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BETWEEN THE UNES: THE REPRESENTATION OF CANADIAN WOMEN IN ENGUSH-LANGUAGE NOVELS WRIITEN BV WOMEN IN THE 1930S

Ann Gossage Department of History McGiII University, Montreal March,1996

A Thesis submitted to the Facult) of Graduate Studies and Research ln partial fulfilment of the requiremern of the degree of Master of Arts

(c) copyright Ann Gossage, 1996

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Canada Shortened Title: Between the lines: Women in Canadian novels of the 1930s ABSTRACT This thesis examines the role of Canadian women as presented in English language novels of the 1930s written by women authors. Within the context ofthe • Great Depression it focuses on issues that are central to women's daily lives such as work, love, marriage and motherhood. lt also isolates recurring themes in the nove!s and attempts to understand the authors' messages within their social context. Social reform. politics and ge!1der relationships are among the subjects explored.

RESUME Cette thèse examine le rôle des femmes canadiennes telles que représentées par les auteurs féminins des romans de langue anglaise des années 1930. Elle se concentre, dans le contexte de la grande dépression, sur les préoccupations qui sont qu centre d~ la vie quotidienne des femmes: le travail, l'amour, le mariage et la maternité. On a isolé les thèmes qui reviennent fréquerrlll,oot dans les romans et essayé de comprendre les messages des auteurs en tenant compte du contexte social. La réforme sociale, la politique et les relations homme-femmes font partie des sujets explorés.

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• ACKNOWlEDGEMENTS 1would like to thank the following people: Professor Andrée Lévesque for her guidance and forbearance; • the inter-library loans staff whose services 1used to the point of abuse; Peter Gossage for his editorial suggestions on structure and style. and for "Between the Unes"; Mary Bleho for the abstraet translation: Joan Kearvell for her help with printing; Audrey Gossage. Mary Bleho and Helene Bleho for babysitting Michael 50 that 1 could work on this thesis: and Mike Bleho for his constant encouragement and support.

• TABLE OF CONTENTS

• INTRODUCTION 1 APPROACH and METHODS 4

CHAPTER 1: CANADIAN PUSLISHING IN THE 19305 15 REALISM 15 RECEPnON 19

CHAPTER Il: EMPLOYMENT AND THE DOMESnC IDEAL 24 THE DEPRESSION SETIlNG 24 WOMEN AND WORK 33

CHAPTER III: LOVE AND MARRIAGE 47 LONG ENGAGEMENTS 47 'ADVANTAGES' OF MARRIAGE 49 "ILLEGITIMACY" ...... 52 SEXUALITY ST SELF-SACRIFICE 65

CHAPTER IV: MOTHERING 73 SIRTH CONTROL 73 CHILDSIRTH 77 CHILDREARING 83 WOMEN'S CULTURE? 88

CHAPTER V: WOMEN. SOCIETY AND POLITICS ...... •...... 94 SOCIAL REFORM 94 SEING ''WELL-BORN'' 97 WEALTH AND CLASS 99 EUGENIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM 102 ETHNIC INTOLERANCE...... •...... 107 COUNTRY VERSUS CITY ...... 111 DEPRESSION POLITICS ...... •...... 118 RADICAL ALTERNATIVES 119 GENDER POLITICS 124

CONCLUSION ...... •...•...... 135 APPENDIX: STORY SUMMARIES ...... •...••• .. 137 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... ••.••••.• 146 • INTRODUCTION Authors and historians tend to charaeterize the decade of the Great • Depression as a decade manquée. The idea that the 1930s seem to mark a hait to the progress of the 1920s is expressed, as historian Michiel Hom has pointed out, in Depression titles such as ''ten lost years" and ''the winter years", Hom sees the "Bennett Buggy" as the best symbol of the rollinq back of certain advances in Canadian society; unable to afford fuel, people hitched their horses to their automobiles and named the hybrid after Prime Minister Bennett.' For Canadian women this rollback was significant. Althouqh by the 1930s they had won the right to vote in federal elections, to serve in both houses of the Canadian parliament, and had entered the paid workforce in increasing numbers since World War l, their freedom to operate in the "public sphere" did not go unchallenged. With the economic downtum of the 1930s, the sense that the best place for women was in the home was reaffirmed. One author and social commentator, Gwethalyn Graham, in an article entitled. "Women, Are They Human?", argues that the 1930s witnessed a backlash against wornen's individual rights. She links this backlash to the economic pressures of the Depression, and to psychoanalytic theories which understand a woman's bioloqy, her mothering function, as her single motivator in life! According to Graham, "Women are conditioned to regard marriage as an end which is exclusive of everything else since their earliest childhood.'" Ma~orie King, writing for New Frontier in 1937, furthers this point.

1 Michiel Hom, The Great Depression of Ihe '930s in Canada. Canadian HistoricaJ Association Booklet No. 39 (Ottawa ,984). 3.

2 A woman's mind. according 10 Frederick Tracy. an ethics Professor ciled by k3eth Ughl and Ruth Roach Pierson. •...is reproductive rather than productive: Beth Ught and Ruth Roach Pierson. No Easy Road Women in Canada 1:)20$ 10 ,960$ (Toronto: New Hoglown Press. ,990), 57, William D. Tait, writing for the Dalhousie Review in ,930. also argued that a woman's role W8S essentially !hat of wife and mother. He wriles. 'The mothers of great men have done more for the world than ail the so-called female uplifters that ever lived: William D. Tait. ·Some Feminisms·. Dalhousie Review , 0 (1930): 54-55. • 3 Gwethalyn Graham, "Women. Are They Human?· The Canadian Forum 16 (Oecember 1936): 22. 2

Women are mugs: Because they are brought up to believe they • must marry and keep house for a living. They are taught to expect less of themselves than men, and to fear and distrust ''working'' for a living as a permanent prospect. The economic system makes this inevitable of course. But what a ridiculous situation! It means that myriads of intelligent women, with extremely varied capabilities and interests, find that if they wish to live a full emotional Iife, to which mating and parenthood are necessary they are automatically doomed to one kind of occupation. whether they Iike it or not.4 The authors of Canadian Women make the paradox of women's position in Canadian society explicit, suggesting that despite broadened social opportunities for women after World War 1. there was an attempt to recapture the pre-war status quo. For women, this meant a reaffirmation of traditional roles as wives and mothers at a time when increased educational and job opportunities appeared to offer more choice than ever before....the "new woman" was incorporated into a value system that reasserted and redefined the female traits of femininity, domesticity. and dependence.5 Gender politics in the 1930s were informed by the Victorian ideelogy which placed women in the horr.e and men in the work place". Yet, as Ruth Roach Pierson has noted, the separate spheres doctrine was based on gender

• Marjorie King, "Women are Mugs", Nl!W Frontier 1. no. 10 (February 1937): 23.

• Alison Prentice et al., Canadian Women: A History (Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1988), 240.

• The corollary to the theory that women are wives and mothers while men are crusaders and breadwinners, is that there is something unnatural about men or women who wish to step outside of these ready made roles. This restrictive standard affected even successful women who seemed to live outside of il Agnes MacPhail. the first Canadian woman MP. for exarnple, had to forego a family. She aise had to endure the pejorative depiction of hersel! in Ottawa as "an austere, sharp" tongued s~,inster"(p. 185) who was somehow incomplete despite her accomplishments. It is said that Mac:'hail "..felt strongly the right of a woman to be a person [emphasis in the original], ta do things in the world at large instead of merely serving as helpmate to a man." Mary Quayte Innis, ed.. The Clear Spirit Twenty Canadian Women and Their Times (Toronto: University of Toronto • Press. 1966). 195. 3 • stereotypes, such as males are aggressive and females are passive. 7 Feminist authors have questioned whether these spheres accurately represented male and female relationships or work patterns. Many conclude that they did not. While men were perceived as breadwinners, for example, women, particularty rural women, engaged in ail sorts of activities that contributed to the household coffers in largely unrecorded ways. Their ingenuity and home production was often essential to survival during the hard financial times of the thirties.· Wornen's contributions to the family economy often went publicly unrecognized, however. "...for decades neither the farm wife nor the fisherman's wife was countoo as a participant in Ganada's labor force."· Historian and literary critic Mary Poovey, in her survey of middle-class women in Victorian England, also makes a case for the f1uidity ofthe spheres. She denies the biological foundat;on for Victorian ideology, and suggests instead that these notions were socially created and never completElly accepted. She says, "...the middle class ideology we most often associate with the Victorian period was both contested and always under construction."'o Apart trom misrepresenting women's contributions, the separate spheres model also fails to highlight the dynamic quality of women's domesticity. In her work on western American women in the second half of the 19th century, June Underwood, a Professor of English at Emporia State University, uses historical and literary sources to argue that women were not always restricted or victirnized by

, Veronica Strong·Boag cites a critic of co-education who lurther delineates the supposed differences between the sexes as follows, •...'a boy is a boy', and will be 'restless, adventurous, creative. active, a maker, while a girl under normal conditions, gr,Jws calm, home-Ioving, receptive. passive. a user'" Veronica Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled: Lives of Girls and Women in English Canada. 1919·1939 (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitrnan, 1988). la.

• Ught and Pierson, No Easy Road, 215.

• Ibid•• p. 252•

'0 Mary Poovey. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid·Victorian EngI8nd • (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988),3. 4 • prescriptive roles. Instead. "...they remodelled their prescriptive roles to suit the needs, personal and public, that they perceived around them."" The notion of separate spheres and the domestic ideology which idealized women's roles as wives and mothers will be a recurring motif throughout this thesis. These ideas constiMe a normative standard against which the characters in these Canadian novels of the 1930s can usefully be compared. APPROACH and METHOOS This thesis represents an attempt to leam about women's experience by using a collection of novels written by Canadian women in the 1930s as an historical source. Accepting that literature is a part of a social context. and keeping in mind the concem women's historians have voiced over the paucity of sources on womell, literature written by women can be read in such a way as to shed light on the ways women lived, their concems and priorities. Fiction written by women has the advantage over some other sources of not being simply prescriptive. Rather it is told in a woman's voice. Since the novels chosen for this survey have contemporary settings, many social issues of the day are addressed. By reading these novels, one can get a sense of whether prescribed roles-such as a woman's place is in the home-were supported by women authors ofthe time or whether they were challenged. Most of the books chosen for this thesis were pulied from "The Canadian Catalogue of Books"." The criteria for their inclusion here were a Canadian

" June O. Underwood, 'Western Women and True Womanhood. Culture and Symbol in History and Uterature". Great Plains Quarterly 5. no. 2 (Spring 1985): 95, Underwood addresses speeifically the four traits altributed to women by the cult of true womanhood: piety. purity. subrnissiveness and domesticity.

" Please refer to the appendix. The novels are summarized and listed a1phabetically, The Newfoundland novels by Margaret Duley are not lisled on the Canadian Catalogue because Newfoundland only entered Confederation in 1949. Their inclusion here is a deliberate anachronism. made in much the serne way that Newfoundland is included in survey texts on • Canadian history, 5 • Depression-era setting and publication date. " My approach was to read books with contemporary settings with a view. first of ail. 10 the ways in wnich the plot or the behaviour of the characters had been sllaped by Depression conditions. Particular attention was paid to the activities and views of women charaeters­ whetherthey worked, married. had children. were politicized-in an attempt to see how this portrayal compared to the picture of Depression women that has already been created. 1also took a special interest in recurring themes and attempted to piace the authors' messages in the context of their times. 1sought books which had been reviewed in order to get a sense of their reception but could not find a review in every case. It should be noted that due to the number of novels consulted each one could not be given equal space and attention and none are analyzed with depth of analysis required of a literary critique. To make optimal use of an historical source, one must question the motivations behind il. However. to leam more about these women authors and their motivations for writing would be a study in itself. carole Gerson is presently addressing herself to precisely this challenge. She is compiling biographical information on Canadian women authors of books of poetry and fiction between 1820 and 1939. In a recent article, she suggssts that the reasons women chose to write included the promotion of certain causes such as moral reform, patriotism, and animal welfare, as a means of self expression and in answer to financial need.'· Despite some ambiguities about the financial viability of a woman choosing writing for a Iiving,15 one main point seems to be thal as a career it was

•• In some instances, the lime frame was unspecified. This along with the absence of a reVlew or corroborating information on the author made the selting difficultto ascertain. Commenls on the difficulty of obtaining employment or tough economic limes. combined with DeprllSSlon-era publication dates, were interpreted as evidence of a Depression.era selting.

.. Carole Gerson, 'The Business of a Woman's lJfe: Careers of Early Canadian Women \'\Inters'. Women's Writina and the Literary Institution. C. Potvin and J. Williamson. eds. (Alberta: Research Inslitute for Comparative Literature. 1992). n.

15 Gerson states at the beginning of the article that women published their books or pamphlcls with •...Iittle hope for financial reward', (p. 77) and yet concludes with ....many of the ean.dierl • women 1am researching tumed te wriling to secure both the money and the roof over thetr heads 6

at least as or somewhat more open to women than other areas of employment. • She says, "While women were implicitly excluded from the academic and politicaJ networks and honours that conferred a portion of an author's literary value, writing offered a fairer chance to achieve economic equality than teaching, for example, where a woman was lucky to eam half the salary of a man."'· Gerson aise points out that more money could be made by writing for periodicals than publishing a book but that books lent a certain perrnanency that added to their appeal.'7 Authors often paid to have their books published and had to rely on sales to make up the initial outlay and then hopefully see some profit. This is an especially cogent point because, as Gerson points out, a study of books as opposed to articles isolates a more affluent group: "By privileging books and monographs over periodicals... such projects, including my own, privilege authors who could afford book publication over authors who sold their work to periodicals, many of whom were women."'· Moreover, she also points out that for the "professional" woman author, financial success on a par with that of a man was possible. The

they require

,. Gerson, 'The Business of a Woman's Ufe", 91.

"Ibid.. 80.

,. Ibid.. 80. Margaret Duley is a case in point According to her biographer, she was raised in a wealthy femily in St John's, Newloundland. Money does not seem ta have been the motivation behind her decision ta write. Although her reBSOns are never made explicit, Fader speculatas as foIlows, 'Certainly she was bore

fairly small group of "professional" women authors Gerson identifies include Lucy • Maude Montgomery, Mazo de la Roche, Ma~orie Pickthall who wrote poetry and prose in the 192Os, and Madge Macbeth (Gilbert Knox) a joumalist and fiction writer and widow with children, who won over the Ottawa elite circles, became the first woman President of the Canadian Authors' Association and was after her death dubbed "a Iiterary Queen".'. Further to this point, she writes, "Moreover, the occasional windfalls of producing a best-seller or winning a substantial prize (de la Roche, Martha Ostenso) offered the possibility of prosperit [sic], an inconceivable prospect in other occupations open to women, such as teaching or nursing."20 Initially my decision to use Iiterature as an historical source was a naive attempt to combine my two academic interests: literature and history. 1have since discovered that using literature in this fashion warrants sorne understanding of Iiterary theories and their effect on the writing of history. In recent years, a growing body of work in Iiterary theory and discourse analysis presents the view that ianguage is more than just a means of communicating knowledge. As historian Mariana Valverde describes this view, "...Ianguage is not a transparent window giving access to the world but it is rather a part of the world, a kind of object among objects...,,21. This view of language tends to erase the distinction between different types of texts and elevates the role of literature in historiography. As Perez zagorin, a critic of postmodem theory, writes, "One of the characteristic moves of postmodemist and deconstructionist theory has been to try to obliterate

,. Gerson, "The Business of a Woman's ure", 93.

,. Ibid., 87.

21 Mariana Valverde, The Age of Ught Soap and Water: MoraJ Reform ln Engllsh c.n.d.. 1885­ • 1925 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991), 10. 8

the boundaries between Iiterature and other disciplines by reducing ail modes of • thought to the common condition of writing."22 It is partJy because of these theories that Iiterature is beginning to be consulted as an historical source. This is a departure from the formalist critical approach to literature which dominated Iiterary criticism in the 1950s and 196Os, and which analyzed a literary work in an "ahistorical" manner. As J. Kelly writes, according to the New Criticism, CritiC's interpreted a text's meaning not trom the historical context of its original publication, but trom the context of the literary tradition. For example, a critic interpreting Eliot's own The Waste Land, which was published in 1922, would be far more concemed with Shakespeare's Hamlet than with the aftermath of the First World War.....Historical contexts merely Iimited explication.23 The idea of understanding literature in its social context and using Iiterature as an historical source is more in keeping with the Iiterary theory known as Historicism which, "...strives to establish relationships among the historical context in which the work was produced, the work as an imaginative artifact, the impact ofthe work on the social and cultural elements of its own world, and the significance of the work for the reader in a later and different world.,,24 Discourse analysis, inspired, at least in part, by the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida, has enabled historians to question models of understanding the past which were taken as axiomatic. The critical stance of deconstruction appeals to many feminist theorists because it allows them to circumvent categories that have restricted them. For example, Derrida observed the tendency for human experience to be understood in terms of binary oppositions, such

22 Perez zagorin, "Hisloriography and Poslmodemism: Reconsiderations", Hislorv and Theorv 29 (1990): 271 .

.. Joseph Kelly and Timothy Kelly, "Social Hislory Updata: Searching the Dark AIley: New Historlcism and Social Hislory", Journal of Social Hislorv 25, no. 3 (1992): 679.

.. C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon. A Handbook la Uterature Fifth Edition (New York: • MacMillan, 1988),239. 9 • as,"..unity/diversity, identity/difference, presence/absence...". which are, according to historian Joan Scott, "... not natural but constructed oppositions...... He suggests the relationship between these perceived opposites might aetually be one of interdependence. If one accepts. as feminist historian Mary Poovey does. the Derridean idea that ideologies are figurative, then there is no reason to be materially inhibited by normative definitions or standards. Because postmodem thinking does not recognize biological or essentialist arguments conceming human nature, a deconstructionist feminist. Poovey argues, could even challenge the categories of male and female thereby opening up the possibility of wholly different social relations in the future. She explains this idea as follows, This social liberation of the concept from its natural referent might, in tum, open the door for examining even the fixity of the anatomical categories upon which the binary opposition seems to be based. Instead of relegating ail biological variants into the two categories,...this practice might enable us both to multiply the categories of sex and to detach reproduction from sex-a hitherto unthinkable concept. .. 20 It should be noted, however, that if one accepts these theories in their entirety, they aetually subvert the notion of history itself. According te Hayden White, "The French Strueturalists in general begin by treating ail human phenomena as if [emphasis in original] they were Iinguistic phenomena.1l27 They argue that written texts cannot recreate lived experience; that there is no direct representation te be achieved through language. Sc if one believes, as Jacques Derrida suggests, "...that ail is simply interpretation of interpretation',28 and that values and ideologies are part of specifie historical discourses which construct as

'"Joan Scott, 'Oeconstructing Equality·Versus-Difference, or, The Uses of Posllltructuralism Theory for Feminism', Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 38.

