natives, and so on – at the same time Canada, as a concept, emerges as something in between of it all.

It is none of the other, pre-established concepts – in a sense, it is the “Other” – and yet in occasions it becomes all of them. This reflects clearly on the spatio-temporal connections in the novel, in which space and time are subject to a duality that portrays separation yet connection almost simultaneously – a self-contradiction that is typical of the Gothic.

Spatio-temporal Separations and Connections

Already in the opening chapter of the novel, the author painstakingly describes the Canadian landscape in great detail. He calls it “a ground hitherto untouched by the wand of the modern novelist” (W, 9).

As, therefore, Richardson initiates the process of literary terraforming of this alien world, he creates more than simple settings. Rather, he creates boundaries and distinctions, separations and connections. Populating this world with fortresses, forests, lakes and roads, he attempts to bring order in a chaotic land.

Particularly important is his emphasis on “a bridge, which will more than once be noticed in the course of our tale” (W, 15). In a Bakhtinian, chronotopical sense, the bridge is spatio-temporally important. It is a symbol of connection, not only spatially, but also between past and future – signifying the current moment in time, the synchronization of the crossing.

Ultimately, the bridge, which as Richardson claims is of chief importance in the novel, becomes a symbol of the aforementioned duality in Wacousta, at the same time separating and connecting.

The Gothic Landscape of Wacousta

Indeed, the landscape of Wacousta exhibits very peculiar characteristics, which emphasize its Gothic qualities. The integrity of spaces is violated at an early point, when the security of the English fort – what should have been the island of civilization, Europe and the whites, in a sea of wilderness – is breached.

Space but also time become entangled in the events, as “the appearance of a stranger within [the fort] walls at the still hour of midnight could not fail to be regarded as an extraordinary event” (W, 19).

As an English detachment is attacked in the darkness, lieutenant Murphy is killed (W, 25). It is decided that he should be buried in the ground of the very same spot where he met his death. The convergence of time, space and meaning is noteworthy.

Because not only is lieutenant Murphy buried in the same place where he died, but during the ritual the detachment is yet again attacked by “a legion of devils” that emerges from the forest in an almost mythological manner (W, 37).

The Ambiguous Borders of Nature

It is as if, quite literally, the forest comes alive to attack the English. Indeed, on more than one occasion, the text makes no definite distinction between landscape and Indians; they are an extension and a part of nature.

The visual impact of the relevant scenes that describe this attribute is unmistakably Gothic in its fluidity and, one could argue, lyricism. In one of the many ambushes suffered by the English, the detachment anxiously anticipates the attack and, while the time appears to momentarily stop, “the heights [come] alive with the dusky forms of naked warriors” (W, 97).

The motif of haunted ground is clearly present, a fact that is demonstrated once more, when a separate detachment is sent to retrieve the body of a fallen comrade, only to be attacked by “a hundred dark and hideous savages” (W, 42).

This continuous cycle of death has the strong undertones of a recurring dream. Events are repeated, spaces morph – as the Indians are essentially an extension of nature – and persons shape-shift in a characteristically disconnected, staccato, dreamlike way.

Clearly, this repetitive allusion to dreaming – occasionally reaching nightmarish, phantasmic proportions – indicates that something deeper, perhaps something repressed is at play.

Works Cited

Atwood, Margaret. Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. (Gloucestershire, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995).
Richardson, John. Wacousta, Three Volumes Combined. Cited as “W”. (Middlesex, UK: The Echo Library, 2007; original 1832).

Read More

Savolainen, Matti & Angelis, Christos. “The ‘New World’ Gothic Monster: Spatio-Temporal Ambiguities, Male Bonding, and Nation in John Richardson’s Wacousta”. Savolainen, Matti & Mehtonen, Päivi (ed & intr). Gothic Topographies – Language, Nation Building and Race. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2013