Joanna Ellen Wood: A Silenced Female Author in English Canadian Fiction

Abstract

At the intersection between New Woman studies and motherhood studies, critical approaches to female literature can offer a renewed perspective that fosters the revitalization of silenced authors and works. When applied within the framework of nineteenth-century Canadian literature in English, new readings of dismissed writers and works from this intersectional critical perspective offer the chance of voicing their innovations and achievements. Although praised in her time, the attention paid to Joanna Ellen Wood and her novel The Untempered Wind (1894) within the Canadian literary framework has been ambivalent. The present analysis of her literary career and her novel demonstrate both deserve a place within Canadian literature still to be recovered.