.. Mary Poovey, 'Feminism and Deconstruction', Feminisl Studies 14, no. 1 (Sprlng 1988): 59.

zr Haydan White, Tropics of Discourse (Baltimore: John's Hopkins University Press, 1978), 230•

.. John Patrick Oiggins, 'Power, Freedom, and the Failure of Theory', Harper's Magazine 284, no. • 1700 (January 1992): 16. 10 • much as they represent the past; then the lived past is severed from the histories that have been written about it, and language itself becomes the site of meaning. The notion that there is one true Iived past which can be reached through historical research is undermined. In short. language, and therefore history, is figurative. Historians understand this threat to history presented by the wave of poststructural discourse analysis ofwhich New Historicism is a part.:!lI For feminist historians, postmodem theories are potentially liberating and yet I.!!timately problematic: they allow women to question certain categories as Poovey intimates, but as Gail Cuthbert Brandt points out, they undermins women's history by "... [denying] the existence of 'women' as a meaningful category of analysis....u30 Many social historians, also, are not prepared tn lose the material past or the human element in that past, and point out that the focus on discourse obscures or neglects entirely the finer points conceming what was actually happening in the daily lives of people in the time frame under study. "... [Social historians] sim still te understand 'people acting and thinking' rather than disembodied discourse.,..' Attracted by the elevation and acceptance of Iiterature as one of many different types of cultural texts and therefore, historical sources, but unwilling te abandon the concept of a lived past, 1am inclined to agree with the optimists who believe that there is a future for historical research informed by literary theories. Joy Parr, for example, recognizes that recent cultural and gender histories pose an epistimological and political threat to the humanist values accepted as axiomatic te an older generation of historians but seems prepared te address herself te the new challenges ofwomen's history. She writes, "Or is it possible that

'" Perez lagorin is disenchanled by postmodemism and fears thal il will debunk hislory entIreIy. He says !hal "..hislory would no longer have a reB! function." Perez lagorin, "Hisloriography and Poslmodernism, Reconsiderallons", p. 274.

oc GlÙl Cuthber1 Brandt, "Postmodem Pa1chwork: Some Racanl Trends in 1he Wriling of Women's History", Canadien Hislorical Review 72, no. 4 (1991): 468• • ., Kelly and Kelly, "Social Hislory Updale", 688. 11 • once we know that the woman we wish to know cannot be featured by one name alone, we will seek instead for a way to go to her and to tell her story there?""" Similarly, Joseph and Timothy Kelly believe that discourse analysis and social history have things to leam trom each other. They write that although, "New Historicists may place too much stock in a period's texts, and provide Iittle Iink between those texts and ordinary people's experience of their world. ... they remind social historians that if those links can be found and understood, the texts

can tell us much that is useful and valuable.'033 1 have, therefore, attempted to ground this thesis by referring liberally to secondary sources on the 1930s. While there is a good deal oftheory on the viability of literature as a primary source for history, 1have come across only one Canadian example of an historian who uses Iiterature as a principal source. Wayne Fraser takes the feminist slogan of the personal is political Iiterally and argues that Canadian women's literary accounts, from Susannah Moody's Roughing it in the Bush through to Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eve, are politically charged and important as historical sources. He says, "Oenied active political power, throughout history, aven to the present day, women writers employed 'women's Iiterature' as a venue for political analysis. Whatever we label it, the quality of each 'woman's novel' can be measured by the political connotations of its personal contents"." One can also look te feminist Iiterary critics who deconstruct literature in an attempt te hear the women's voices 1I'.'hich have been muted in patriarchal society.

.. Joy Parr, "Gender History and Historical Practice', The Canadian Historical Review 78, no. 3 (September 1995): 376. Parr suggesls that the 'newest ofthe new social history" studles continue the lraditionaJ, if impliclt, historical mandate which is to ' ..open rather than extinguiah qUMtions.' (p. 354) She accepls the premise of diversity on which gender studies are basecl, saying, 'This knowing is less agnostic !han pantheistic, seeking explanation by inclusion rather !han excIalon. And like ail historical knowledge, this knowing is interim, expectant, augmentable, recombinant.' (p. 375)

.. Kslly and Kelly, 'Social History Update', p. 689.

.. Wayne Fraser, The Dominion of Women: The Persona! and the Political in Canadiarl Women's Uterature, Contributions in Women's Studies Number 116 (Connecticut: Greenwood Pr_, 1981), • xii. 12

Karen Gould, in Writing in the Feminine, describes her intertextual approach as • follows, "My own view is that a somewhat f1uid movement trom the personaJ to the political and back again is a necessity in a reader-conscious criticism that seeks to understand the interconnections of text, culture and female writer.''''" Patricia Smart, in Writing in the Fatr,er's House The Emergence of the Feminine in the Ouebec Literary Tradition, examines gender within the Ouebec Iiterary tradition and in the context of a society which had as its comerstone the idealization of the role of wife and mother but which, she claims "...gave women a prestige Iinked to their 'feminine' influence on morals while at the seme time reserving real power and authority for men: .. .'o3Il Within the Ouebec literary tradition, she contends, women simply have no story. As story implies a beginning, a development in time, choices and an unpredictable conclusion: in other words, the development of a relatively autonomous subject. For the official ideology, on the contrary, woman has no story: her existence and her value begin and end in the role of wife and mother to which she is destined for ail time. 07 Wrthin this context, however, Smart iIIuminates the challenges made te patriarchy by women authors, and the emergence of female subjectivity through men and women's writing that undermines the accepted literary structures upon which the father's house is built. As Smart writes, "...the house is evidently a metaphor for culture and its ideological, artistic, and Iinguistic structures of representation, shown by feminism with increasing precision and clarity in recent years te be the

projection of male subjectivity and male authority.o3lI Wrthout making any pretention te the theoretical sophistication of a work such as Smart's, many of her

.. Karen Gould. Wriling in the Feminine: Feminism and Experimentel Wrilinq in Ouebec. (Southem Illinois: Southem illinois Univenlity Press, 1990), 247•

.. Palricla Smart Writinq in the Fether's House: The Emergence of the Feminine in the Ouebec Uterary Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1991), 59.

31 Ibid., p. 84. • .. SIl1lIrt, Wri!ing in the Fether's House, 6. 13

observations conceming Quebec Iiterature are pertinent to this survey as is her • rubric of searching for women's subjectivity. Although literature has typically been used as a i1lustrative rather than a "hard" historical source. many prominent authors see their work as a relevant social document. In Canadian Literature of Today. a compilation of CBC broadcasts which were intended to explore the trends in Canadian Iiterature and relate them to conditions of Iife in Canada. Iiterature is defined as, "... the expression of a nation's mind in writing.'03' This sentiment is echoed by many Canadian authors and critics in equally eloquent fashions. Margaret Laurence, one of the preeminent women authors in Canada in the twentieth century. says. 'Writers of serious fiction are almost always. in some way or other. consciously or unconsciously, expressing their own times.'040 William Arthur Deacon, Literary Editor of Saturday Night Magazine and The Globe and Mail during the 1920s, says, For 1 am a critic who believes that Iiterature is not a thing apart, independent of everything except its creators. 1 believe rather that it is one of the natural and necessary forms in which the general life expresses itself; and that, to an unrealized degree, the writers are oo4 recorders-... ,

Beyond simple recording, authors also offer social commentary and criticism. In the novels 1will discuss, Depression conditions are presented, and prevailing attitudes are both reflected and challenged. For example, Irene Baird, in her novel Waste Heritage, reveals c1early that young people in the Depression were robbed of their futures by poverty and unemployment, while at the same

3D Philip Child, 'Fiction', Canadian Uterature of Todav. a series of broadcasls sponsored by the Canadian Broedcasting Corporation, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1938),31.

40 Margaret Laurence, 'Ivory Tower or Grassrools?: The Novalis! as Soc:io-PollticaJ Belng', ! PolilicaJ Art: Essays and Images in Honour of George Woodcock, William H. New, ad. (VlII1COIMIf: UnMHsity of British Columbia Press. 197'3). 15.

., Wdliam Arthur Deacon, 'The Canadian Novel Turns the Comer', Canadian Novelislll and the • Novel. Douglas Daymond and l.esIie Monkman, Eds. (Ottawa: Borealis, 1981 ), 128 14

time, by showing this waste of potential, communicates a message of social • protest which challenged establishment attitudes towards the unemployed during the Depression. In this way, while the results of research using Iiterature is not quantitative, known trends are often reinforced or contested. 1will discuss Canadian publishing in the 19305, Depression conditions, pattems of women's worl<, love and marriage, as weil as issues surrounding mothering, social reform and politics as they are presented in secontlary sources and through women's literature. The aim, then, is to place these texts within the greater cultural context and to read them with a feminist view towards understanding the choices of women authors and, to some extent, of Canadian ~vomen during the 19305.

• CHAPTER 1 CANADIAN PUBUSHING IN THE 19305 • The majority of women authors presented here are marginal to the Canadian Iiterary community. It is worthwhile to note, however, that Canadian Iiterature in the 1930s had not yet come into its own. The intent in this chapter, th erefo re, is to place these novels in the context of the Canadian publishing market and to convey a sense of their critical reception at the time. REALISM As was mentioned above, in selecting books for this survey, priority was given to representational works of fiction. It should be made clear, however, that realism was not the dominant form of literature during the Depression. Although artists and writers on the left such as Dorothy Livesay, a Marxist poet and founding member of the Progressive Arts Club in 1932, offered political and social commentary,' many authors, perhaps in response to the hardships of the Depression, provided an escape for their readers with stories of romance and mystery and of easy money-a welcome escape judging from the marked increase in library memberships and circulation during the Depression years,' According to literary historian Desmond Pacey, historical fiction and ragional idyll genres dominated the Iiterary scene, Although the ragional idyll is representational, albeit often romantic or sentimentalised, it seems to have been dismissed as a ''woman's" genre. Desmond Pacey defines the ragional idyll as a novel of "...Iocal colour and sentiment ."portraying the Iife of a small area of Canada, usually of a rural or semi-ruraJ area, in a way which stresses its beauty, its peculiar customs, its traditions and its aspirations.'" He also points out that the focus in this type of novel tends to be on the private lives of the charaeters with the public

, Prentice et al. Canadien Women, 265-266.

2 J.M. Bumsted, The Peoples of Canada: A Post-Confederation History (Toronto: Oxford Univelsily Press, 1992),228,

3 Desmond Pacey, "Fiction. 1920-1940", Uterary History of Canada, Canadian UterabJre in Enalish, • Carl F. Klinck, Ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1965),667. 16 • circumstances as backdrop. He says, "The emphasis is always on domesticity, the Iittle events of everyday Iife, and the tone is predominantly optimistic." Because Pacey suggests that the difference between a realistic novel and a regional idyll is often minimal,' one wonders whether the categorization could reflect a reluctance to accord the seriousness of the category "realism" to domestic matters. In the following quotation Pacey pairs ''feminine'' and "domestic" in a way which is typical of the separate sphere model of gender relations in Western society. He says, "The regional idyll, written predominantly in canada at least by women, is feminine and domestic in emphasis, and treats of young love, the home, and the family.''' lronically, addressing herself in the 1990s to the ''feminine'' in Quebec's literary tradition but loath, at the same time, to fall into the trap of a biologically determined male/female public/private duality,7 Patricia Smart also, and more explicitly, associates realism with the masculine. She says, What our culture has always called the 'traditional novel' (realism) is in fact a literary manifestation of the Father's House: a solid construction of language through which, we have been told, the writer 'captures' reality and 'transcends' the temporal realm through the etemal forms of art. Within this structure, the writer consolidates his power by robing himself in the authority of an omniscient narrator, who dominates the multiplicity of the reaJ and reciuces it by means of his gaze to the smooth fabric of a unified vision.a Feminine writing tends to be characterized, according to Smart, by a decentered narrator or a less traditional narrative style such as a letter or diary narrative format. The association of a Iinear narrative with patriarchy and the non-feminine

• Pacey, "Fiction, 1920-1940", 667.

• Desmond Pacey, "Prose Fiction Since 1920", Creative Writing in Canada A Short HistOly of English Canadian Uterature (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1952), 171.

"Ibid., 166.

7 Smart. Writing in the Falher's House, opening page. • • Ibid., 11. 17 • is reiterated by Ann Scowcroft in her master's thesis on Canadian women writers. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly. both authors agree that for a woman the aet of writing is subversive in a patriarchal society. Scowcroft says, "1 aise believe that any woman who attempts to relay her experience truthfully necessarily does so from a revolutionary perspective, insofar as women have been shoved te the outer edges of the dominant discourse..."· Writers such as Patricia Smart, however. do not neglect women authors who use the traditional male narrative format, as do the writers studied in this survey. Feminine or even feminist elements or messages are often present in their manipulation of the traditional form or on other levels of the narrative. For example, conceming Gabrielle Roy's powerful work of social realism, The TIn Flute, Smart says, "This is 'realism in the feminine', then, and if the omniscient narrator oftraditional realism is often compared to 'God the Father,' Roy's narrator is much better evoked by Rose-Anna Lacasse's image of God-a somewhat harassed mother at the beck and cali of ail her children/characters at the same time, ... ,,'D Smart also points out that in a novel of the land where the narrative oftsn hinges on the exchange of a woman between two male characters, such as a father offering his daughter in marnage to another male character, a woman charaeter's insistence on choosing her own partner can be understeod as an assertion of the feminine element. This is a point which will be retumed to as many of the young female characters in the books examined here assume, or attempt te assume control over their love lives. While the type of fiction Canadian women were writing during the Depression rendered them, as a group, marginal, it is important te note that the

• Ann Scowcroll, "Escaping the Hegemony of the Written Word: Canadian Women Wrilers and the Dislocation of Narrative" (MA Thesis. McGiII University. 1989), 8. • ,. Smart, Wri!ing in the Father's House, 181. 18

Canadian literary scene itself was marginal. 11 As Pacey remarks, "If this period • deserves remembering at ail, it is as th~ time when a few novelists first seriously tried to come te terms with their canadian environment, and to find a suitable style in which te seal the bargain.,,'2 Despite signs of growth in canadian literature, such as the start of the Universitv of Toronto Quarterly's "Letters in Canada" series in 1936 which focussed critical attention on Canadian Iiterature and the institution in 1938 of a one-term Canadian Literature course at the University of Westem Ontario,13 canada was still developing its Iiterary reputation. Although authors such as Morley callaghan, Frederick Philip Grove, and Hugh MacLennan were eaming respect. the Canadian writer could not live off the Canadian book market.'4 Contemporary commentators made the point that to be a successful author one had to leave the country or else write with a different type of audience in mind. William Arthur Deacon argues that canada was suffering from an inferiority complex. He says, canada, having now completed her long ascent of political autonomy by the Statute of Westminster, is still far from conscious of her economic strength. Centuries of colonialism have induced self-inferiority as a habit of mind. Sc, while nations sure of themselves, like Britain and the United States, consume 80% of their own books (since readers normally enjoy familiar scenes and idioms

" Carole Gerson noIes lhal es laIe as 1941 Canadian authors are nol even lisled as a separate calegory in the Canadian Census. She wriles, •...in 1931 and 1942 the calegory was "Authors, editors, journalisls," of whom women were 14% (464) in 1931 and 17% (713) in 1941.· Gerson, "The Business of a Woman's ure·, 89.

.. Pacey, ·Fiction, 1920-1940·,659. J.M. Burnsled concurs that the majority of Depression novals were escapist: thal is of historical romance, adventure or myslery and regional idyll genres, and also singles out the reaJistic Iilerature as more worlhy of noIe. He writes, "In addition to rnany forgellable works, a small number of strong, confident, realistic novels were publlshed in this period lhal formed the foundation of modem Canadian fiction.· Burnsled, The Peoples of Cenad!!. 228

" Clara Thomas, Our Nature-Our Voices: A Guidebook 10 English-Canedlan Lilerature Volume 1 (Toronto: New Press, 1972), 83

,. E.K. Brown, "The Contemporary Situation in Cenadlan Uterature", CanedIan Lilerature ofToday, a series of broedcests sponsored by the Cenadlan Broedcasling Corporation (TCII'OI1lg: lkIivgqjty • of Toronto Press, 1938), 10. 19

and points of view) canada goes on importing something Iike 98% • of books read here-...'5 RECEPTION Mazo de la Roche is one canadian author whose popularity belies the bleak pieture of the canadian literary scene as described above. She was both extremely prolitic and extremely popular. Always imaginative and a bom storyteller, de la Roche's career was launched when she won The Atlantic Monthly prize for Iiterature with her entry of Jalna, a book which came te be the tirst in a long series focusing on the fate of the close knit, insular Whiteoak family of Ontario. Her books appeared regularly en the best seller lists during the decade and people anxiously awaited the nex! instalments.'· As Clara Thomas puts it. Mazo was rewarded "...with a degree of financial success and renown that made her unique for sorne decades among canadian authors.,,17 Despite her popularity. or perhaps because of it, Iiterary critics were dismissive of her work. One reviewer of The Master of Jalna laments, "When we are 100king te Miss de la Roche to write the great novel of Ontario, her continued refusai te describe the province is disappointing."'· ln truth, the Ontario depieted by Mazo de la Roche seems more typical of a tum-of-the-century rural estate in England and the insular nature of the Whiteoak clan seems to prevent them from being affected by changing times. The debate as to what if anything Mazo and her Jalna series has contributed to canadian literature raged at the time of her writing and has not been settled since. The case made against Maze de la Roche is summed up as follows, "...she is accused of falsitying the Canadian scene, neglecting social history, creating incredible or absurd charaeters, and of baing

'5 Deacon, "The Canadien Novel Turns the Comer", 126.

