Helpmates of man : middle-class women and gender ideology in nineteenth-century Ontario

by Barbara Maas

The central purpose of this study is to understand gender in its historical, cultural and social context. Focusing on middle-class Anglo-Canadian women in 19th-century Ontario, it explores the relationship between normative concepts of femininity, the social reality of women's lives, and the way women saw themselves. As most of the women are first-generation immigrants from the British Isles, the study may also contribute some insights into the process of immigration from the woman's perspective, counterbalancing the traditional approach of immigration as a predominantly male experience. Beginning with an outline of the economic and social structures on both sides of the Atlantic, including the social position of women & links between Canada and Great Britain in the 19th century, the study proceeds to analyse dominant Victorian middle-class gender ideology, as reflected in newspapers, periodicals and manuals in Ontario. A comparison to its British precedent can establish whether a transatlantic transfer of Victorian conceptualizations of womanhood took place between Britain and Ontario and how these concepts related to social reality. Remaining chapters investigate the different ways in which Ontario's women mediated between social prescriptions of femininity and the realities of their lives. In order to highlight the interrelation between gender ideology, social reality and female self-images and experiences three different cases have been selected in which this relationship came under pressure as a result of migration, the transition from girlhood to married life, and the social and demographic changes related to industrialization. The first of the three chapters dealing with women's experiences focuses on British immigrant women in pioneer Ontario in the first half of the 19th century. Main challenge they confronted was the process of emigration itself, which uprooted them from habitual surroundings and separated them from the circle of friends and relatives.

199 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1990