The journey through selfhood in The Journals of Mary O'Brien 1828–1838 and A gentlewoman in Upper Canada: the journals of Anne Langton

The Journals of Mary O'Brien and The Journals of Anne Langton bear witness to and are part of a process of mental and emotional adjustment to life in the early nineteenth-century Canadian bush. This article uses a postpositivistic reading and Yi-Fu Tuan's theories of space and place to demonstrate how Mary O'Brien and Anne Langton created new identities for themselves in their adopted country by writing themselves into a place. It is through the pages of their journals that Mary O'Brien and Anne Langton organize their world and give it meaning.