,. In a chart indicating priees of goods in 1933 as compared te 1990, Pierre Berton lisls Maze de la Roche's Mesler of Jalna as en exemple of a best·seUing novet. the priee of which _ .30 US. Pierre Berton, The GreaI Do!lDression 1929-1939 (Toronto: McClelland & S'-l 1990),44.

17 Thomas. Our Nature-Our Voiees. 101 . • ,. J.R. MacGillivray, The canadien Forum 14 (February 1934): 190. 20

a mere escapist entertainer."'· These r.:haraeterizations called into question the • usefulness of her work for this thesis. Amidst her detractors, however, she always had a few supporters. Dorothy Livesay values the realism of her early novels such as Possession, and, of Jalna's gentlemen farmers writes, "It was fair enough,... , that Mazo's personal knowledge of such people in the New Market and Lake Simcoe area was 'meat' for a Canadian novel."'o Literary historian Desmond Pacey writes that, while her strength is not in representative fiction, social history is not entirely neglected. He sees "glimpses" of the Depression conditions in The Master of Jalna.21 Clara Thomas finds de la Roche's strength in rendering the psychological rather than social aspects of her environment. She says, "Though no such family and no such home could be seen as a real part of the twentieth-century Ontario scene, the charaeters are based on Mazo de la Roche's very real perceptions about a narrow, but very powerful range of human feeling-pride, ambition, self-will, sexual desire."" Finally, Jack Kapica, in his master's thesis on Jalna, concludes that on an a1legorical level the decay of the British value system and the ascendancy of modem, Canadian values is represented in the Whiteoak saga. He argues, "...that the relative isolation of the Whiteoaks, combined with their slow and subtle evolution as Canadians, is a symbolic representation of immigrant British­ Canadians, a1legorically describing the growth of Canada.,,23

,. Paeey, 'Prose Fiction Sinee 1920', 167.

'" Douglas Daymond, ed. with a forward by Dorothy Uvesay, Selecled Stories of Mezo de la Roche (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1979), 12. Il should be noled, however, !hat Uvesay saw the $10,000 Atlantic Monthly Prize for Jalna as being a limiling rather then a Iiberaling event in de la Roche's career. She says, 'What did !hat prize meen? An end to poverty, a chenee ta travel, freedom to write as one ple8Sed.... No, she must stay with 'the good thing,' popular acclaim for Jal!!!!, popular demend for more end more about the Whiteoak farnily.' Ibid., 13.

'" Pacey, 'Prose Fiction Since 1920", 169.

22 Thomas, Our Natur8-0ur Voices, 102.

Zl Jack Kapica, "The Social Relevenee of Jalna by Mezo de la Roche', (MA Thesis, McGill • University, 1972), 4. 21

Master of Jalna is therefore included in this study because of de la Roche's • popularity and because of her departure the prescribed role for women in trom the 1930s. In a biography of de la Roche, Joan Givner describes her Iife as follows, It was a Iife for which there was no precedent and no pattem, one that she forged for herself quite outside the established tradition of women's lives. It was one of unparalleled individuality, and, Iike ail such lives, it was shrouded in secrecy and silence." She never married, but lived with her cousin, Caroline Clement, for most of her lite and adopted two children. Caroline describes her closeness to Mazo as follows, "We came together like two drops of water."2S As we have sean, Mazo de la Roche's works received mixed reviews but her popularity was undeniable. The reception for the remaining sixtean novels was varied. Although Irene Baird was taken to task for modelling her work on that of Steinbeck,2e Waste Heritage was favorably received, and, due to enthusiastic endorsement by leftist writers such as Dorothy Livesay, was reprinted in 1973. In 1939, Bruce Hutchison, in a review of Waste Heritage for the Vietoria Daily Times, praised it as a great Canadian aceomplishment. Catherine McLay cites him as describing the book as, "...a piece of stark and odorous realism,oo.a social document of first-rate importance....1think it is one of the best books that has

come out of Canada in our time. ,,27 Vivian Parsons won the 1938 Avery Hopwood Prize at the University of Michigan valued at one thousand dollars for her novel

.. Joan Givner, Mazo de la Roche. The Hidden We (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989),4.

,. Ibid., 3.

'" One reviewer Mites, "And the larger intent of "Weste Heritage" is to do for the migratory workers of Canada whlll Stainbeck did for the Okies. But Iike mast disciples, Miss Baird has borrowed and magnifiad ail the feuils and mislakes of her mester-his tendenc:y toward melodrama and his straining for realism-while largely failing to reflect his virtues." Harold Strauss, "Waste Heritage" and Olher New Works". The New York Times Book Review, 10 December 1939, 7.

2T Catherine Melay, On Irene Baird, Dictionary of Uterary Biography, Volume 68. Canadian Wrilars, 1920-1959 Ars! Series, W.H. New, ad. (Michigan: Bruccoli, Clark & Layman, Gale Research Co., • 1989),16. 22 • Lucien which surpassed reviewer Morley callaghan's expectations. He wrote, with a note of condescension, "Up to the last chapters it seemed to me to be a surprisingly good book."'· Margaret Wallace gave a favourable review of Mary Graham Bonner's Rainbow at Night, saying it "... is an honest and sensitive novel and one hopes it will receive the recognition it merits."211 Ostenso's White Reet was a disappointment to reviewer Louise Maunsell Field, who said it is "..mildly interesting and has some moments of unfulfilled promise."'o Jessie L. Beattie's Hill-Top was considered by one reviewer to be "delightful and charming" where another commented on the harshness of the mother character, Adelaide, suggesting that Hill-Top is a "...homely tale of rurallife in Ontario-but the tale is not sc simple after all."" Ma~ory MacMurchy's The Longest Way Round was characterized as "...a quite readable tale of present day Iife in canada.'032 According to the 1934 Times Literarv Supplement, Ursula Leigh's Give Me My Robe is "..quietly and sincerely written and has a real glow and warmth at its heart',.33 Pearl Foley's !he Gnome Mine Mystery was reviewed before it was published. Taking the author to be a man, and the title of the book to be The Golden Siren, The canadian Bookman reported that Paul De Mar, "a talented young Toronto novelist", was about to publish a novel whose "..plot is dramatic and compelling;...',.34 Ethel Chapman's The Homesteaders was noted for its "naturalistic approach", and, aceording to Ma~ory MscMurchy, her Wrth Flame of

.. Morley Callaghan, 'Woman's Ufe", Saturday Night 54 (March 1939): 18.

20 Margaret Wallace, "In Nova Scotia", The New York Times Book Review (8 March 1936): 7.

30 Louise Maunsell Field, "l.atest Works of Fiction", The NewYork TImes Book Review (4 November 1934): 22.

.. EX Broadus, "Fiction", "Letters in Canada: 1935", University of Toronto Quarterly 5, no. 3 (Apnl 1936): 380.

.. Scrutator, "Analecta", Canadian Bookman 19, no. 6 (Oecember 1937): 11 •

.. TImes Uterary Supplement (1934): 265. • .. "It is reported tha1", The Canadian Bookman 15, no. 1 (January 1933): 6. 23 • Freedom "... has importance for Canadians since it is a well-balanced presentation of average lives and average fortunes.,,35 Margaret Duley's The Eyes of the Gull, accordir.g to her biographer, Alison Feder, received favorable reviews in England, but only made "...a small splash in her native waters"."" According to Feder, Duley's descriptions of lsabel's body and her lovers' dialogue had her "friends" in Newfoundland in stitches, and gives the following as an example of "Iaughable" prose: "[Isabel] had a way of lifting [her body] out of her waist and pointing her breasts to the wind that maddened him with its beauty of line.,,37 Duley's Cold P3Storal seems to have fared even worse, receiving almost no critical attention." No reviews were unearthed for the four remaining novels in this survey: Crosscuts by Jessie Garden Riordan Smith, The Grafted Twig by Allistene Starkey, Laugh in the Sun by Amy J. Baker and Below the Salt by Vima Sheard. *** While the books surveyed here, with the exception of Irene Baird's Waste Heritage, may not be enduring works of fiction, they deserve attention as social documents of the 1930s. In order to place these works in their social context it is time to tum this discussion to the topic of the Great Depression.

os Lady Wimson (Marjory MacMurchy), "Rural Cenadiana", Saturc!ay Night 54 (November 1938): 21 .

.. Feder, Mergaret Culey, 41.

'" Ibid., 45-48. • .. Ibid., 48. CHAPTER Il EMPlOYMENT AND THE DOMESnC IDEAL • This chapter will explore the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the extent to which this crisis shaped the fiction of these women authors. Unemployment is a major theme in this chapter and special attention is paid to women's role in the workforce. With jobs at a premium, women were often expected to renounce any claims to employment outside the home. At the same time, however, their paid work was often essential to their families' survival. The ambivalence with which women were received in the paid workforce, therefore, is seen to be connected not only to the economic pressures of the Depression but to a reaffirmation of the domestic ideology. THE DEPRESSION SEnlNG Unemployment is the defining memory of the depression era. According to the 1931 census 20.87% of male wage eamers and 8.74% of female wage eamers, or 18.28% of the total wage eaming population ten years of age or over in Canada were unemployed. By 1932, 26"10 of wage-eamers were unemployed, and in 1933, the worst year of the Depression, one third of ail wage-earners were unemployed according to a memo for the office of Prime Minister Bennett.' It should be noted that the category of wage-eamer excluded a large proportion of the Canadian population-68% in 1931-including farmers and fishermen. 2 These statistics, therefore, under-represent the numbers who suffered financial hardships during the 19305. J.M. Bumsted estimates unemployment or underemployment affected closer te 50% of the Canadian population, including women.3 Of course not ail people experienced hardship during the Depression. Those who kept their jobs aetually benefitted from the depressed economic conditions. For them, as Michael Bliss points out, the Depression was •...a time

, R.B. Bryce, "The Canadian Economy in the Great Depression", Inlerpreling Canada's Put: Post­ ConfIIderalion. Volume 2, 2nd Edition, J,M. Bumsted, Bd. (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), 470 and Hom, The Great Ollpression of the 1930s in Canad!!, 10.

• "Population Summary", The Census of Canada. volume 1(1931): 295-303• • • Bumsted, Peoplea of Canad!!, 188. 25

to make up the ground lost to inflation in the 1920s, buy that first automobile, hire • a cleaning lady one day a week to run thE" new vacuum cleaner and electric washing-machine, take holidays, and relax in the evenings around the radio,'" But those Canadians who were unemployed or underemployed had to suffer extreme poverty and the shame that poverty carried with it. Dorothy Uvesay, one of a group of writers whose main concem was the plight of the people, wrote of the Depression years in the following way: "The unemployed were completely without recourse. They were evieted trom their homes, their water and heat was cut off, they were given the meagrest amount for food and so on. That Iife was one of

great despair,..."s Unfortunately for these people, the Canadian system of relief was decentralized, confusing and inadequate. Although the economic disaster, which began with the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with the beginning of World War Il, affected ail Westem countries, the severity of the crisis in Canada was second only to the United States. As Michiel Hom points out, Canada's national income in 1933 was only 51% ofthe national income of 1929.8 Farmers in saskatchewan were particularly hard hit. Prices for wheat, their main cash crop, plummeted and many had to contend not only with the disastrous Canadian economy but with five years of drought and infestations of grasshoppers which decimated t"eircrops. According to historian R.B. Bryce, in 1937 saskatchewan farmers were yielding peracre one­ sixth of the wheat that they had produced in the 1920s and two-thirds of them were "destiMe and on relier.7 The idea that Depression conditions in Canada, though extreme, were by no means uniform is presented in the novels of this survey. The Depression is

• Michael B1iss, Ed. The Wrelched of Canada: Lettars 10 R.B. Bannait 1930-11135 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), vi.

S Dorothy Uvesay, Righi Hand Lell Hand (Toronto: Press Porcepic Ud., 1977),83.

• Hom, The Great Depression of the 11130s in Canada, 3. • 1 Bryce, "The Canedlan Economy in the Greai Depression", 483. 26

featured with varying significance, ranging trom defining the plot and character • action as in a "Depression novel", to supplying a significant backdrop, to having no observable impact at the level of plot.8 Waste Heritage, by Irene Baird, has to take pride of place as a Depression novel in this survey. It has been called the Canadian Graces of Wrath. It is a realistic novel which tells the story of a sit down strike by the unemployed in Vancouver in 1938. The main character, Matt Striker, has been unemployed for over six years and suffered trom the stigma attached to his poverty. He has been beaten by the police and driven from province to province because of his joblessness. He is very bitter and, throughout the novel, is struggling to keep control of the rage that has been building up over the years. He says, "How'd you Iike it if ever since the time you was sixteen you'd bummed around, if every job you went after there was a hundred other guys there ahead of you, if every place you went there was cops on your tail movin' you on so you wouldn't start trouble­ •..".D Although he is not overtly political at first, saying, "1 don't give a goddam about politics, ail 1 want is work!"'o he is comered into an anti-establishment behaviour by the unresponsiveness of the govemment. Refused a leadership position in the communist organization which led the unemployed in their strike, Matt seals his tate as a renegade when he beats a policeman to death at the end of the novel. ln Waste Heritage, Baird is exploring the effects of the Depression on Canadian men and women. Her role as a social commenta1or is conveyed within the novel itself. One of the unemployed men, Kenny Hughes, is writing a book about his experiences. He says, "This book of mine is to be more than just another book, it is 10 be a...a kind of a social document, a book that will bring

8 The assumptlon here is thal even a novel which does not deal with the overt symptoms of the Depression era. such as poverty or unemployment, is still reflective of Depression era atlItudas.

• Irene Baird. WBSte HerItage (Toronto: MacMillan, 1939), 90. • '0 Iblcl., 29. 27

before the nation this whole problem of unemployment that is festering on its • body like a bloody sore..."" Classified as a romance/regional idyll by Desmond Pacey, The Homesteaders, by Ethel Chapman, is shaped by the Depression in that the droughts in Southem Saskatchewan drive the main charaeters to stake a new claim farther north. Whereas Waste Heritage is an indictment against the govemment, and Matt Striker is presented as a casualty of the Depression, in Ethel Chapman's novel, the challenges presented by Depression conditions are somewhat romanticized. '2 The hard times are seen to bring people together as a community and bring out the best in individuals. As Shirley Paustian points out in her doctoral thesis, this book is essentially a pioneer story: "The Depression, it appoors, fostered a retum to the social attitudes of pioneer times, marked by neighborliness, a sharing of labour, a concem for others and the enjoyment of good fellowship.,,13 ln a manner characteristic of pioneering stories from an oorlier period where, as June Underwood points out, women "...were the standard bearers ofa civilized society,"" Chapman's women characters recognize the need for churches, hospitals, and schools in their community. Aiso covered in this thesis is Chapman's With Flame of Freedom. It is aise a regional idyll, according to Pacey, but it is set in Ontario. Although the charaeters in this book do not pioneer a new community, theyare motivated by a reforming zool that is a response, at least in part, to the crisis of the Depression.

" Baird, Waste Heritage, 206.

" Reviewer J.R. MacGillivray sees The Homesteaders as senlimentalized. He says, "They have a surprisingly easy and plessant lime pioneering. Neighbours crowd in to help. There are ditliculties and crises but these are overpessed. A1most everybody is friendly, cheerful and sail secrificing, there are no 'bed men' in this part of the North." J.R. MacGilrMay, in "Fiction", "Lattera in Canada: 1938", University of Toronto Quarterly 6, no. 3 (April 1937): 354-5.

13 Shirley Paustian, "The Uterature about the Depression 1929-1939 in the Prairie Provinces of Canada" (PhD Thesis, The University of A1barta. 1975), 17. • ,. Underwoo

ln The Gnome Mine Mystery by Pearl Foley (alias Paul de Mar), the • Depression can be seen as having a defining role. The crash is the hingepin of the mystery because the death of Mr. Maxwell, a once wealthy New York businessman who loses his fortune in the crash, is attributed to suicide. Ali he leaves to his nephew, Roger Merriton, is potentially worthless stock in a gold mine in northem Ontario. Although this book does not offer an analysis of the affect of Depression conditions on its cilaracters, it does make the point that there was money to be made during the Depression. Rolland St. Lambert, one of Roger's partners in the mine says, "And they say there's no money in the country! Didn't 1 tell vou, mon ami, the greenbacks didn't flutter off the planet?,,'5 This is consistent with Depression conditions since goId mining was an area where profits could still be realized.'· The White Reef by Martha Ostenso, whose writing Desmond Pacey has placed in the realism genre, is set in Vancouver. The Depression prcduces one of the major confliets in the stery. Quentin Wingate comes back to Heartbreak Cove with two strikes against him. He jilted Nona Damell six years earlier and his father owed the Cove community money they invested in a development project he proposed and then abandoned. Of Mr. Wingate Sr. it is said, "They tell me he got caught in the market and just couldn't cough up any more cash to carry on with here".17 Once a member of the wealthiest family in the area, Quentin Jr. comes back te the Cove impoverished and determined to redeem his good name and fortune by rejuvenating the fish packing plant that his father left behind. ln the Master of Jalna, set in Ontario and classified by Desmond Pacey as a regional idyll and by Clara Thomas as a psychological novel, the Depression is a significant factor in the storyline. Its importance is undermined, however, by the

,. Pearl Foley (Paul de Mar), The Gnome Mine Mystery :A Northem Ontario M'mina Stery (lllndon: John Hamilton, 1933), 128.

1. Hom, The Great Depression of the 1930s in Caned~ 6. • " Mertha Qslenso, The White Reet (Toronto: Oodd, Mead & Compeny, 1934), 4. 29 • response of the characters to their situation The Whiteoaks are haro pressed to maintain the style of life to which they have become accustomed. They refuse to accept, however, that like so many others, iney couId be affected by the economic disaster of the 1930s. Money had never been so tight at Jalna. It was not only tight. It simply was not there. It was like a river that had sometimes trickled slowly, sometimes rushed in a spate, but had now-and without apparent reason-become little more than a moisture in the mud. Even though there were national crises, there must be people who would want horses... Conditions like this might be inevitable in Europe. If the United States were in a mess-weil, they had only themselves to blame. But Canada had done nothing to deserve this. She had been good; she had been loyal;... Especially the family at Jalna did not deserve it. They had upheld the old traditions in the Province. They had stuck by Jalna and stuck by each other. Sa they reasoned, and looked at one another baffled. Alyane lost ail patience with them. She tried to talk world politics with them, but they could not see what world politics had to do with Piers not being able to pay his rent,'· ln three Maritime novels, the people of the fishing villages are depicted as taking the Depression in their stride. It is an added hardship but hardship is nothing new. Veronica Strong-Boag suggests also that the Depression did not mean drastic change for everyone: For many Canadians, hard times were Iikely to be nonnal times, and those that survived leamed to cope as best they could. Poor, Native, Mennonite, and Maritime outport women, for instance, often continued to rely on the retums from domestic production that had succoured generations before them.,Q ln Rainbow at Night, a tragedy classified as ragional by Clara Thomas and set in Nova Scotia, the Depression is presented as follows, "The depression was bothersome because it was hard ta understand. Stonns every one knew were

,. Maze de la Roche, The Master of Jalna (Toronto: MacMillan, 1948; first published, 1933),78.

