Travelling with the Crone: the journals of Susanna Moodie

This essay focuses on Margaret Atwood’s 1970 collection of poems entitled The Journals of Susanna Moodie. It displays, not only at a figurative level, all the characteristic traits of the old woman: her privileged, though painful, relationship with time; her ability to freely live her life in the present and dwell upon life under the shadow of death; her witchcraft, her magical power over time. This collection of poems also presents an allegorical-metaphysical transposition, which involves the younger generation and the cyclical seasonal rhythms: in the end, in fact, the pioneer, Susanna Moodie, is bound to become herself a crone and to face a new generation, which is unaware of time and pain.