Section 1 Summary

Meneseteung is a short story about a frontierswoman who lived in the province of Ontario, Canada in the late 1800's and whose independent spirit carves out the life of an artist in favor of the typical roles assigned to women of the time period. Each of the six sections of the short story begins with a few lines written by Almeda Joynt Roth, the protagonist of the story, which is told from the perspective of a narrator. The poems are from a book entitled Offerings written in 1865 at a period in time when a woman's lot is assumed to be wife and mother not an unmarried poet. The narrator comments on the photo of Almeda inside the book and describes the woman as rather plain with gray hair although she is only twenty-five at the time.

Almeda is the last surviving member of...