,. By citing "Ten Lest Years', Strong·Boag supplies another Maritime example of this situation: We aJways hed sorne sort of Depression going for us in New Brunswick'. Strong-Boag, The New Day • RecIIIled, 219. 30

sudden and determined. The combination of both was trying on the old timers."20 • Similarly, in Cold Pastoral, a ragional romance set in Newfoundland, it is a given that life in the fishing village into which Mary Immaculate, the main character, is bom, will be hard. When she is adopted by the Fitz Henry family of St. John's, their weaJth and prestige will change Mary's life completely. Mary's natural mother is overwhelmed by her daughter's new prospects. She says to Lady Fitz Henry, ''l'm glad about the money. It seems a wonderfullot, but the poor can't think past a dollar or two. 1don't know ail that it means, but it might lift her out of the life i don't want for her."" ln Duley's tragic The Eves of the Gull, also set in Newfoundland, money is not easily come by. When locals refuse to clean a house because they believe it to be haunted, a cousin visiting from Nova Scotia says, "Think a body would be glad to eam a few cents these days.·22 Newfoundland is presented as being remote and isolated and little is made of the economic conditions affecting the world wide economy in the 1930s. In these novels, the understatement conceming the impact of the economic Depression makes the point that the resources of the characters in the fishing communities are already stretched to the limit. ln many ofthe books, Depression conditions are backdrop. In Give Me My Robe, a tragic romance, there is mention of the difficulty in getting jobs. This is of some import at the level of plot. The main character, Hannah McLeod, is orphaned for a second time when her adoptive father Steve dies and she has te make decisions conceming where she will live and how she will support herself. She considers moving east but says, "... t1mes are as bad there as anywhere.023 ln Hill-Top, which Pacey classifies as a regionaI idyll of rural Ontario, the

:li> Mary Graham Sonner, Rainbow al Nighl (New York: Lee Furman Ine., 1938), 60.

2' Margarel Duley, CoId Pastoral (Toronto: Gritfin Housa, 1977; originally published 1939), 77.

22 Margaret Culey, The Eyes of the Gun (Toronto: Gritfin Housa, 1976; originally published, 1938), 17. • .. Ur.sula Lelgh. Give Me My Robe (Lllndon: Heritage, 1934),218. 31 • Depression conditions, though not central to the plot, are seen to directly affect hiring policies. When a school teacher marries and leaves her position, the replacement is paid less. Jessie Beattie writes, "Evelyn Norton could not have been more than twenty years of age, and this was her first appointment. The community, feeling the pinch of the times, had endeavoured to economize by employing an inexperienced girl."24 ln Vima Sheard's Below the Salt, classified as a novel of "amorous intrigue· by Pacey, O'Sullivan is a wealthy farmer who seems to be invulnerable to Depression conditions. Looking over his farm, he imagines, "...a counterpane of

invisible dollars was spread over his farm ... "2.5 That the book is set in the Depression can be gleaned from the financial condition of other farmers who are indebted to Mr. O'Sullivan2S and from references such as the following to drought conditions and grasshopper plagues. Of migrant workers, Sheard writes, Good or bad crop seasons were not of great moment to them. If the grasshopper was a burden he was not their burden, and if the rain did not fall either on the just or the unjust they took it phiiosophicaJly, for until the exchequer was empty wages must be paid.27 ln keeping with the escapist nature of some of the literature, certain characters are insulated from the Depression conditions by simple twists of fate, such as inheriting money or a house, or through the kindness of someone with wealth. ln Laugh in the Sun, a romance set for the first part in England and then in Westem Canada, the two main characters are young working women from London. Although employed themselves they see the evidence ofthe Depression ail around them in England. Agnes says, •...outside every cinema, every tube exit

.. Jessie L 8eatlie. Hill-Top (Toronto: MacMillan, 1935),212•

.. Vima Sheard, BeIow the S8It (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1938). 115•

.. Sheerd. Below the Salt 217• • 7T Ibid.• 185-188. 32

or entrance, every restaurant, tea-shop, or post-office, and every six or seven • yards along the principal pavements, men stand with placards round their nteks,

and perhaps bootlaces or matches in their hands-... ".25 Their good fortune is sealed, however, when a wealthy elderly lady takes a personal interest in them. She sends Agnes away to Canada for a beautiful summer at a camp in Banff where she meets her future husband. Similarly, in Crosscuts, which is a story set in a logging camp in British Columbia, the future of the main character Kathleen, is brightened when her second husband to be, Buck McAulay, inherits the fortune of a wealthy widow due to a case of mistaken identity. In The Longest Way Round, a book designed for young readers, Sylvia Bye's poverty is attributed te her widowed status. She says to her daughter, Letty, ''Your tather thought he had left enough money to take care of us both. But our investments are worth sc very much less now than they used to be that 1 made up my mind to find work.­ Sylvia makes sacrifices, including a separation from her daughter, in order te obtain work te keep them afloat. In the end, their dream of being united is realized when an elderly lady, Mrs. Trant, dies and leaves them her house in her will. Despite the Depression backdrop, money is not glorified in the books in this survey. Materialism tends to be associated with lack of substance in a character. Moreover, as the following quotation from Rainbowat Night suggests, money can not buy happiness or love. "Money's ail right," Ingram said, sucking at a now empty pipe, "but ifs not goin' te make your woman wantin' you more, or give a wee bit happiness that means a damn in your hoose. The blood isn't goin' te stir faster or your bed ce pleasanter because they's a few more dollars in a day."""

'" Amy J. Baker, Laugh in the Sun (London: John Long, 1934), 110•

.. Marjory MllcMurchy (Lady WiUison), The Lonoast Way Round (Toronto: MllcMillan, 1937), 1• • 30 Banner, Rainbow et Nighl, 199. 33 • WOMEN and WORK ln keeping with the paradox of women's roles in the 19305 which saw traditionaJ gender roles reaffirmed despite broadening opportunities for women in Canadian society, there is ambiguity surrounding the right of women te a place in the workforce. On the one hand. women had been working outside the home in increasing numbers since the tum of the century. According to Veronica Strong-Soag, the proportion of women in the Canadian labour force increased from 15.5% in 1921, to 17,0% in 1931 and 19.9% in 1941," At the same time, however, Canadian society was operating on the family-wage principle whereby men were meant to be the breadwinners and competition from women in the labour market was unwelcome. With industrialization. and the attendant shift in the Canadian population from predominantly rural in 1851 te almost equal numbers of urban rural dwellers by 1921,32 new career opportunities had opened up for women. They tended, however, to be slotted into low paying and low skilled positions, and te cluster in certain areas, such as textiles, education, persona! services and domestic service."" lronically, as Michiel Hom points out, many women during the Depression stayed employed because they were already paid less than men and were concentrated in the service sector which was generally less hard-hit by the Depression than the export-oriented industries."" Sc, despite the backlash against women's participation in the workforce in the thirties, fuelled by the fear that women were taking jobs from men, the pattern of young single women working before marriage was fairly common. Sy working outside the

31 Veronica Strong-Boag, Janey Canuck: Women in Canada, 1919-1939, Histori~ SookIeI no. 53 (Ottawa 1994), 8-11. Strong-Boag lisls 685.859 as the total number ofwomen in the labour force in 1931. This is the total number lisled as "gainfully occupied" in the Census and it is Imgllt' !Mn the number of wage-earning women. 547.837. which W8S used in the sec:lion on unemployment. /l$ W8S mentioned before, unemploymenl slalislics were only generated for those in the categcry of "wage-earner".

32 Prentice el al. canadian Women. 109.

33 Strong-Boag, The New Day Recalled, 51 . • 34 Hom. The Great Oep~oflhe 19S0s in canada. 9-11. 34

home, single women either supportecl themselves, or made a significant • 35 contribution to their family economy or both. Once marriecl, however, women were expectecl to leave the workforce rsgardless of financial neecl. This was particularfy true of civil service jobs. Despite the increased labour force participation by women, the numbers offemale employees in both the fecleral and provincial civil service declinecl during the Depression. Dorothy Livesay, for example, had to leave her job with the provincial Jovemment of British Columbia when she marriecl in 1937."" For most women a career still meant being a wife and a mother. Jeanne L'Esperance elaborates or. this point in the following quotation: ln the face of limitecl opportunities for advancement, the discrimination and ghettoization which charaeterized women's work, marriage and childrearing seemecl to offer many women a more rewarding and economically secure way of Iife.37

As Veronica Strong-Boag has arguecl, women who workecl were tolerated rather than encouragecl and the idealization of marriage and motherhood had negative financial repercussions for women. In an article on working women and the state, she contends that the marginalization oi women workers in Canadian history was state supported.38 Influencecl by Mary Mclntosh, Strong-Boag surveys the state policies on labourin Canada and concludes that the division of iabor was actively supported at the expense of women's options. As she suggests, •...govemments subordinated women's independence to a view of the family in which the male wage-eamer was dominant and the female supplied the domestic labor which was critical to the preservation and continuation ofthe private household as a producer

.. Strang-Boag, The New Day RecaJled, 48•

.. Uvesay, Right Hand Left Hand, 269.

37 JlIlII1ne L'Esperance, The Wldening Sphere: Wamen ln Canada 187D-1940, Public Archlvw of Canada (1982), 54•

.. Veronica Strong-Boag, 'Warking Wamen and the State: The Case of Canada, 1888-1945", • Attantis 8, no. 2 (1981): 2. 35 • of new recruits for the capitalist economy.'o3O ln the 1930s the govemment wanted to reserve jobs for the men as major breadwinners and so tried to direct "excess" women into domestic work.40 Waged work for women was rarely seen as a matter of economic necessity. For Strong-Boag, "The fact that most female wage-eamers depended, as often did their families, on theïr income for sustenance was routinely ignored.... As ever, women's problems. economic or otherwise, were not Ottawa's major concem.'04' Whether or not a woman worked outside the home or inside the home, and the kind of work she did, was more Iikely to be determined by her class and social environment than by prescriptive domestic ideologies. As Margaret Lawrence suggested in the controversial School of Femininitv. "The women from the lower classes worked as they had always worked. Nothing was thought about that....• This reality is certainly in evidence in the novels of this survey. In the rural settings and small fishing villages particularly, girls, single women and married women work hard to maintain their households. There are examples also of self supporting working women and career oriented business women, but the tendency in these novels is for women to stop working outside the home once married. In only one isolated example does a female charaeter combine work outside the home and wedded Iife. ln The White Reet by Martha Ostenso, Rainbow at Night by Mary Graham Bonner and Cold Pastoral by Margaret Duley, set on Vancouver Island, and in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland respectively, the women of these small fishing

.. Strong-Boag, 'Working Women and the Stale", 4.

40 Ibid., 5.

•, !!ill!., 8.

<. Mllf9arel Lawrence, The $chool of Femininity: A Book for and About Women as They ara Inlerprated Through Feminine Wrilers of Yestardav and Today (Toronto: Musson Book Company, 1972; originally publishad, 1938), 159-180. This book was raviawad Gwathalyn Grllharn, a contamporary social commantalor, who saw il as a blow 10 feminism, because of Ils pramlsa thal • all of women's actions are biologically motivelad lowards marriage and childrearing. 36

communities work very har~ to support their families. The White Reef opens with • a scene of the fishermen having a few drinks at the local bar during their off season and gossiping about a recent town scandai, while their wives are working at home." Hanging out the wash, Mrs. Thorpe, referring to a Leghorn chicken who is SiCk from laying too many eggs, says to her neighbour, "'Ain't that just like a woman? Goes and does more'n her share, and then they kill her!''''' The work dernands placed on women in Nova Scotia are considerable. According to a neighbor, Margaree Macdonald, in Rainbow at Night, is considered a trifle lazy within the community although, "Times she work eighteen hour a day but it's Iight work, sewing, spinning, bringing up but a mite of dung hersel' trom the beach and only helpin' a little with the hayin'."45 Similarly, life for the fishertolk of Newtoundland, as it is depicted in Cold Pastoral, is hard. Josephine Keilly, Mary Immaculate's mother, is a very good wife. The fact that her husband, Benedict, and her family depend on a woman like her, is communicated in the following way: "In Benedict's world a woman could make or break a man,'.... There is no romanticizing the simple life of the fishing village; survival is a cold reality. Duley describes Benedict Keilly's thoughts when his wife goes into labour on a boat during a storm: "Benedict was occupied with the skiff. She belonged to five others, and the sea was giving her a drubbing. He was a steady husband, but a skiff was harder come by than a woman,'047 Cold Pastoral is a rags to riches story. Mary Immaculate escapes Josephine's life when she is adopted by the Fitz Henry family, which, despite

., Women's active involvement, and even control over their household economies is depictad in the lollowing quotation. At the tavern, Gii Pallerson "... [fishes) in his poeket for the silver his wife had dolad out to him that morning." Ostenso, The White Reel, 3.

.. Ostenso, The White Reet, 10.

4' Sonner, Rainbow at Night, 127-128•

.. Duley, Cold Pastoral, 15. • 47 Ibid., 12. 37 • having come down a social rung or two during the Depression, is still among the wealthiest of St. John's society. Although the adoption means giving up her daughter, Josephine does not consider standing in Mary's way. She wants more for her than the endless grind of work, and Mary, though she is only thirteen, wants the same. She is struck by the following image of her mother. Captive as the Cove, Mary Immaculate saw her mother. Her hair was fair and oily round a face scorched from the kitchen stove.... Mary Immaculate saw what life had done to her mother. She was not beautiful! .. , Work! That was the Cove!'" To underline the class distinction, it should be said that in her life with the Fitz Henry family, Mary is spared the burden of working, either in the home or outside of it. For most women, however, marriage did not signity an end to work. Hannah McLeod, the main character in Ursula Leigh's Give Me My Robe, recognizes this and, on finding herself without any family after her adoptive father dies, is not keen on the advice of her nearest neighbour Mrs. Duncan. "She knew what Mrs. Duncan wouId suggest. Every Tom, Dick and Harry for miles around, as a possible husband. She was crazy on women getting married and working themselves to death.'o4lI ln Hill-Top, by Jessie Beattie, it is clearthat even for girls rurallife in Ontario involves a good deal of domestic labour. Mary Margaret's Saturday tasks include "...washing dishes, making beds, scrubbing the big veranda, dusting."·o She also takes part in the potato harvest, although it is pointed out that this is the only field work Mimsie is allowed to do." As the novel progresses, Mimsie takes on more

48 Duley, Cold Pastoral, 34.

•• Leigh, Give Me My Robe, 27. Typical of Hannah's less conventional style, at this juncture in the novel she opls for independence over marriage and goes to work as a cook on a survey camp where there are no other women.

.. Beatlie, Hill-Top, 14. • SI Ibid., 192. 38

and more of the domestic labour because her mother, who is more concemed • with the afterlife than the physical one, tinds the daily tasks tedious. "It seems strange that my life has to be spent cooking and cleaning and sewing when 1long to devote it to higher things."52 ln Parson's Lucien, classitied as a regional idyll by Desmond Pacey and set in Trois-Rivières, children are equally important to the work on a farm. Père Charbonneau needs children, sons in particular, to run his farm. He is disappointed that his tirst child is Lucien, a girl.53 Lucien is recruited to do work normally reserved for men because as Charbonneau says, "She will plant and weed, and help with the harvest. If 1have girls when 1need boys, then 1must use them Iike boys."" Besides the work she does for her father, she has onerous obligations in the household as weil. Her mother, "Marie, expecting her third child, asked more than was reasonable of Lucien. She taught her how to clean the vegetables, pare potatoes, make candies, feed the speckled hens, and even to milk the COWS.,,55 The idea that wealth was a major factor determining the amount and type of work women had to do is underlined in Lucien's case as weil. Once married to the wealthy Estien La Tendresse, her household chores are Iightened by hired help. ln Below the salt, Gail and Kathleen, the daughters of the wealthy farrner Marcus O'Sullivan, have no work responsibilities. Their father does not Iike to see them working in the household. The sisters are set apart trom other members of their community by their beauty and wealth and are a testament to their father's

.. Beattie, Hill-Top. 3.

53 VIVian Parsons, lucien (Toronto: McCleliand & Slewart, 1939), 6. Il should be noled thal although the name "Lucien" is spelled in the masculine form rather than the feminine form "lucienne", the charactars do nol seem la have deliberalely given thelr daughler a man's name. They declde la cali her Lucien because il is a Sainl's name and the name of a wealthy aum, and nol, il seems, because of Charbonneau's desire for sons.

"lbid.,6. • .. Ibid., 58. 39

zealously guarded social standing. They have the following effect on a choir • member, "The bass, who was sentimental but painfully conscious of his lowly social standing, was, as always on Sundays, overcome in secret by his close proximity to the beautiful daughters of Marcus Q'Sullivan."·· Mary Moran, in Ethel Chapman's The Homesteaders, fits the pattem of the single girl working before marriage. Chapman makes clear when the novel begins that Mary has no living relatives and is working at a newspaper in Saskatchewan to support herself. Although she loses her job due to the Depression, the reader is informed that she was not cut out for the life of a business woman. For example, Mary is sent to cover a story of a drowned girl, and, on discovering that the girl had actually committed suicide-probably because she was carrying a chi/d out of wedlock-Mary spends her time consoling the tami/y and the rival newspaper gets the scoop. "She was no business woman;..."" concludes her boss: "It was hard to say just what she could do, with competition as keen as it was in these times; for she had never seemed to catch on to the ambitious young woman's ways of driving a good bargain for herself either in business or socially."·· It is as if not being a very good business woman is a testimony to Mary's goodness as a person. A negative picture of the business woman in the 1930s as being hard boi/ed and self interested, yet at the same time frivolous, is developed more fully in the character of Ann Sevem, Mary's friend and a successful joumalist working for The Clarion. Ann visits Mary and her husband Peter's home in northem Saskatchewan and sends Mary a package of cosmetics as her parting gift. Blind to natural beauty and absorbed by what are, in Mary's opinion, the superficial charms of the city, the charaeter of Ann serves as a repudiation of the career woman consistent with the dominant discourse.

