Sherrill Grace,
"Inventing Mina Benson Hubbard: From her 1905 Expedition
across Labrador to her 2005 Centennial (and Beyond)"
(page 4 of 7)
She was manipulating and inventing her image of course, but she had
reason to do so. Before she had escaped into Labrador on this
expedition, the press had caught up with her and the speculations,
gossip, and aspersions made headlines. As I carried out my research for
the edition, I explored dozens of newspapers of the day, tracking down
items and tracing the story presented by reporters. Comments like these
are representative of what I found: "Mrs Hubbard Suspicious," her
"strange visit" (not expedition) to Labrador is "sentimentally
inspired," and Mina herself is described as "jealous," "secretive," and
"a small, frail woman."[4]
These quotations illustrate a few of the more
common epithets, and through this research I could get in touch with her
contemporary milieu and gain insight into the ways in which a woman
leading a northern expedition in 1905 would be viewed and constructed in
the popular, southern imagination. These insights, in turn, helped me
to appreciate many of the choices and decisions she made, not least to
keep her expedition a secret for as long as possible. Feminist theories
and history also guided my thinking on these issues, as did my research
into what Mina might have read. After all, she was a trained nurse and
although that training definitely inculcated good practices of
observation and note-taking, it did not provide her with narrative
templates for a northern expedition. For that her models had to be male
ones. However, when I began the process of comparative analysis with
male expedition narratives I was struck by the differences as much as
the similarities with A Woman's Way. I have described these in
detail in my introduction to the edition, therefore, I will just mention
two differences in passing: first, in her narrative, she adopts an
inclusive and multiple—what Bakhtin would call a dialogic—voice by
interspersing her story with the stories of her dead husband and her
guides (a narrative privileging unheard of in men's narratives of the
time); second, her photographs, while many are clearly taken with the
expeditionary goal in mind, are remarkable for the care and attention
she devotes to her guides, their work and individual identities, and to
the native peoples she meets. What I was trying to do—and I think we
must all make this attempt when we try to work with northern materials
from an earlier period, perhaps especially when a woman is at the centre
of the story—was to avoid as much as possible forcing my views onto the
text or event. We must try to listen, with historically and
theoretically sensitive ears, to the voices in the text or story, and we
must keep the geographical, social, and political contexts of an
expedition like Mina's as clearly before us as possible. And yet, with
the best will in the world we will still inevitably produce an
invention.
Thus far I have focused on the context and background for this
expedition, but I was working with a book that I wanted to bring back
into print. No manuscripts appear to have survived. The plates of her
hundreds of photographs have disappeared (something that has not
happened with male explorers of the day). Where to begin? The archival
challenges were considerable, but her original expedition journal did
survive and was in the collection at Memorial University in
Newfoundland, with a complete photocopy deposited in the National
Archives in Ottawa. I have studied both and own a complete copy for
research purposes. One of the most arduous but fascinating aspects of
my research involved a careful reading—often a deciphering—of the
journal and then a detailed comparison with her published text. What I
learned through this work would require another article, so I cannot
delve into the matter here. But I was very fortunate to have such a
resource because it brought me a bit closer to the private woman,
revealed her writing ability—which was considerable—and convinced me
once and for all that Mina adored her dead husband and had no romantic
interest in her handsome guide George Elson—oh yes, that is part of the
inventing that continues to this day! It also assured me of her courage
and endurance because not even in the privacy of this journal did she
whine or complain about the hardships of her expedition—the voracious
flies, the dangerous rapids, the paucity of clean clothes or feminine
supplies of any kind (including a mirror). Her journal contains long
passages of praise for the men and quotations of their conversation—when
these were in English. Her chief frustration lay in the extreme care
that Elson and the men took of her; they balked at her requests to roam
freely or to photograph rapids because, as she came to realize, they
were terrified that she would fall or come to harm, in which case they
would be accused of the most evil behaviour and, as George told her on
one occasion, then they would never be able to return to their
homes. In other words, comparing the journal with the final text
reveals a great deal about what she learned, about how she adapted to
rough northern conditions and was changed by her experience, and about
what it came to mean to her. At one point in the journal she writes
that she never wanted to go back to civilization and that if she were
only a man she would stay in the North. This comment, however, does not
make its way into the published book.
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