Gender Notes: Wilderness Unfinished

• Published in: Journal of Canadian Studies
• Main Author: Moss, John
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: University of Toronto Press Inc. (UTPress) 1998
• Subjects: History; Cultural Studies; Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/jcs.33.2.168; https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/jcs.33.2.168

Men and women tell their stories in fundamentally different ways. The structure of women’s narrative has been subverted, as the content has been suppressed, through the course of cultural evolution from classical to contemporary expression of human experience. Nowhere is this more evident than in writings of wilderness travel, but as male designs give way to female imperatives, not only are the forms Of narrative changing. But the very notion of wilderness itself is being refigured. Histrionic tales of conquest and endurance are being displaced by accounts of making connections with the natural world. A close reading of books by Victoria Jason and Don Starkell about overlapping Arctic expeditions clarifies the argument: in the female account, meaning gives way to being, the wilderness is rescued from metaphor, narrative celebrates the object perceived, not the subject perceiving.