"" Sheard, Below the S8!l. 33.

57 Ethel Chaplnlln, The Homesteaders (Toronto: RyeIson Press, 1938), 28• • "" Ibid., 30. 40

ln Amy J. Baker's Laugh in the Sun. Agnes and Fanny Brook work as • beauticians and as such are self-supporting. yet they also view marriage and motherhood as the ideal career for women. Financial independence is only a practical necessity in the absence of suitable prospects for marriage. Although not desperately seeking out established partners"· they feel destined to marry."O Agnes says of her responsibilities at the beauty parlour. Vet these trivialities were her job. the things for which she eamed her money. Customers were weil served at Mrs. Harrington's, but it was so small. so unimportant. Perhaps most occupations seemed unimportant at the foot of great peaks.... What was a woman's work? Her real Work? The question was easily answered, but with seven-or was it ten?-women to every man in the world ...A means of livelihood. then. Independence. A burden to no one, either State or individual."' ln Pearl Foley's novel. The Gnome Mine Mysterv. the business woman is portrayed more favourably through the character of Marcile St. Lambert. 5he does meet with disapproval, however. Roger Merriton's uncle. for example, is opposed to her involvement in the running of her father's gold mining operation because,

"He [thinks] independence a divergent road from marriage... .'..2 Marcile keeps her partnership in the family business a secret to avoid negative responses. In defense of her Iifestyle, her brother, in the following passage, distinguishes Marcile from the vain, materialistic type of women that the discourse against women working in the thirties addressed: "There's a type of girl who never rises above a mediocre job-yet the job provides her with pretty clothes and manicured nails. Babies and home don't appeal to her. And then, what future is there for her?-The

50 Baker describes them as, •...1Wo sane. normal, cheerful, hardworking young women, distinctly 1934 in outfook. going their own way without blarning others for going theirs.· Baker, Laugh in the Sun, 16.

00 Ibid., 76.

•, Ibid, 228. • .. Foley, The Gnome Mine Mystery. 53. 41

eking out of a meagre existence.'o03 He also points out that MarcHe is different • because she did not really choose her path, rather, it her inheritance. was Nonetheless, the incompatibility of working outside the home and family life is communicated. The middle-c1ass bias in the above quotation is evident in the assumption that women's jobs provided extras such as "manicured nails". Most working-class women contributed their eamings to their family's economy. Nancy M. Forestell makes this point in her study of St. John's. She writes: Unlike mostworking-class women, [middle-class women's] eamings rarely had to be handed over to parents as a necessary contribution to the household. They were freer to spend their eamings on clothing and entertainment. When middle-class women were laid off, few of them had to worry that members of their families thus might be denied food and clothing." ln only in one of the novels examined does a woman choose to work outside the home during her wedded Iife. Kathleen Evans, in the regional novel Crosscuts by Jessie Garden Smith Riordan, is a strong, intelligent, beautiful woman who was orphaned at twelve years of age and who became a nurse. She marnes Robert Evans, who, having lost both his job in Ireland and his inheritance, leaves her te find his fortune logging in Vancouver. As the book progresses, it becomes clear that Robert Evans is a gold digger who marned Kathleen for her money and who continues to seduce single wealthy women for funds during his marnage.es She only leams about his true nature after becoming pregnant with his

tl3 Foley, The Gnome Mine Myslery, 53. Il is odd thal this quotation combines the criticism that women who worl< are doing sa not to support themselves bul to supply themselves wiIh unnecessary extras, while at the sarne time, pointing out that opportunities for women in the work force tend to be low paying and that the average working woman will only manage to eke out subsistence. The conflicting images of the working woman of the 19305 are in this way highlighted.

.. Nancy M. Forestell, "Times Were Hard: The Pattem of Women's Paid labour in St John's Between the Two World Wars", 24, Labour/Le Travail (Fall 1989): 153.

.. This is a complete role reversai. While there are materialistic gold-digging characters in the • other novels, they tend to be women. 42

child. Although the child dies before it can be bom. she had made plans and was • prepared to work and raise the child on her own. Not only, then, does she continue to work during her marriage, but she is but is prepared to work as a professional single mother after divorcing her unfaithful husband. Sylvia Bye, in The Longest Way Round, does what Kathleen had been prepared to do; widowed, she is raising her child, Letitia, alone. Mrs. Bye is a resourceful character who relies on her domestic skiIls to support herself and Letitia. She takes a job as a housekeeper in a hospital which separates her from her daughter, then she ge15 a housekeeping job in same neighbourhood and then another as house mistress at Woodycrest Hall where Letty goes to school.110 Although widowed, and fending for herself, Mrs. Bye is a cheerful woman. When Letty fantasizes about a wealthy future in which her mother would not have to work, Mrs. Bye responds in a way which communicates her pride in her work. Letty says, "We'lIlive together and l'II eam a big salary and be the man of the house and you'lI be the lady, and not do a hand's tum...... "A very poor sort of lady, 1would say," Mrs. Bye exclaimed,....87 If, as Morley Callaghan sugges15, ..... - the man out of workoM was a much repeated theme during the thirties, the woman out of work, it seems, was not of social concem. Ruth Pierson makes this point in her introduction te No Easy Road: "Oegrading and inadequate as federal, provincial and municipal relief measures were, the jobless male was at least an object of concem. Unemployment, according to experts, was not a female problem, except insofar

.. Between 1921 and 1931 the numbers of women engaged in domestic service increased by 7%. Prentice et Ill. Canadian Women, 235.

5' MacMurchy, The Longes! Way Round, 187.

.. Callaghan reviews the short stories published in the first edilion of New Frontier, ail three of which delll wilh unemploymenl He comments on the lack of variety and repaats his editor's explanation thet there was lillle choice in the malter since ail the short story submissions had unemployrnent as their theme. Morley Callaghan, 'A Criticism', New Frontier 1, no. 1 (April 1938): • 24. 43

as women were the cause of job loss for men.'.... In the majority of novels in this • collection, unemployment is not presented as a major concem. For Mary Moran, in The Homesteaders, the loss of her job at the newspaper is really a liberation. It enables her to embark on her life with Peter Shoedecker. Similarly, in The Grafted Twig, a romance by Allistene Starkey. Kerry Willet loses her job as a commercial artist because her employer began using photographs.70 This too is presented as a blessing in disguise. Kerry has the opportunity to go to the island off Nova Scotia where the novel is set, to see the house her aunt left to her in her will, and it is there she meets her Mure husband. She does not express any remorse over the loss of her job. Only in Waste Heritage is female unemployment presented as a serious matter. Irene Baird shows how vulnerable women employees were in the Depression, and the stiff competition it fostered. When Matt meets Hazel she is working at Lincoln's store in the meat packing department. Women are hired there instead of men so that they can be paid less. Although the work is not ideal-Hazel says, "It's not the hours that get me, it's the smell... that and the bloodstains,,71 -Hazel counts herself lucky to have this job. But she is fired from the meat wrapping job because she rebukes the advances of Mr. Shield, the department head. She tells him, "Why you old sonovabitch, you! You think you've got every girl in this department in your pocket!"72 Although she is pleased to have spoken her mind, she is fearful of unemployment and the measures a woman sometimes must take to get a job. Matt does not want her te work at the dance hall for Art, whom he calls a "pimp". She responds, "1 wish you knew the line-up

.. Ught and Pierson, eds. No Easy Roed, 16.

70 Allistene Starkey, The Gra1led Twig (New York: Acadia House Inc., 1940).25.

71 Baird, Weste Heritage, 60• • 12 Ibid., 212. 44

of girls waiting for the job an' some of the things they'd do to get it.,,73 For her • own part, she feels badly about taking the job away from the older woman who had it before. She says, Art said he could get me a job as cashier at that dance place. He said the one they got there now don't bring in the customers like a young one would, he told me she was ail shot to hell. You could see that the night we passed, couldn't you? Ali shot up and finished-Iooking. 1feel kind of sorry for her, getting thrown out on her ear. 74 The older woman in this paragraph is depicted as being used up and discarded at a time when the employers owed nothing to their employees. ln these novels the scenario of a single woman working outside the home is weil represented. Although it is clear that financial independence is necessary for many of the female characters such as the Brook sisters and Mary Moran, except in the case of Waste Heritage, the dire consequences of unemployment for women are not explored. No character must confront the tate described by Barbara Harris who wrote to Prime Minister Bennett on March 22, 1935 as follows: 1am 19 yrs. of age Mr. Bennett, but it really is impossible for me to get work. 1 haven't got any shoes to wear & no coat & so 1 haven't any home or any relatives here, lm ail alone as it were. Now 1tho't perhaps you could help me a Iittle Mr. Bennett 1would be much obliged. Here in Moose Jaw it just seems impossible te gat relief unless you go & work for your board & room & 1 can't work Iike that as 1need clothes so badly. Ifs even a tact that not only haven't a coat to wear but 1haven't any stockings either....75

*** As we have seen, the role the Depression plays in these novals varies. Waste Heritage stands alone as a pure Depression novel. In Wrth Asme of Freedom, The Homesteaders, The Gnome Mine Mystery, The Master ofJalnaand

'" B8lrd, Waste Heritage, 211.

7' Ibid., 211 • • 7li Bl'ISS, ed. The Wrelchecl of Caned~ 132. 45

The White Reef it plays a significant role in terms of shaping the plot: in others it • is just a backdrop, receiving passing mention if at ail. In the Maritime novels. "hard times" are nothing new and the Depression is not shown to change Iife dramatically. While none of the female characters in these novels experience destitution, many of them enter the workforce out of economic necessity. Despite the image of financial independence made by Kathleen in Crosscuts, Marcile St. Lambert, the businesswoman in The Gnome Mine Mysterv, and by the widowed Sylvia Bye in The Longest Way Round who is in no hurry to marry again, financial independence tends to be a necessary but temporary state of affairs for women characters. The novels confirm the continued importance ofwomen's domesticity in the 19305. Marriage and, depending on the wealth of the characters, domestic labour are the common scenario. As in the example of Marcile whose partnership in • ,e Gnome Mine is disapproved of by some, the notion that work outside the home was incompatible with married life is, on the whole, confirmed. The idea that a woman could not do both is conveyed through the secondary character of Alinda Blanhammer in The Longest Way Round. Although she is a gifted teacher, Alinda leaves her profession to run the household of her brother after the death of his wife. Not only is she unhappy there, she is extremely incompetent, as if her skill as a teacher precludes ability in domestic affairs. Mrs. Trant comments, "They say Alinda Blanhammer is very smart about some things. But 1 can tell you it isn't about housekeeping."711 After the baby Blanhammer escapes from her crib unnoticed by Alinda and develops pneumonia, Alinda's caretaking comes to be seen as Iittle short of dangerous. She decides to retum to teaching, saying, 'It is not because 1have not tried te change myself into a different woman that 1have made up my mind now to go back te teaching again."n This echoes Agnes MacPhail's point, that most women had te choose between work outside the

,. MacMurchy. The Langast Way Round, 10. • n Ibid., 134. 46

home and a family lite. 78 Although, for most of the adult femaJe charaeters in this • survey'" the choice is family Iife, not ail these charaeters conform willingly or fully te the expeetation of the domestic ideaJ. This will be explored further in the following chapter.

,. See lIbow. ~. 2 noIII 8.

-. - '" ElCCIuding HlIJ-Top Md The Lanaest Wav Round bec:ause the main fIIrnId8 cIllIr8cl8Is _ tllo • young for nwriIQe. the -1IIIIn'Y ln 10 novels out of 15. CHAPTER III LOVE AND MARRIAGE • Romantic attachments are an important element in these novels. The importance of marriage and the advantages it was seen to offer women during this period will be discussed. But, while marriage and motherhood was the idealized social role for women in the in the 1930s, some of the main female characters in these novels by women are unable to fulfil this role because of their financial or environmental circumstances. Still others deliberately challenge the social expectation of marriage. Their rebellion takes a number of forms including: engaging in pre-marital sexual affairs, choosing not to many, or choosing "unacceptable" partners. What follows is a discussion of courtship and sexuality in C',anada during the Depression and as it is portrayed in the novels by these women authors. LONG ENGAGEMENTS The Depression not only made it more difficult for men and women to find work outside the home, it altered pattems of courtship and marriage. Great numbers of single men were unemployed and, unable to foresee supporting a wife and children, they often postponed marriage.' This pattem emerges in Irene Baird's Waste Heritage. The main character, Matt Striker, is involved in a demonstration of unemployed men in British Columbia, and his plan for the immediate future is te stay out of jail. To him and his girtfriend, Hazel, the conventional Iife course of marriage and a tamily is a luxury they cannot aven afford te think about. When Matt hears Hazel say that she would like a home and children, he answers, "..you've got expensive tastes. Those things cost money.oo2 Although Hazel has a job, Matt does not feel comfortable with her paying when they go out. When Hazel offers to buy them dinner, he says, "'Not on your lite. 1 naver ate off a woman yet an' l'm not sta"tin' now.' He was boorish about it

, Strong.Boag, The New Dav Recalled, 91 . • • B8ird. W!!l! Heritage. 95. 48

because ofthe v.:ay he felt.03 This inability to play the role of provider demoralizes • Matt Striker, and contributes to the frustration that is unleashed in the end when Matt kills a policeman. Similarly, in The Homesteaders, Ann Severn comments on the absence of men to date. Although there are church parties where people can meet, she says to Mary, "Boys want to pick out their own girls and pay for their entertainment It leaves girls, young Iike yourself, as short of beaux as if they were spinsters of forty. Tell me, do you know one young man in this town who has lost a way of eaming his living and has kept his morale?'" The observation that men's financial straits interfered with their romantic aspirations is also made in Laugh in the Sun. The two main characters are single despite a number of proposais because the "boys" were not financially set for marriage. Amy Baker writes, "Both had refused offers of marriage which would have meant waiting indefinitely for rises in the young men's salaries, and as no deep feelings were stirred it was better to remain friends without definite bonds.05 Peter and Mary's relationship in The Homesteaders is a1so affected by the dismal economic conditions. Peter Shoedecker delays asking Mary to marry him because, shortJy after they first meet, he is forced to abandon his unproductive farm in southem Saskatchewan. Only after h3 has spent a year on his new stake in northem Saskatchewan clearing the woods and putting up buildings, and perhaps more importantly, only after he discovers that Mary will be losing her job at The Times, does he ask her to marry him and join him on the homestead. The idea that marriage plans might be delayed during the thirties to a1low men te get

• 81ùrd, Waste Heritage, 91. Veronica Strong-608g aJso noled the resistance lo the Dutch !rea! on the part of men and women in tho Depression because il challenged existing g9llCler relations. She cites one young woman as saying, 'Evidenl1y il does something 10 a man when the girl makes grand gestures insteed of him. And 1guess WB girls still react 10 caveman stuIf. We Iike a boy who pUIs Ils in our place....• The New Day Recalled, 97.

• Chapman. The Homesteaders. 32• • • Baker. Laugh in the Sun, 15. 49 • established further suggests that, despite women's entran::e into the paid labour force, the perception of men as the sole breadwinners was not altered. "ADVANTAGES' CF MARRIAGE Most of the couples in these novels, however, do marry. Among the perceived advantages of marnage for women in the 1930s are economic <;ecurity and renewed respectability for the unwed mother. But, while economic considerations form a part of the discourse conceming mate selection, physical attraction and love are the preeminent forces motivating the main female chaëcters. In this way, although most of these women charaeters meet the societal expectation of heterosexual coupling,· they challenge social expectations both through their choice of partners and their passionate involvements. As we have seen, in a society geared towards men as sole providers, marriage was often a matter of economic necessity for ""umen. In Lucien-and in keeping with the traditional novel of the land which, according to Patricia Smart hinges on the exchange of a woman between two male r:haracters7-Père Charbonneau arranges for his daughter Lucien to marry an older, wealthy, neighbour named Estien. Lucien is wounded and bitter not only because her father has rejected the application for marnage from the man she loved, Pierre, but also because her marnage hinges on a profitable wheat deal between Estien La Tendresse and Charbonneau. She says, ''You sold me! You sold me Iike a

COW. If 1marry Estien, 1damn my soul and 1take yours with me!'· The charaeter of Père Charbonneau is, as one reviewer points out, reminiscent of "...the brutal,

• As Veronica Strong·Boeg points out, "Remaining happily single and exploring the potentilll of seme sax relationships were never presented as relll options." The New Day RecaJled, 82.

7 Patricia Smart elaborates, "In narrative terrns what this meens is that 'his story' (the narrative of mille deve/opment) is dependent on possession of the woman-object • and therefore on the conlinuing impossibility of 1Il10wing 'her story' to come into being." Wriling in the Father's House, 15-16.

• Parsons, I..ucien, 165. It should bo noted that those in positions of power and inlluence within the community were not aware of the coercive nature of the arrangement and would not l'.ave • approved. When the Curé found out, he blamed Estier: for Lucien's unhappiness. 50 • bullying tather, that classic of the tarm novels of Nebraska, North Dakota and westem Canada; ..."· It is because he aets with only his own interests in mind and expressly against those of his wife and daughter that his behaviour is so reprehensible. Charbonneau, however, has no crisis of conscience. When Estien La Tendresse complains to Charbonneau that Lucien is cold to him, suggesting it is because they arranged a loveless marriage, Charbonneau responds, "Half the women in Canada marry for convenience, and they make good wives. Their men see to it they have no time for foolishness. You've been too soft with her, Estien."'o Since marriage was a means of economic security for women, wealth is often depieted as a man's most important asset. As Roger Merriton in The Gnome Mine Mystery suggests, "It is an age when fil man is judged by the si::.e of his bank account,..."" However, a woman who makes judgements solely on the basis of wealth is denigrated as being a materialist.'2 This type of shallow materialist is embodied in the secondary character of Julia O'Connor, a young girl in The Longest Way Round. She says, "Poor people [don't] amount to

• Marie Quayle Innis, ·Slingingly Alive·, review of Lucien in The Canadien Forum 19 (1939): 28. Père Charbonneau caUs to mind, in parlicular, Caleb Gare, the domineering father character in Martha Ostenso's novel, Wild Geese, published in 1928.

