1 - Surveying the Fields

Summary

The sheer variety of what happens on North American farms and of how these events are told in North American farm novels is truly astounding. Amid this variety of thematic issues, ethnicity of the cast of characters, and formal narrative aspects, however, there are also conspicuous constants or trends, which run along the lines of national literatures and cultures. Most importantly, American, English Canadian, and French Canadian farm novels, respectively, tend to portray specific types of farmers and to project particular national myths or ideologies onto the farm space. In the United States farm novels regularly focus on settlers who use the farm as a space to fulfill their personal version of the American dream. In English Canada, too, farm novels tend to focus on settlers, but here farmer characters regularly employ agriculture to project and impose their vision of man-made structures and order on the natural space. In French Canada, finally, the roman de la terre concentrates on well-established farmers and stresses the role of the farm space in the struggle for survival of French or French Canadian culture on the North American continent. Cross-border regional similarities—between, for instance, American and English Canadian farm novels from the West—notwithstanding, then, North American farm novels “differ in some nationally distinctive ways” (D. Harrison 1981, 259).