Voyageurs

Margaret Elphinstone's Voyageurs: A Novel (2003) may well be the most Sir Walter Scott-like novel that I've read since...any novel by Sir Walter Scott.  Our protagonist, Mark Greenhow, an Englishman and Friend, leaves the family farm in Cumberland to find his sister, Rachel, who has mysteriously disappeared into the wilds of Canada.  In many ways, the particulars of his quest turn out to be unimportant (when he finally finds Rachel, it's a deliberate let-down).  More importantly, Mark's voyage forces him to reflect on his own identity as a man, on the peculiar nature of his relationship to English patriotism, and on the place of the Society of Friends in a modernizing world. 

Elphinstone represents the novel as a "lost manuscript," concealed in the farmhouse owned by Greenhow's descendant, and its discovery introduces a very Scott-like theme: history as a somewhat melancholy conflict between the old traditions and the new ways, with the former inevitably giving way to the latter.  The twenty-first century Mark Greenhow sells his farm to the editor's family after disaster strikes, and she finds the MS while happily contemplating her "big study that was to run the length of the house, lit by new rooflights, with my work surface directly underneath, and bookshelves all along the back wall" (2).  What was once a working farm, in other words, is about to become the rural retreat for people who want all the modern conveniences without the hurly-burly of urban life ("who wants to raise children in London these days?" [2]).  The narrator's slightly condescending attitude to the living Mark Greenhow ("cannier than I expected" [2]) suggests a conflict between urban and rural Englishness, in good country-and-the-city fashion, that turns out to replay a very similar conflict in the nineteenth-century Mark's narrative.  Mark himself is actually recopying his older notebook, footnoting as he goes along, which tells us that there are really two Marks--the one traveling abroad and the older one, a well-established farmer with a wife and children, somewhat anxious about the less conventional aspects of his tale.  In fact, the novel doubles Mark's distance from his earlier self, since the editor feels the need to cut and update the MS for modern consumption: besides adding punctuation, she edits terminology that "might be offensive to modern ideas" and sharply reduces the "religious discourse," especially "in the women's letters" (3).  This last is a fascinating admission, justified on the grounds that "[o]bviously it mattered to the writers at the time; I can't see that it would have any significance for the modern reader" (3).  It's fascinating because Mark's membership in the Society of Friends is absolutely central to his sense of self, to his understanding of the world, and, indeed, to how others perceive him; cutting out chunks of the "religious discourse" because it seems so anachronistic may make the characters seem less strange, but it also slashes away at what makes them who they are.  The novel remains full of religious discourse, but the editor's anxiety about it--combined with her unwitting condescension to the current Mark--calls her historical privilege, as it were, into question.  Indeed, the editor "others" her author, and in so doing, replicates Mark's own problems instead of transcending them.

While Mark is not quite a classic "mediocre hero"--he's got far more gumption than, say, Edward Waverley, although he does wind up being pushed around by forces outside his control--he plays much the same function: his voyages take him through shifting national landscapes, bring him into close contact with different (sometimes wildly different) cultures, and finally lead him to a more self-conscious awareness of self and country.  In James Buzard's terms, this novel performs fictional ethnography with a vengeance, as Mark tries to reconcile his initially uncomplicated identity as a Friend with other, often violently conflicting ways of living in the world.  Elphinstone's most significant revision of Scott's model, I think, rests in her decision to make all the main characters part of the cultural "periphery," not its center.  Mark's clothes, speech, pacifism, and other traits all single him out as part of a distinct and sometimes reviled minority; his brother-in-law Alan Mackenzie is a displaced Highlander who witnesses the triumph of economics over clan loyalties, journeys to Edinburgh and then the colonies, and manages to remake himself as a successful gentleman.  Rachel and her aunt Judith turn to itinerant ministry, which dismays some of the novel's men, and Rachel herself is clearly frustrated by the restrictions of both her religion and her gender.  And Loic, Mark's and Alan's guide, is half European and half Ottawa, identifying with both cultures but also aware that their relationship trembles on a knife's edge.  Mark and Alan, in particular, must struggle to figure out how to think about themselves as "English," or "British," or "Scottish," or "Canadian"; at the end of the novel, Alan answers "How should I know?" when Mark asks him to name his country (444). 

By emphasizing Mark's minority status, Elphinstone turns Mark into the equivalent of Scott's exotic Highland clansmen; at one level, it's as though Fergus Mac-Ivor was Waverley's protagonist, instead of the title character.  Others study Mark as much as Mark studies them.  At the same time, Elphinstone doesn't collapse all forms of cultural difference into each other.  Mark's education includes the realization that Canada was not exactly empty before the British and French got there, but despite his best efforts, he inadvertently finds himself a party to co-opting the various tribes they encounter for British military interests.  As one ultimately helpful Ottawa warrior grimly notes, "[i]t would be better if there were no white people in our country at all, if you had stayed in your own place, and not come to our lands in order to rob and murder and steal, and entice us with promises that do not last" (385).  The warrior's assessment of British (and American) behavior does not prefigure any possibility of peaceful reunion, as the novel's classic romance plot--straight out of both the national tale and the historical novel--makes quite clear. Mark finds himself torn between his love for Clemency, an American Friend transplanted to Canada, and Waase'aaban, Loic's beautiful young sister-in-law.  If readers are going to be annoyed by anything in this novel, it's Mark's relationship with Waase'aaban, which rapidly tips over into highly problematic cliche territory, although Mark himself remains troubled by the memory.  In this instance, the outcome is rather Ivanhoe-ish than otherwise, but raises more questions than it answers about what "love" means in this colonial context.  The personal certainly provides no cure for the political. 

The slight sense of disappointment that Mark experiences on reuniting with Clemency, who is badly scarred by smallpox, forms part of the novel's overall melancholy about what historical change means for the participants.  Mark's reunion with Rachel is not particularly happy and doesn't bring about any magical change in their always-tense relationship.  Nor, for that matter, does her resumed marriage to Alan have a joyful conclusion.  Mark himself, while happy in his marriage and his children, never manages to really make a dent in the religious practices he finds troubling, and his experiences leave him somewhat alienated from his fellows.  Outside of his narrative, there is nothing left of Mark except for "the grudging record of birth, marriage, and death" (465).  And, as we have seen at the beginning, circumstances beyond their control ultimately force the Greenhows off their farm.  For all of the editor's recovery work, the reader feels left with a sense of loss, instead of accomplishment.