10 Parsons, Lucien, 228.

11 Foley, The Gnome Mine Mvstery. 28

12 Consumerism, though not unique to the 19305, is highlighted unfavourably due to the severe economic conditions. The theme of woman as consumer is played out in a short story entitled "The Party" by Mary Quayle Innis. In it, a woman, Ethel. throws an expensive party. She buys a new dress, new bedspreads, a new lamp shade, a bronze elephant because ·elephants were ail the rage·, and has the event catered to impress her guasls. The woman's reasan for ail the extra expense and effort was quile sîmply to show off. Just as poverty was a source of shame during the Depression, the story makes the point that wealth was one of pride. The woman wanted to give the party, .... to show their friends that while so many people were out of work and selfing thelr cars and moving into cheaper houses and wearing old dresses, Todd had hls job the seme as ever and they could afford just as much as they ever had." Mary Quayle Innls, "The Party", Volces of Oiscord: Canadien Short Stories trom the 19305, ed. Donna Phillips (Toronto: New Hogtown Press, 1979), 151. The irony, and the sociallevelfing which was part of the Depression, • Is achieved when, after the party, il is made known that Todd has lost his job. 51 • anything.,,'3 But this type of character is most explicitly drawn in The Gnome Mine Mysterv. ln this story, Roger Merriton goes to northem Ontario to evaluate the worth of a goId mine which was ail that was left to him by his late Uncle Maxwell, who was once very wealthy but who has lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929. He leaves his fiancée Miriam behind in New York City planning to retum shortly. Once in Ontario, however, ti~ b~0rnes interested in the fate of the mine. This is partly because he sees it as the ke~ to understanding his Uncle's death which he never accepted as suicide, and partly because, as he says, "..the fire of the pioneer had entered his blood...".'4 Miriam wants him to find a lucrative position so the marriage can go ahead as planned. She is clear with him that marriage for her does not signify giving everything up for love. She considers wealth her "birthright" and daims that she could not "...live [her]life away from the refinements of civilization.,,15 She follows this with an ultimatum. "Your ring has become an empty symbol, Roger. 1 am not of the self-sacrificing type, as Vou must know-and if Vou feel it your duty to spend months-years, perhaps, on an empty venture-I'm afraid we shall have to part company."'· Miriam is depicted as seductive and superficial and is drawn in direct contrast to the main female character, Marcile St. Lambert, a partner in the gold mine. Marcile is a strong, attractive woman, but not, by her own admission "...of the clinging vine type."" There were advantages to being married, besides economics, which made it an appealing choice for women in the thirties. One was the social status it conferred upon a woman. In The Eyes of the Gull, Isabel Pyke remains single at

,. MBcMurchy, The Langast WBY Round, 62.

'4 Foley, The Gnome Mine Mwlery, 88.

,. Ibid, 137.

,. Ibid•• 188• • '7 Ibid., 157. 52

thirty years of age. She is characterized as an "old maid", and, living at home, is • subject to the will of hsr mother.,8 ln lsabel's case this service is particularly onerous because her mother is a gluttonous and exacting woman who must be served snacks in between her snacks. She makes fun of Isabel for her slimness, although "slimming", as a neighbor points out, is ail the rage in canada. Cecilia Benoit, when discussing the importance of marriage to women in Newfoundland during this period and the plight of those who chose to remain single, corroborates Duley's portrayal: "Spinsterhood," however, as one woman put it, ''was no bed of roses either." A society which measured women's status according to the trequency of her pregnancies within marriage gave Iittle praise to a woman who did not make her biology her destiny. Such a woman was labelled an "old maid" and remained a servant and perpetuai minor in her parents' house, despite her age, Iife experience and productive labour.'· "ILLEGITIMACY" Marriage for women was also important because it is the only antidote, besides abortion, for a woman who found herself in the position of having a child out of wedlock.20 ln Mary Graham Bonner's Rainbow at Night, Nova Scotian society is presented as being tolerant of pre-marital sex for girls within the community. During a community dance lan Blake, a visitor from New York City, is shocked by the open sexuality of local people, who, "..were already walking out of the hall, arms around the girls, to come back a Iittle later, quieter, a bit of their

.. Duley, Cold Pastorel, 59.

,. Cecilia Benoit, 'Mothering in a Newfoundland Communily, 1900-1940: DeUvering Motherhood: MatemaJ Ideologies and Praclices in the 19lh and 20lh Centuries, Katherine Amup, Andrée Lévesque, and Ruth Roach Pierson, eds. (lgndon and New York: Routledge, 1990), 180.

'" Angus Mclaren notes that despite the falling birlh rate, maternel death rates rem8lned high due 10 abortion attempts which resulted in dealh. In Manitoba, 1928-1932 abortion accounted for 17.1% of matemaJ dealhs, and in Ontario the percentage was 14. Furlhermore, ' .•the matemaJ death rate of single women was 40 to 100 per cent higher !han that of the marrled.' Angus Mclaren, Our Own Mastar Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 (Torol'lto: McClelland & Stewart, • 1990),34-35. 53 • heathful [sicllustiness temporarily satisfied .,,21 His date and a local herself, Jenny Macdonald, is less shocked because, as she says, "..the lads were only going after the girls she knew they likely would rnarry, and anyway were hell bent on having without too great objections from the girls.""' Bella, Jenny's friend, discusses her prospects should she find herself pregnant and unmarried: 1 was savin' it mightn't be long afore we ail married and settled down and had a home of our own, babies and a garden to tend. And 1was also savin' that it's no' so very terrible if sorne one-just one, mind ye, so's ye can be sure-does give Vou a knock-down and maybe vou go on four or five months. He'lI speak to the minister the next other 8unday he come to town when he's sure it's his own spawn. It's best the other way and 1hope l'II not forget and say yes when 1shouldn't. But nothin's ever been left high and dry in this Coye save the cods' heads and bones.,,23 1n the novel Lucien, set in Quebec, a marriage would probably follow a pre­ nuptual pregnancy as weil. In this novel, however, special circumstances make the woman pretend to be pregnant with an "iIIegitimate" chiId and endure the stigma attached to such a pregnancy in order to overcome another stigma. Phonce and Pierre are first cousins between whom marriage would not be sanctioned. For this reason, they pretend that Phonce is pregnant and gain a grudging approval for their union. Monsieur le Curé says, "It's a marriage of necessity. 1 told Vou that before. You know how the Church stands on the marriage of cousins. 1hope now Vou will cause no more scandal.·24 Their trick is discovered, however, but not before Phonce is truly pregnant. This time they are sent away from their home in order not to be a poor example to others. Marriage was not a1ways an option, however, and many single women had their children despite society's disapproval. The number of children born out of

21 Bonner, Rainbow al Nlg!tt, 289•

.. Ibid., 269-270.

.. Ibid., 43. • ~ p~, ~, 13. 54 • wedlock increased during the Depression because the practice of marrying once it was discovered that the woman was pregnant was compromised by economic hardship. Veronica Strong-Boag reiterates the notion that in this decade, despite certain indicators of progress for women, sex based double standards remained: "The stigma attached to illegitimate births, the number of which almost doubled as a percentage of total live births from 1921 to 1935, reminded ail women that the penalties for sexual expression, even in a supposedly more liberated age, were paid overwhelmingly by one sex."" Although motherhood was considered to be a married woman's highest calling in the thirties, for the single woman it carried with it shame and punishment."" "... [W] hat man could visualize the special agony of a woman outside convention?,,·7 asks the main character in Cold Pastoral. ''You feel yourself outside your tradition, and your tamily looking at you as filth.,,'8 The prejudice against single mothers was expressed in the protocol of the mother's allowances which did not supply aid to the single or divorced mother.20

'" Strong-Boag, Tha New Day Recalled, 90.

'" Andrée Lévesque, 'Deviants Anonymous: Single Mothers at the Hôpital de la Miséricorde in Montreal, 1929-1939.' Rethinking Canada: The Promise ofWomen's History, 2nd Edition, Veronica Strong-Boag, and Anita Clair Fellman, eds. (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitrnan, Ud. 1991), 323. Levesque explores this stigma in her work on single mothers in Montreal during this period. The ostracization of single mothers makes it clear that motherhood carried wilh it no special meri! outside the confines of the institution of marriage. Rather,'...single mothers were shamed and punished for thelr own and their loverlseducer's failure to conform to sexual codes that restricted intercourse to marriage. Repentance and hard work were the order of the day, but they could not obliterate women's loss of respectability.' (p. 323)

'Zr Duly, Cold Pastoral,322.

'" Ibid., 321 .

,. Mother's allowances were introduced in ail provinces except PEI and New Brunswick between 1920 and 1937, Bigibility requirements and amounts paid to mothers varied from province te province. A general principle was tnat 'Mothers with families who, through no feuil of thair own (emphasis mine), were laft alone with the responsibility of r!lising children, were eligible for the allowances, which were te be short-term supplem",,,ts. nct regular income.' Widows were eligible across Canada. although in some provinces women wilh only one child were not eligible and in ail provinces except Saskatchewan and Alberta, immigrant women were ineligible due to policies • that provided only for l3ritish subjects or their wives and widows. Prentice et al. Canadien Women. 55 • Dorothy Livesay, a social worker at the Infants Home for unmarned women in Toronto during this period, saw equality between the sexes as the only hope of changing the hard reality for single mothers: "1 saw that only in a society where men and women struggled together for equal opportunity and equal responsibility would the iIIegitimate child be accepted, and with no black-listing of his mother.'030 Certainly, the books in this survey tend to present pregnancy outside of marnage as a very serious social transgression. The sin of sex outside of marnage and, as a corollary, the importance of chastity, are major themes. ln Below the Salt by Vima Sheard, when it is discovered that Phyllis, the housekeeper, is pregnant, her mistress, wrongly convinced that the child is her husband's, hisses to Phyllis, ''You wicked one!..." and throttles her, making Phyllis

Jose consciousness and damaging her vocal cords permanently.31 Her child, bom on the same night that Mrs. Q'Sullivan, the mistress, commits suicide, is adopted by Mr. Q'Sullivan. Phyllis remains the housekeeper and has to watch on powerlessly as Q'Sullivan, a tyrannical patriarch, raises her own daughter. Silenced, she lives the rest of her Iife Iike a shadow, serving others without any needs of her own being met. Recognizing that Iife for her daughter, Gail, would be ruined if the truth of her birth were known, Phyllis sacrifices her own Iife te keep the secret. The local history in The Eyesofthe Gull, set in Newfoundland, isdominated by the scandalous story of a woman's infidelity. Josiah Pyke came back from a long sea voyage te discover that his fiancée, Elfrieda Tucker, has died giving birth to another man's still bom child. Crazed, he digs up her grave and shakes the corpse, smashing her head on the ice. The town's interpretation of this incident,

258-259.

oc Uvesay, RighI Hand left Hand. 123. • .. Sheard, BeIow the S8!t, 270-271. 56

as expressed by Isabel, is that, "[Elfrieda] sinned and spoiled Josiah's life."" This • scenario foreshadows tragedy for lsabel's own secret love affair. ln Cold Pastoral, the need for the main female character to be utlerly chaste is paramount. Mary Immaculate is thrown out of the Fitz Henry household by Dr. Philip Fitz Henry, her adoptive brother and future husband, on the mere suspicion that she is having an affair with Tim, the boy next door. Philip's readiness to believe the worst of Mary Immaculate reflects his jealous and

possessive love for her. It may al50 point to a lingering subconscious belief that because of her "Iow" birth in tne fishing village, she never really was the "lady" he felt they had moulded hcr to be. This feeling is expressed by Hannah, the housekeeper who never approved of Mary. She says, "She's made a fool of vou ail, and most of ail vou.... To my mind she's not as good as she might be, .. .If there's any trouble they'lI say it's vou, and there's never a person will cali you in, with that disgrace on your name."33 Later in the novel, when Mary is in England trying to gain some sense of independence, a friend of hers becomes pregnant and asks Mary for the money for an abortion. Mary in tum asks Philip, and a1lows him for a moment to assume that she is the one that requires the abortion. The following is a description of Philip in that moment of doubt. The possibility that she is no longer chaste affects Philip like a physical assault: "Philip," (Mary) said, without elaboration, "1 want sixty pounds for an abortion." It was a split-second of doubt, but it was enough. He collapsed on the couch Iike somebody felled, dragging her with his fall. Literatly she bore the full weight of his body across her knees. On the hand that layon her lap she could feel the ooze of his sweat, damping the lace of her dress. Wildly she knew she might have taken a gun and wounded him with less pain.'"

32 Culey, The Eyes of the Gull, 32.

.. Culey, Cold Pastorel, 254-255• • .. Ibid.• 328. 57 • ln Laugh in the Sun, Mrs. Harrington, who runs the beauty parlour at which Agnes and Fanny work, aets as an unofficial den mother. She does not want her employees drinking or staying out late with men. She says, "Here, a young woman is, or she isn't. l'II have no mottled virgins."" As we have seen, Rainbow at Night depicts a society which is more accepting of open sexuality. But, even in this novel, having a child out of wedlock carries with it serious social consequences. A story is told in the book of a city woman who came to the Cove and had an affair with a local. Mrs. Timothy, lan Blake's landlady, describes how the woman's family, "...came down to trounce her soundly for bein' a bit too human, poor lassie". She goes on to say, "The baby, poor mite, was sent to a Home, and the family trie<:! to cover it up back in town, but us in the Cove knew, and we felt, kind of, that the lassie, a forlom little gull ifs true, was maybe a scrap happier than when she'd come to the Cove.'o3

.. Baker, Laugh in the Sun, 58. Although Mrs. Harringlon plays the raie 01 a chaperon 01 sorts, the main characters, Agnes and Fanny, would nol, according la Amy Baker, be easily taken advantage 01. Ilseems that they have encounlered a number 01 sexuel advances, "Two girls with youth and zesl lor lile, but able la chose clear-eyed between the good and the rotten, the worth· while and the valueless. Thelrs was nol the purily 01 ignorance. They knew masl thlngs. Men they could deel with. Mrs. Harringlon hersaI! hed deelt with a woman, llal·heeled, llal-chested, tellor·made, who lor a lime had Irequenled the !!!!!.Q!!, desiring elways Fanny's services for shampoo or manicure. When Mrs. Harrington telked, she telked straighl" (p. 60)

.. Bonner, Rainbow al Night 129. • "Ibid., 111. 58

was taJked about (by men) in whispers and usually with sniggers. an attitude that

• emphasizes the prudery of those times. The subject W'"aS publicly taboo. as were ail references to abortion, pregnancy, menstruation, and masturbation.'o3ll At the same time, however, professionals in the medical field opened up the subject to public discussion actively promoting the "companionate" marriage ideal"" - which, according to Gary Kinsman, is "...defined by heterosexual friendship and erotic satisfaction"."· Although predicated on the importance of satisfying sexuallives, the advice campaign was also based on the idea that there was something lacking in canadian sexual relations. canadian women received most of the blame. Strong-Boag cites Alfred Tyrer, author of Sex. Marriage and Birth-Control. A Guide-book to a Satisfactory Sex Life in Marriage (1936), on this point: "Lack of erotic response in women was attributed 'to an entirely taise education by

unfortunate family influence or wrong religious teaching in childhood' .1141 Moreover, while this sexual advice sounds very liberal against the Victorian

.. Berton. The Great Depression 1929-1939. 40. Veronica Strong-Boag elaborates on woman's nalvete concemlng sexual matters in the Depression era. She says, "Most women had 'te stumble' aIong about the details and the functioning of both their bodies and those of men." The Naw Day Recallecl. 87. This is evident in Jessie Beattie's novel Hill-Top. Mimsie is a girl growing into adolescence and she is thoroughly ignorant of sexual matters. Beettie wrïtes, 'Babies WIIfll seldom mentionecl at Hill-Top and never before their arrivai". (p. 203) This young character recelwcl a WllIion of sexuaI fIlcts !rom her friend Esther and. when looking upon a newbom baby, •...(rememberad) certain rude tacts..' which gave her a •..sick feeling in her throat· (pp. 204-205)

.. Prentice at al. Canadian Women, 254. Companionate marriage became a popular ideal and smaller family sizes meant that friendship would serve a couple weil during the lenglhenecI amount of time they would be spendlng on their own. Mclaren and Mclaren aIso note that during the inter·_ period. •...the transition in the idealized image of the family !rom the patriarchal te the companionate.' Angus Mclaren and Arlene Tlgar Mclaren, The Bedroom and the State: The Chanoine Practices and Politics of Contraception and Abortion in Canada. 1880-1980 (Toronto: McCleIIand & Stewart, 1988). 12.

