The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925

by Mariana Valverde

BACK IN PRINT WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION The turn of the last century saw a great wave of moral fervour among Protestant social reformers in English Canada. Their targets for moral reform were sex hygiene, immigration policy, slum clearance, prostitution, and "white slavery." Mariana Valverde's groundbreaking The Age of Light, Soap, and Water examines the work and the ideas of moralist clergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain - or create - a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical, feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressive and puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement at the centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a healthy sexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linked to racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolish urban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical "light, soap, and water." This study uncovers a little known dimension of Canadian social history and shows that moral reform was not the project of a marginal puritanical group but was central to the race, class, and gender organization of modern English Canada.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Gender and Sexuality, Canada, Religion

208 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1991

Reviews

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A foundational text regarding moral reform movements and social purity movements in Canada, Valverde's monograph argues that these reform movements (which were privately organized and conducted by largely by the middle-class) served to both shape the bourgeois and used ideas around gender, class, and race as a form of nation-building. Disputing ideas around these movements as being highly evangelistic and/or not-based on science, Valverde explores how moral movements built upon a complex language of symbols regarding purity, race, and science to push for reform and to project their ideas of model citizenship (white, Protestant, middle-class). While the reform movements were almost entirely private/semi-public endeavors, they were eagerly embraced by the state as they provided a cost-effective alternative of social control - though this would shift after WWI - demonstrating the ways in which state power can be enacted onto multiple levels.

[Michael Primiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Valverde is such a clear and direct author

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! I highly recommend it to anyone interested in getting a historical outlook on moral regulation of prostitution, poverty, and immigration. Sadly, but many raced and classed notions around "moral purity" that were predominant at turn of the 20th century are still alive and well today...

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.

[Sharon]

very interesting