MULTIPLE IDENTITIES ON BEING CANADIAN IN EMILY CARR’S FICTIONAL WRITING

MULTIPLE IDENTITIES ON BEING CANADIAN IN EMILY CARR’S FICTIONAL WRITING

The paper concentrates on the artistic achievements of Emily Carr, who offered a very interesting angle for analysis within Canadian fictional writing. This ultimately served as a basis for a definition of what Canadian identity came to mean both in writing and painting. The aim of the essay is to uncover the multiple identities featuring in Carr’s fictional writing, namely The Book of Small (1942) and Growing Pains: An Autobiography (1946). Carr’s fictional works may be viewed as an extension of her painting, since these “help” to uncover the hidden personality of its author, or is it the image she wishes to present to the outside world? A thorough examination of the works reveals that Carr’s “herstories” present a multiplicity of identities. These are images Carr allows the reader to uncover, while her “other self” remains hidden as if in a “sealed envelope”.