.. Gary Kinsman, The R!lQulation of Desire: Sexuality in Canada (Montreal: Black Rose Books. 1987).54. • ., Strong-Boag. The New Day RecaJIed. 87. 59 • paradigm," both Strong-Boag and Kinsman read in it an attempt to shore up heterosexual marriage and control female desire. As Strong-Boag writes, ... unsettling as such advice was to some who prized purity and reticence in women, these would-be therapists were tundamentally conservative.... Monogamous marriage, sharply differentiated sex roles, and motherhood remained largely untouched shibboleths.43

According to Kinsman, "Companionate marriage and heterosexual culture were partlya response to feminism and same-gender eroticism among women.'''' Ethel Chapman, the best spokesperson among these authors for the professionals' point of view in this decade, does depict relationships which could be described as "companionate", although the emphasis is placed on the importance of friendship and not on the need for sexual compatibility. But in the majority ofthese novels, passion is a female attribute. Despite the caution against pre-marital sex, physical attraction outweighs economic or status considerations for the majority of women characters. In this way, they challenged the perception of female sexual passivity and of appropriate sexuality. Kathleen Evans in Crosscuts is a strong, passionate woman whose love for her husband, Robert, is very physical. When thinking of reuniting with him, "A smile hovered bewitchingly about her lips. A pleasant sensation thrillecl her. Color f1amed her cheeks. Delights from which she had long been separatecl were taking place in her mind.'045 ln Master of Jalna, Alayne Archer's passionate love for her husband Renny is her Achilles heel, whil6 Sarah positively simmers with sexual potency. Her deceased husband, Arthur, had not met her needs: "Arthur

.. Gary Kinsman describes the image of Viclorian sexuality as follows: "Vietorian male ruling claa, middle-class white men came le be sean as the 'head' 01 the household and the social system, middle-class women as the guardlans 01 emolions and respectability-the 'heart' of society, yel lecking in sexuaIIerolic drive.' The ReouJalion 01 Desire, 44.

co Strong.Boag, The New Day RecaJled, 87•

.. Kinsman, The Regulation of Desire, 54• • .. Jessie Garden Smith Riordan, Crosscuts (Oregon: Metropolilan Prass, 1933), 11. 60

Leigh had roused passions in her which he had never been able to satisfy, and • now their renewed stirrings filled her with a sensuous elation which she took care to conceal.',4e sarah's sexual nature is seen to be literally captivating. Of Finch, sarah's fiancé, de la Roche writes, "And he was going to offer his young, free life to another.. to be bound to be enslaved... not to art.... but to Sarah's white flesh,

to sarah's black hair, to her desire... ,,47 This is an interesting role reversaI. More often a woman is characterized as surrendering during a romantic exchange, as in the exchange between Clara Lebreaux and Renny, Alayne's husband, at the end of The Master of Jalna. "[Clara] felt only desire to surrender herself to him. She put a hand on each side of his head and drew his face down to hers. Their lips met.',4e ln Waste Heritage Hazel's sexual openness shocks Matt. He says to her, "1 didn't think you were that sort." She replies, "Every woman's that sort.'048 ln The Grafted Twig. set on an island off Nova Scotia, the romantic behaviour of the main female character falls short of social expectations. In love with Ted and eager for his approval, Kerria Willet responds to his praise by giving him a kiss. ied is dismayed. He says, "Crest/and girls were reticent, and that was what he had been taught to expect • and admire. Ali his Iife, he had taken it for granted that ultimately some Crestland girl who exemplified the virtues he had leamed to respect, would make him the most desirable wife."sO Passionate love-making in these nove/s is usually reserved for married couples or couples for whom marriage is likely to result. When sex is presented

.. de le Roche, The Mesler of Jaln!!, 127.

47 Ibid., 276.

.. Ibid., 310.

.. Baird, Wesle Heritage, 98.

oc Starkey, The Grafted Twig, 277. Il should be noled here thal the Maritime society depictea in this novel stands in stark contract 10 the Nova Scotia of Mary Graham Bonne;. While the latter has been noted for ils 'honesl' rendering of thal society, The Grafted Twig. plesenls an idealized community. Il is a morality tale, expressing by ils example the same types of reform ideas that • are contained in The Homesleaders. 61

without the expectation of marnage. it tends to be an act for which the woman is • ultimately punished. Mrs. Timothy. in Rainbow at Night, is given a black eye by her husband because she had extra-marital relations. She is quite unrepentant. however, when explaining the matter to her new tenant. lan Blake. She says, "It's for why because 1was out ail larst night and he was home waitin' for me and expectin' his pleasure. But ye know. Mr. Blake. l'm a hard workin' woman and l've got to have some pleasure and a wee bit variety too. My man will be ail right in no time at all...."sl ln two tragic maritime novels. The Eyes Of The Gull and Rainbow at Night. sexual affairs occur without the validation of marnage. In The Eyes Of The Gull, despite the story of Elfrieda Tucker and the sin associated with iIIicit love. IsaJbel risks public ostracization to meet clandestinely with her lover. Peter. They do not marry. however, and at the end, she dies of pneumonia, overcome by the prospect of a future of servitude to her mother. now incapacitated by a stroke. Jenny Macdonald's passionate nature in Rainbow at Night is depicted as primai and wild. Although she is sexually innocent when the novel begins, and is aven suspected of being "cold", with lan she is overwhelmed by her own sexuality. "She longed te feel his hands on her skin. to have them there on her breasts. From some deep primai unreasoning instinct it was ail that she desired in ail the world.',52 Jenny and lan do not marry either, and the novel ends with Jenny alive, but alone and unhappy in the life she lived before she mtlt lan. The tragic endings are the result, according to one raviewer at any rate, of the unequal matehing in terms of class and sophistication between the men and

51 Sonner, Rainbow al Nigh!, 37.

S2lbid.• 235. Rainbowal Nighl is the masl sexuaJly exr-ilcil book in the survey. The feelings Jenny has when lislening 10 lan play music and when she is with him physlcally are intense. Sile describP"'l her feelings during a sexuaJ encounler as tollows, "A wave of tremendous feeling look up ail tl.a millions of liltle quivers, look themall together inlo a mighty grasp and concenlrated thern in a oneness and it became sa she could nol bear il No. This feeling was too great ta tKw. • ... She couldn't endure this onsweeping desire!hal was shallering her. She gave a cry." (p. 283) 62

women in these couples. J. R. MacGil/ivray paired Rainbowat Night with The Eyes • of the Gull together in the following way, The common theme is how the sophisticated man trom the big city...finds true love for a short time with a primitive girl and of course without oppressive institutional sanctions. This interrelation of primitivism with erotic longing is plainly nothing new, being at least as old as the seventeenth century English Iiterature.53 :" the novel, lan is aware of how his affair with Jenny appears. He thinks, ''l'm no b""tar than the kind of man who goes away to some summer country place and ruins the prettiest girl in it."" The suggestion, therefore, is that giving in to the advances of these men is a weakness on the part of the women, who are, therefore, victims not only of the men, but also of their own primai desires.55 Similarly, Nona Damell, in The White Reef set on Vancouver Island, is accused of weakness when she reunites with Quentin Wingate, the father of her six year old "iIIegitimate" son. Her brother Paul says, "1 refuse to be made the laughingstock of the town because 1 happen to have a weak-minded sister.'058 By having extramarital sexual liaisons Jenny, Isabel and Nona do not fulfil the social expectation that women should safeguard moral and physical purity.

"" MacGillivray, "Fiction", 357. Another reviewer, Margarel Wallace. denies thal Rainbow al Night ls a slock drama, but admils 10 the inevilability of the tragic ending. She says, "The plot, if suggesled in outline, will seem commonplace enough. Ilfaits almast too neatty into that well-wom formula according 10 which the sleek young gentleman trom the city first seduces and then either nobly marries or baselj' desarts, the prelty bul naive little country girl. Actually thls description, or almast any other, will be bound to do Miss Sonner's novel injustice. There ls not a single faIsa nO'.e in the emire development of the slory. lan Blake and Jenny MaC"anald are both living persons and their love story proceeds inevilably 10 an inevilable conclusion." Wallace, "In Nova Scotie",6.

54 Sonner, Rainbow at Night, 204-205.

.. lSl'bel is described as a "simple village girr and as a "victim" in another review of The Eyes of thE Gull which furthers MacGillvray's point Gwenda Morgan, "Newfoundland Tragedy", London Times üterarv Supplement (1936): 993. • 50 Ostenso. The White Reef, 189. 63 • ln The Eyes of a Gull, it should be noted that Isabel chooses not to marry; she finds the local men repulsive, saying, "They don't wash enough, ..."."' The prospect of marned life in Newfoundland is completely dismal as far as Isabel is concemed. She says, "It means having false tseth, ar.d being fat and ugly and working from daylight to dark."" Initially, Jenny Macdonald in Rainbow at Night, set in Nova Scotia, is similarly uninterested in marnage. She is described as being free and wild, and unw.lling to senJe for a convenient marnage. She refuses an offer of marnage from a local fj.,t,erman, whom she likes and respects, in the following way: E. i,/, you're so good to me. l'm ternble fond of you.. .It's just sornehow that when l'm out on the rocks and feel the sea bursting at my feet 1am fselin' so much 1could die with it ail. And when the wind sings low and sweet and the salty smell ail gets mixed up with the sweet fem and the wild roses and the wee bit hay and the sun and the spruces that 1could cry with the beauty of it and 1feel wild like and love so hard that it seems as though no one in the world could ever love so hard or hold so much feelin'....•• Although passionate in nature, she does not yet entertain passionate feelings towards men and is reluctant to give up her autonomy. She explains, "...but 1 can't think of lovin' a man and goin' under the same blankets with him and lettin' him feel l'm his to do with and that l'lIlike it very nice too.''"o Ultimately it is her sexual attraction for lan, the musician staying at the Cove for the summer, which changes her point of view. Ncna Damell, the main character in The White Reef which is set in a fishing community on the Pacific coast, also challenges the societal expectation of marnage for womtln. Nona has an affair with Quentin Wingate, at the time believing, perhaps naively, that they wou!d be marned. But, because Nona is a

57 Culey, Eyes of the Gull, 50.

50 Duley. Eves of the Gull, 50.

50 Bonnei, Reinbow al Night, 54• • 00 Ibid.• 55. 64

fisherman's daughter, Quentin's family makes sure that this does not happen. In • her family home on Vancouver Island, Nona is stared at, socially ostracized and viewed as an easy sexual target for new men in town. Nona has the opportunity to be redeemed through marriage; a long time friend, named Ivar, who has himself been jilted, asks her to marry him. Her father, Silas does not coerce her, but suggests that a marriage based on friendship and respect, would not be a bad thing: "Romance is thin fare when you settle down."·' Nona is prepared to marry Ivar in order to spare her son, Si, from ridicule. After Si's death he·waver, the wedding plans are abandoned. The upshot is that, although a union with Ivar would provide comfc>rt and security, Nana needs love and passion in a marriage. With the retum of Quentin, who is working hard to clear his name and who clearly loves Nona despite his past mistakes, she realizes it is for him she has these feelings. They get back together, even lhough he is still malried, and people locally think she :s daft for courting trouble twice. Nona, having lived so long outside of convention has become immune to this type of disapproval and is prepared to be Quentin's lover whether or not he is free. Ostenso writes, "To the Cove, to her own people, to herself, she was already the exception, a woman taken without marriage. If Quentin never became legally free, it would not matter so long as she was in the eyes of their love, his wife.,,·2 Her rejection of marriage is expressed also in her open hostility towards her sister-in-Iaw, Eve, who is depicted as a whining, overprotected woman, a true dependent. When Eva shudders in fear and tums to her husband Paul for protection, Nona is described as "... (staring) at her with unconcealed d;=taste.'o03 The assertiveness of the women characters in terms of choosing their own mates reflects a trend which worried certain members of society. Courting practices during the Depression remained locally based and subject to family

., Oslenso, The White Reet, 85.

"Ibid.. 244. • "Ibid.. 71. 65 • approval.ll4 But in these novels, the emphasis is clearly on physical attraction rather than practical considerations and family approval. In Below the Salt, for example, Gail's main objection to a marrying local farmer's son is her father's support cf him. This challenged the tradition of socially condoned marriage. One eugenically minded contemporary noted this trend and l'ead in the literature of the thirties a unhealthy tendency to glorify "!ove at first sight." Morris Siegel's view was that, "The modem drama, novel or short-story is usually constructed of a plot centering about a trivial characteristic of a ,'oung man or woman which has some appeal on the opposite sex.'''· These i10vels SLiggest that marriage or imminent marriage was the socially acceptable context for sexual relations, while at the same time challenging this more through the romantic affairs of unmarried and passionate women. SELF-SACRIFICE Through Isabel of The Eyes of the Gull, whose passionate nature is expressed in her affair with Peter Keen but who dies of pneumonia after he leavElS largely' because Iife for her is no longer worth living, the quality of self-sacrifice is introduced into the discussion of love and marriage. While generally associated

.. Veronica Strong Baag writes, "Courting was commonly a famil)' centred affair. Young people met in sellings close to home, chaperoned by the community. While longer periods of schooling and female employment were slowly increasing the pool of possible suitors, women lended 10 marry within their own social group." "Janey Canl.lck", 14-15.

es Morris Siegel, Constructive Eugenics: Eugenics and Rational Marriage (Toronto: :JcClelland & Stewart, 1934), 109. Siegel cl8lmed that the important decisior.s concerning mate selection were being made without the parental sanction traditionally required and on the basis of sexual attraction alone. He believed that this trend would negatively affeet the quality of the Canadian population. He wrote, "We fail 10 see that our syslem of mating is gradually breaking up and is undergoing rapid impairmenl Faulty matings must resull in fsulty offspring. There is no allernative." p. 107 Siegel underslood Iileralure to be a mirror of the limes and the glorification of passionale love in conlemporary dr8lT'a as il!. "eugenic defee!". He did not attach mlllicious inlenl 10 the authors of this type of IileralUre, bul fell thal it has negalive impact on sociel)'. He wrole, "In most cases the authors are nol even aware of t'le fact. that the sex instincl alwavs brings forth eugenic problerns and complicaliuns." (p. 110-111) ln The Homesteaders a similarly pejorative comment on the morality of modern drama is made. According 10 Peter, "A modern r.ovel with married people mixed up in triangle love affairs, WSS 10 him so unnalural as 10 be nol quile "healthy". And no Iilerary style could make up for indecency - of which he thoughl there was • plenty in some of these books. Chapman, The Homesleaders, 183. 66

with the mother-child relationship which will be treated later in this thesis, self­ • sacrifice seems to be part and parcel of loving a man for Jenny of Rainbow at Night, Hannah McLeod of Give Me My Robe, and Lucien of Lucien. The priee these female characters pay for the romantic choices they make is quite high. ln Bonner's novel, Jenny Macdonald is madly in love with lan Blake. She says te herself, "...lan, you'lI never know how terrible 1love you."ee Despite the strength of her own feelings, she always puts her concern for him first, and wants people te see him in a good light regardless of whether or not he leaves her. Bonner writes,"Let her feel hurt at Jan, but no one else ever must speak anything but fine of him.,"7 lan does invite Jenny to New York, but knows she would not ''fit

8 in" and fears she would be hurt by cruel social snubs. ' He thinks also about how much more appropriate his girlfriend in New York is for marriage. Because his feelings for Elizabeth are practical rather than passionate, he feels she is probably the best choice for marriage. Bonner writes, "The truth was that he contradictorily did not care enough for Elizabeth to make her anything else, as the old phrase had it, but an honest woman.'oOlI He is unaware of how deeply he will hurt Jenny by deciding to leave. She would not coerce him, however, into a union he did not really want by revealing her true feelings. It was why she had sent him from hsr the day he was leaving-while yet he had a little while-so that he could not see the ending of everything for her, so that his plly, his kindness would not make him do anything he would regret. She was not for him. Ali she had to give him was her love, her unchanging, tremendous love that had roots so no sea or storm or gale or will could touch it. And it was not enough.70

.. Sonner, Rainbow al Night, 264.

•, Ibid.. 241.

"Ibid.. 221.

00 Ibid.. 204. • 10 Ibid., 317. 67

Uke Isabel in Eyes of the Gull, Jenny makes no claims on her man despite her • keen desire to be with him. Another extreme example of self-sacrificing love on the part of a female character is presented in Give Me My Robe. Despite having decided against marriage at the start of the novel, Hannah falls in love with, and marries her new boss Evelyn Dawson. They had become close when he confided in her about his unrequited love for his brother's wife, Lois. It was Hannah's passion for him that brought them to the next stage in their rel

71 Leigh, Give Me My Robe. 228. • 7Z Ibid., 285. 68

ideal tamily setting."73 One can view Hannah's death as an ironie indictment ofthe • impact of these ideologies when taken to their extreme. ln Lucien, Lucien's passion is reserved for her childhood sweetheart. Her sacrifice is to force him out of her Iife not once, but twice, because she feels that it would be best for him. Her love for Pierre is passionate and strong, as the following quotation suggests: "The desire she'd felt the moming after that first kiss, when she lay in bed knowing she was a woman with a woman's capacity to love, lived in this embrace....Her mouth clung to his, and they breathed as one, with no identity left to distinguish them."" For her husband she has no such feelings. She does not participate in sexual relations with her husband if she can avoid it. She does not want his child, particularly because she feels this would represent a permanent barrier to any reunion with Pierre. Parsons writes, "She felt she could still be Lucien to Pierre no matter how much Estien used her if only there had been no baby.,,·5 The word "used" reinforces the idea of a passive female sexuality with an important distinction. Lucien lack of sexual desire represents a response to, or perhaps a rebellion against, an unwanted match.

73 The authors su9;lesl thal women were ultimalely responsible for the smooth running of a household and thal, particularly in the stresslul period of the Depression, they were expected 10 be a support lor their husbands. "Husbands were rarely encouraged 10 take up their wives' inlerests: women continued 10 be responsible for the home. According 10 editorials in Chalelaine, il remained a wife's duty 10 creale a smoothly run haven for her hard-working husband. When problerns arose il WBS her responsibility 10 solve them. Fearing possible rising divorce rates afler the enactrnenl of the divorce laws in 1925, the popular press conslantly reminded women thal it WBS their duty, honour, and privilege 10 preserve farnily stability lor the benefit nol only of the farnily but also lor the nation." Prentice &!h Canadian Women, 255. Dr. Winler, in WIth Aame of Freedom, gives marriage advice 10 his prodigy, Allan, which lits in with the ideaJ as described above. He says, "...a doclor who doesn'l wanl trouble ahead has no business marrying a woman who isn't inleresled in his work." Chapman, With Aame of Freedom, 106. Honora proves 10 be sufficiently supportive and self·sacrificing when she BSSists Allan with a man who crushed his foot in an accident without giving a second thought to missing the dinner gala they were going ta attend. In Hannah's case, however, her sacrifice subverts the idea of farnily.

74 Parsons, Lucien, 322-323. Il should be noled thal this is afler a six year separation trom Pierre.

73 Ibid.. 202. This quotation is also further explanation of her feelings lowards having a farnily and her reasons lor requesting some birth control information trom her doctor. These questions are • explored further in the chapler on mothering. 69 • Lucien, however, has little control over her own sexuality within her marriage. Her husband complains of her coldness and, at the urging of her father, forces her into submission. "See here, Lucien, l've put up with enough of your foolishness. 1won't have it! After ail, you're my wife. A man has rights with his woman. You've never satisfied me. 1can't come near you without feeling you freeze.,,70 Estien rapes Lucien that evening. Parsons writes, "His taking of her that night was so brutal that Lucien, rising afterwards, retched until she could not stand, and crawling on her hands and knees pulled herself up to bed."n Despite her unhappiness in her marriage, however, Lucien does not run away with Pierre when she has the chance. She decides that Pierre deserves the freedom to pursue his truest love, his career in music, free from the scandai of being involved with herself, a married woman. Lucien reasons, "Without the freedom to create he would be without life.,,78 Lucien sees that she can not give Pierre what he needs, and relegates that dream to the past. Parsons writes, Lucien, the woman, was marked and hard with a strength that came from knowing the meanness and pettiness of men. It was that lite she had thought to ofter him. The blight upon her she had thought to place upon him. It would poison the fountain of goodness from which his music came. She was marked as if Estien had laid a brand on her, glowing red with heat. Pierre had come back for a girl who was dead, who could now be nothing but a dream. 7lI *** As Veronica Strong-Boag points out, "...most female Canadians not only expected to marry but took it for granted that marnage would provide satisfaction, security, and purpose".80 The depiction of this institution in some of these novels,

70 Parsons, Lucien, 225.

n Ibid., 229.

