Undisciplined Women: Tradition and Culture in Canada

Abstract

Undisciplined Women: Tradition and Culture in Canada. Edited by Pauline Greenhill and Diane Tye. (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi + 306, photographs, drawings, editors' concluding statement, references, index. $45.00 cloth) The aim of the editors of Undisciplined Women was to redress Canadian folklore studies' tendency to both neglect women's traditions and ignore feminist perspectives (x). This is an important project, and this volume meets the goal of its editors. Hopefully, it will also be an impetus for more work in this area. The collection includes the work of scholars from a variety of fields contributing essays that are arranged into three main sections: Identifying, Collecting, and Interpreting Women's Folklore; Images of Women in Canadian Traditional and Popular Culture; and Women Transform Their lives and Traditions. Of particular interest in the first section are articles by Edith Fowke and Diane Tye. Written before her death, Fowke's contribution to the volume is an account of her odyssey and personal prejudices (39). Her discussion begins with her work in leftist politics, covers her popularly known work with folksongs and folklore in general, and includes her Paul Bunyan fakelore debate with Richard Dorson. She also takes issue with the manner in which some academics distinguish sharply between what they term professionals and amateurs on the basis of their training (45). Her personal history is compelling, and-whatever the reader's views on the issues-her arguments about the academic/popular schism in the field are worthy contributions to the discussion about this matter. Tye also addresses the issue of the popularizers with an article detailing the work of Jean D. Heffernan, whose stories of Springhill, Nova Scotia, were chronicled in a newspaper. Drawing on Joan Radner's and Susan Lanser's work, Tye examines the coding in Heffernan's articles and argues that folklorists should pay attention to this kind of local ethnography. Finally, included in this first section is an article by a women's studies scholar, Christine St. Peter, about Anne Cameron's well-known book, Daughters of oper Woman. In her article, St. Peter makes a surprising comment: she says that it was only after 1989 that she became aware of how essential is the practice of verbatim recording of [Native] elders' words (68). That a feminist scholar could be so late in coming to this realization does illustrate the importance of books like Undisciplined Women, which provide an interdisciplinary meeting ground for scholars. Cameron's comment also highlights the need for more conversations between folklorists, ethnographers, and scholars in other fields, including women's studies. …