Freedom on the Frontier: Sharon Butala’s Novel <i>Wild Rose</i> as Existential Autofiction

Abstract

In Wild Rose (2015), the seventh novel by Canadian prairie author Sharon Butala, the protagonist—young wife and aspiring homesteader Sophie Hippolyte—expresses profound anguish, rejection of upbringing and religion, and headstrong desire to remake herself on the prairie frontier of southwestern Saskatchewan in the mid-1880s. The novel marks a turn in Butala’s fiction toward atheistic existential philosophy, a progression from a questioning to a rejection of organized religion and an emphasis on complete freedom. This turn was prompted by her suffering and questioning as Butala dealt with the rather sudden death of her husband, the loss of her way of life on, and intimate connection with, the prairie landscape, and the need to remake herself. Indeed, Wild Rose can be considered “existential autofiction” in which Butala fictionalizes her experience of loss and her rejection of religion (specifically Catholicism) via Sophie, one of her most resilient characters, who seeks freedom on the frontier.