70 Ibid., 367.

711 Ibid.• 368. • 00 Strong-Boag, The New Dav Recalled, 81. 70

however, suggests that the merits of marnage were either unattainable or over­ • rated. In Waste Heritage, the Depression conditions rob Hazel of her dream of family life while in Rainbow at Night and Eyes of the Gull, Jenny and Isabel respective!y, are prevented from marnage by their social position. Kathleen Evan's first marnage in Crosscuts brings her unhappiness and Hannah, in Give Me My

Robe, feels 50 inadequate in her marnage that she forfeits her own life. Lucien is in an economically and socially advantageous marnage but tells her husband, "Money doesn't buy love, Estien. l'd rather have lived an old maid without enough to eat than marry you!"" As a response to being mamed off to a man she does not love, Lucien is waging the most significant war against this institution. By withholding herself from her husband, by resenting the children she bears, and by withdrawing from the Catholic religion due to a crisis of faith, she is undermining many of the expectations of mamed women in her community of Trois-Rivières. This message is softened, however, at the end of the novel when she decides to puts her love for Pierre to rest and try to make her marnage to Estien La Tendresse work. Love is a powerful, even destructive, motivating force for many of the female characters in these books which often sets them up against convention. Nona Damell lives as a social outcast in payment for choosing to remain unwed and be with Quentin Wingate. According to The Times Literary Supplement, "...Quentin stirs up her dormant passions of hate and love, which find full

expression in the fracas which precedes the ultimate triumph of love.,,82 Mary Moran of The Homesteaders, though she did not have to defy convention to marry Peter Shoedecker, did have to take on a Iife of homesteading up north which must have been daunting. For Gail and Kathleen, the protected daughters of D'Sullivan in Below the Salt, choosing men that he disapproved of was a rebellion indeecl. For Isabel, in The Eyes of the Gull, taking a lover was the only rebellion she

., Parsons, Lucien, 226• • .. Times Uterarv Supplement (1935): 502. 71 • committed in her life of servitude, and she had no regrets. The love in these stories is often ideal; the \'Vomen characters, so willing to take risks to pursue a passionate rather than practical love, will not risk harm to the object of their love himself. This is evident in the self-sacrificing behaviour of Jenny Macdonald, Hannah McLeod and Lucien in Rainbowat Night, Give Me My Robe, and Lucien respectively. These depictions do not square with the prascriptive ideas of passive female love and sexuality for Canadian women in the early twentieth century. Rather, these characters' insistence on choosing their own partners, one can read active attempts te reject prescribed roles and assert women's autonomy. These stories of the power of love, even illicit love, certainly suggest that a love story in the 1930s was as popular as it is in the 1990s. They also hint at changes in demography, in the traditional marriage pattems, as weil as an increase in the number of divorces"" which threatened certain groups into raising the spectre of iIIegitimacy as a means of enforcing social control. At the same time, they freed others, such as Ostenso, to explore the possibility of love for a woman on her own terms. Perhaps also, the presentation of passionate women should be linked to the activities of the Canadian birth control advocates, which will be examined in the following section, and their suggestion that women should be allowed to enjoy their own sexuality." While the novels in this survey, such as those of Chapman and Baker, the marriages are in keeping with the companionate ideal which places a strong emphasis on friendship and shared goals within a couple,os the element of attraction is always there and no charaeter

113 The 1925 Divorce Law enabled women 10 sue for divorce on the grounds of simple adultery. Although divorce was still nol eesily obteined, and accessibility varied be!ween the provinces - in Quebec, for exemple, a residenl would have 10 apply 10 the Parliamenl of Canada - the Canadien divorce raie increased during the Depression era trom 82 per 100,000 in 192910 18.4 per 100.000 in 1939. Despite this increase, desertion of a wife by her husband was a more common end of marriage scenario during this period. Bumsled, The Peoples of Canada, 212-213.

.. The McL.arens make the point that Marie Stopes in Britein and Margaret Sanger in the US, the women who were essentially the 'godmothers' of the Canadian birth control movement, argue that access to birth control should be a woman's right. The 8edroom and the Sale, 12• • os Prentice et al. Canadian Women, 254. 72

marries simply becausc. they are asked and feel that being married would be • preferable to being single-although indications from the dominant discourse suggested that this would be so. In this way, although marriage is the Iife course of choice for many of these female charaeters, it is also challenged as a prescribed behaviour by some of these women authors.

• CHAPTER IV MOTHERING • According to domestic ideology, being a married mother was the ideal role for a woman in the 1930s. This idealized view is presented in Marjory MacMurchy's The Longest Way Round. Sylvia Bye is a loving mother, an efficient housekeeper and a model of forbearance and self-sacrifice. She has the love and respect of her daughter who believes, "..whatever her mother [does is] right.'" MacMurchy comments on the strength of a mother's love, suggesting that nothing, ".. .Iasts as long or stands as much wear and tear as the love of a mother for her children.'" Mothers are also seen to be gifted with an ancient wisdom. Ir. The Homesteaders, Mary Moran is compared to her husband Peter in the following way: "She was ages older than he was in wisdom now and stronger in courage,

the etemal mother,.... 3 Similarly, in Crosscuts, Kathleen Evens feels her relationship to the world around her change. When she discovers she is pregnant, she is "...consumed with tendemess for every living thing-a strange joyousness, sweet and overpowering.,04 ln most of the books surveyed here, however, the mother figure is treated with far more ambivalence. She is excluded entirely from many of the novels. and has fragmented or caricatured roles in others so that the reality of motherhood is not fully explored. The mother role will be looked at in more detai! in the following discussion of various aspects of reproduction such as birth control, childbirth and childrearing. BIRTH CONTROL During the Depression years, the puOhc debate over birth control intensified and became part of a number of different and conflicting political agendas. As

, MacMurchy, The Langast Way Round, 172.

, Ibid., 137.

• Chapman. The Homesteaclers. 155• • • Riordan. Crosscu!s. 170. 74

Angus McLaren and Arlene Tigar Mclaren point out, "In the first decades of the • century, birth control had been associated either with feminists caJling for women to have the right to control their own bodies, or with leftists striving for a democratization of contraception.'" Although members of the middle classes feared that the widespread dissemination of family limitation information would mean "race suicide", the birthrate had already been declining since before the tum of the century." Because numerous children were less of a financial asset in an increasingly urbanized society, and in response to the economic crisis of the Depression, women were already employing whatever methods they had to limit b,rths in the interest of their family's well-being. 7 The more conservative birth control lobby of the 1930s headed by A.A. Kautman, the ''father'' of the birth control movement, emphasized family limitation as a way of preserving the social order.' Mainstream feminists, such as Nellie McClung and Emily Murphy who "...regarded motherhood

as a woman's highest calling, ,,0 began to see family limitation as a necessary evil. As the McLarens suggest, "The leading Canadian women's organizations were slow in publicly defending birth control. They only did so in the 1930s when their moral misgivings were overwhelmed by evidence of the social and economic misery resulting from unwanted pregnancies."'o ln this way, a cause defended initiaJly by socialists and anarchists, birth control was adopted by conservative e1ements in society as a method of social control:

• Mclaren and Mclaren. The Bedroom and the Stat9, 123.

• The Canadian birlhrate declined 41% between 1851 and 1921. Mclaren and Mclaren. The Bedroom and the State. 18.

1 Ibid.• 27-28

• Ibid.• 71.

"Ibid., 68. • '"lbid•• 70. 75

Many of the first Canadian defenders of contraception had • associated it, as we have seen, with sexual and political radicalism; the new birth controllers succeeded in presenting family planning as a force that would support rather than subvert existing social, political and sexual relationships."" Birth control is not mentioned often in these books. But the less popular defense of birth control put forward by feminists and socialists is made explicit in certain passages. Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes argued that "...contraception was not only compatible with pleasure but essential if the woman's passions were to be a1lowed full expression."'· Although these birth control advocates were probably referring to passion between a husband and a wife, Margaret Duley and Mary Graham Bonner depict the use of birth control for sexual pleasure between unmarried couples. In the words of the artist who seduced Isabel Pyke in Duley's The Eyes of the Gull, "People nowadays love for the sake of LOVE, as samething delightful, independent of families."" Similarly, in Rainbow at Night, when Jenny imagines she could become pregnant, lan reassures her, saying, "Jenny! Nothing like that will happen. How could you think l'd forget-sa far as that?".'· ln the same novel, proteeted pre-marital sex is implied in the following quotation as is the notion that sexual freedom extends beyond the fishing village into the towns of Nova Scotia. Mr. Timothy say, "...-but Mrs. T. has a sister who lives in one of our toniest cities where life is smart 1can tell ye and the gels is sa wise they take around they Iittle proteet mesel's in they purses."15 Perhaps this feminist defense of family limitation can also be read in the reeurring presentation of passionate women.

11 Mclaren and Mclaren, The 8edroom and the Stale, 93.

12 Ibid., P 58.

13 Duley, The Eyes DI the Gull, 51.

,. Sonner, Rainbow al Nighl, 249. • '. Ibid., 185. 76

ln Crosscuts, the use of birth control "independent of families" is both • presented and undermined. The difference here is that Kathleen Evans is a married woman. She is a nurse who used birth control when first marned but who, on reflection, comes to see it as unnatlJral. The love for her mate had bee!1 strong and passionate but the love for her ottspring was the predominating passion of her nature. Blindly and foolishly she had allowed her mate to mould and shape her life, preventing ~he strongest force within her to be realized. She had erred against Nature. She !lad not heeded the danger signais that had been wafted to her across the ocean, but had re>mained in a shroud of bewildering mist while another had bome the child that should have been hers."

Because Kathleen's attraction to her husband is mainly physical, Kathleen can been seen as a victim of her own passionaie nature. And although Robert Evans is an unfaithful cad, this passage also impliE..:; that had she become pregnant earlier she wouId not have been replaced by Grace, Robert's mistress and mother of his child, an~J her marnage might have remained intact. Rather than as a means of preserving the family during difficult economic times or te allow for sexual pleasure, Lucien, in the novel of the same title, wants birth control because she is unhappy in her marnage and does not want te have a family with her husband. Her doctor is shocked by her request as birth control goes against the teachings of the ea+holic Church. Lucien asks, "Monsieur, isn't there something 1can do to prevent children?" to which he responds, "Mon Dieul What kind of Catholic are you?"" He recommends nursing as a method of delaying another pregnancy. Kathleen's rejection of birth control because of her belief that motherhood is an ideal state contorms te the dominant domestic ideology. Lucien seeks birth control information for reasons which do not echo any of the arguments put forth by birth control advocates. In these novels at least, the birth control debate,

,. Riordan, Crosscuts, 147. • " Parsons, Lucien 214. 77 • though ultimately public, hinged on personal choices individual women made according to their own unique needs. CHILDBIRTH Throughout the 19th century and into the first decades of the twentieth century, the medical profession grew in influence and social prestige.'· With the rise in authority ofthe medical "expert", the traditional knowledge passed trom one generation of women to the next was undermined. So too were the skills of the midwife. Health officiais such as Dr. Helen MacMurchy, a leading "expert" on childbirth and child care who aeted as the chief of Maternai and Child Welfare Division of the Department of Health from 1920 to 1934, favoured increased medical intervention in childbirth, arguing that maternai deaths were caused by lack of medical care. MacMurchy's Little Blue Book series, which developed into the Canadian Mothers' Book, was central to the public health educational campaign around childbirth. The campaign aimed at convincing expectant mothers of the importance of pre-natal care and doctor-assisted childbirth, and waming them against heeding the advice offamily and neighbours.,Q By 1935 half ofthe children in Canada were bom in hospitals;20 by 1938 half of births in Ontario oc~urred in hospital, in British Columbia by 1928-29 and by 1945 in Montreal.21

,. McLarei1, Our Own Master Rac~, 29.

'··A HistolY of Midwifery in Canada', Report of the Task Force on the Implementation of Midwiferv in Ontario (Toronto: submitled to the Ministry Hcallh, 1987),214. As a point of interest, there is a quotation in this report which tells the story of a woman in Saskatchewan who is summoned by her neighbour to attend a birth. She was in the process of making bread and decides to bring the dough along to finish her baking. In The Homesteaders, set in Northern Saskatchewan, Mary Moran is summoned to a sic" neighbour and aJso lakes her dough. 'A HlStory of Midwifery in Canada' reads, 'My grandmother had mixed bread dough earlier in the day, 50 she packed the pan of dough in with her in this sleigh, which was comfortably wa:m with lots of blankets and quilts and heated stones.' (p. 202) and, in Ethel Chapman's The Homesteaders, Mary •...wrapped a blanket around the pan of dough, and took il and her baking pans with her.' (p. 144)

2O'A History of Midwifery in Canada', 222. • 21 Prentice et al., Canadian Women, 248. 78

There is evidence that doctors had monopolized obstetrics decades earlier • than the hospitalizatior. statistics reflect. But the evidence is skewed by the underreporting of bi~hs attended by midwives or neighbouring women, and by a substantial difference in the accessibility of medical attention between rural and urban centers. Although the Medical Act of 1865 had made the unlicensed practice of midwifery iIIegal in Canada, the popular birth culture whereby women took care of each other during their confinements persisted. A task force report on midwifery in Ontario states that, "The objections to Iicensing midwives under any condition prevailed, and female midwifery continued to be iIIegal. But this did not seem to stop women from helping their neighbours with births."22 There was a tendency also for women to be attended by midwives in more remote areas even when in the cities the doctor's monopoly over healthcare was already in place. In Newfoundland communities midwives were practicing until 1960s.23 ln her study of midwifery in Ontario, C. Lesley Biggs corroborates these conclusions. She writes that in 1899, o'1ly 3% of births in Ontario were listed in the Ontario Sessional Papers as having been attended by midwives. But at the same time, only 16% of births were reported as having been attended by physicians. She posits that fear of prosecution encouraged underreporting of midwifery. In the urban center of York, however, the medical monopoly was firmly in place. Here only only 3% of pregnancies were unattended by a physician. Biggs concludes that, ln the newer, developing counties, however, there were few physicians available and, therefore, many births went unattended by physicians. It is difficult to image that 50 per cent of the women had no assistance in their deliveries; it is more Iikely that female midwives assisted with these births and did not report it. Thus, one can assume that the midwives continued to praetise in areas that

""A History of Midwifery in Canada", 207. • 23 Ibid., 201. 79

were unprofitable [emphasis in original] for the medical 2 • praetitioners. ' ln Cold Pastoral and The EVes of the Gull, both written by Margaret Duley and set in Newfoundland, the people of the small fishing villages depended more on each other than on a medical doctor during childbirth or sickness. To underline the urban difference, Mary Immaculate in CoId Pastoral had never seen a Doctor until she came to St. John's. Similarly, Jenny's mother Margaree, in Rainbow at Night, is attended by a midwife during her births. But because she is from the Valley, which is depicted as being more "civilized", she wishes she could see her old tamily doetor. Margaree knew it had been because of her own weakness and not because the midwife had been in any way to blame, though she had wished in advance it might be the tamily doctor she knew in the valley. After ail, midwives attended to such matters, and no one in the Cove thought doctors were necessary. Old women knew as much as they.25 ln The White Reef, Nona Damel and the midwife Mrs. Pringle assist Eva, Nona's sister-in-Iaw, in her labour. No mention of a doctor is made although a derogatory image of Mrs. Pringle as a grubbing sort of individual is contained in the tollowing quotation. "When the midwife came back before supper instead of after, as she had arranged to do, Eva declared petulantly that she had come early just to eat."20 This, however, might be aise read as a pejorative comment on Eva, who is depicted throughout the novel as an ungracious woman, at once demanding and dependent. ln Crosscuts, set in a logging camp in British Columbia, Kathleen Evans volunteers i1er h'3lp in the absence of any other health services. This begins when

:14 C. Le... JY Biggs, "The Case 01 the Missing Midwives': A History 01 Midwifery in Ontario !rom 1795-1900", Delivering Motherhood: Maternai Ideologies and Praclices in the 19th and 20lh Centuries, Katherine Arnup, Andrée Levesque, and Ruth Roach Pierson, eds. (New York: Routledge, 1990),28.

"" Bonner, Rainbow at Night, 118. • .. Ostenso, The White Reel, 220. 80 • she surgically removes a staple from the throat of a child, and extends to assisting in childbirth. "Often, at some urgent cali, she had left camp in the darkness of night, and on several occasions had brought into the world a husky young Canadian.,,27 This is in keeping with the task force report which suggests that nurses in remote areas often practised "unofficial midwifery". While this apparently went uncontested in Northem Ontario, in Northem Manitoba, where four nursing stations were dispensing primarily matemity care by 1922, the nurses were informed by the Provincial Health Officer that "...they had no right to conduct cases of confinement under any circumstances except emergencies."25 Dr. MacMurchy associated homebirths with ignorance, and felt that this ignorance explained the high incidents of matemal mortality. McLaren writes, "Particularly at risk were rural women and members of ethnie minorities. Such

\I\'Omen were chided by MacMurchy for their ignorance, indifference and apathy.,,21/ T,lrough her novels, Ethel Chapman heartily endorses MacMurchy's view. In The Homesteaders, the main charactei, Mary Moran, has her baby in the hospital. In fact, her choice is so deliberate-she and her husband leave for the hospital a week before she is due in order to avoid an anticipated storm-that it reads like a tract on the importance of hospitalization for childbirth. In another scene, a neighbour has a baby at home. When Mary arrives ail is weil. But the neighbour

21 Riordan, Crosscuts, 175.

""A Hislory 01 Midwilery in Canada", 217.

'" Mclaren, Our Own Masler Race, 33. RaIes 01 malernal death lell!rom 1 in 150 in the 193Cs to 1 in 3,000 by the 196Cs. