Sara Jeannette Duncan
Sara Jeannette Duncan was a prominent Canadian journalist, dramatist, travel writer, and political activist born in 1861 in Brantford, Ontario. She initially trained as a teacher but pursued a career in writing, beginning her journalism journey in 1880. Duncan traveled extensively, covering significant events and issues, including the New Orleans Cotton Exposition, and worked for notable publications like The Washington Post and The Montreal Star. Her literary work is characterized by a blend of fiction and personal narrative, often exploring themes of women's emancipation, imperialism, and cultural identity during her travels in places like India and England.
Duncan's novels, such as *The Burnt Offering* and *The Imperialist*, delve into complex topics like Anglo-Indian relations, sexual politics, and the moral dilemmas of her time, showcasing her unique perspective through a semi-autobiographical lens. Throughout her life, she grappled with societal expectations of women and the condescending attitudes of the British towards Canadians. Despite her advocacy for women's rights, her views resist easy categorization, making her a multifaceted figure in literary and feminist contexts. Duncan's work remains significant for its exploration of the intersections of culture, politics, and gender.
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Sara Jeannette Duncan
- Born: December 22, 1861
- Birthplace: Brantford, Ontario, Canada
- Died: 1922
Biography
Journalist, dramatist, travel writer, and political activist Sara Jeannette Duncan remains best known for her fiction. She wrote a considerable number of novels while traveling the world; she went from western Canada to Japan, India, Egypt, and then England. Born in Brantford, Ontario, in 1861, she trained as a teacher but longed to be a writer. Her journalism career began in 1880, when an article appeared in The Canada Monthly. In 1884, she covered the New Orleans Cotton Exposition, and her coverage led to jobs at The Washington Post, The Toronto Globe, and The Montreal Star. From the male- dominated world of journalism, Duncan crusaded for women’s emancipation. However, it remains difficult to define her as a feminist; indeed, the inability to easily characterize Duncan’s views becomes the most dominate trait of her writing. As a resident of Canada, she keenly felt the condescending air of the British toward all things Canadian; she traveled extensively in British-dominated India, but held mixed attitudes toward imperialism and made clear her disdain for extreme feminism. Her restlessness began on a world tour in 1888 with her friend Lily Lewis. Her first book, A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves, published in 1890, presented Lewis as the improbably named “Orthodocia Love,” an innocent who required guidance. Duncan seems to have relished pseudonyms, sometimes posing as a male or suggesting some quality of her characters. Her semiautobiographical article “How an American Girl Became a Journalist” belies her nationality and uses a nom de plume, Margery Blunt, to depict a young woman who boldly travels by herself to New Orleans.
While on her travels, Duncan met and later married Everard Cotes, a British museum official in Calcutta, in 1890. An American Girl in London and Two Girls on a Barge both appeared the following year, and both took England as their settings. During Duncan’s lifetime, these two works proved her most popular. While living in India, Duncan published The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib (1893). Most of the novels that followed focused on life in India, with one of particular note: His Honour, and a Lady (1896), in which she further investigates the relations between Anglo-Indian cultures. This work set into motion two more novels that completed a type of trilogy: Set in Authority (1906) and The Burnt Offering (1910), which delve more forcibly into both the politics of the Anglo-Indian relationships and into sexual politics and take a stronger woman’s point of view with regard to adultery and its attendant desires. Among Duncan’s later writings, the most notable remain Those Delightful Americans (1902) and The Imperialist (1904); the latter probably has the most appeal for readers today. It explores the tension developed by Duncan in her Indian novels about politics and sexual freedom, though in this novel the protagonist also struggles to balance ideals and practical realities. Interestingly, Canadian and English critics gave it unfavorable reviews, while The New York Times praised it. As representative of Duncan’s œuvre, one would do well to take as her best works The Burnt Offering and The Imperialist. Although most of her other works were far more popular in her day, these two best define her own ambivalences toward politics, race relations, sexual relationships, and the changing moral climate of her time.