Creating Canada: Emily Pauline Johnson and the Dramatic Monologue

• Published in: Victorian studies 2020-01, Vol.62 (2), p.208-212
• Main Author: O'Neil, Lindsey E. R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 19th century; Authors; Beliefs, opinions and attitudes; British & Irish literature; British Empire; Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861); Canadian native peoples; Canadians; Colonialism; Dramatic monologues; English Canadians; English literature; History; Indigenous peoples; Indigenous peoples in Canada; Interiority; Johnson, E. Pauline; Military personnel; Monologues; Morality; Native peoples; Negotiation; Poetry; Political aspects; Prayer; Race; Rhetorical figures; Social aspects; Values; Women; Works; Writers
• ISSN: 0042-5222; 1527-2052
• DOI: 10.2979/victorianstudies.62.2.07

I argue that the late-nineteenth-century dramatic monologue shifted to depict the relationship between multiple societies rather than an individual speaker versus his or her society. The poetic form expanded from depictions of idiosyncratic individuals to global negotiations between communities and the rage and violence that resulted. E. Pauline Johnson's dramatic monologues participated in this shift and, in so doing, challenged Anglo-Canadian audiences to confront their understanding of themselves as a British colony. Johnson's use of poetic tropes from Britain, Canada, and the United States suggested a universality of values between colonizer and colonized that the colonized Indigenous peoples of Canada surpassed the British in upholding these values. Johnson's dramatic monologues invited Anglo-Canadians to join in her rage and created a new conception of what it meant to be Canadian by questioning the foundational assumptions of colonial society.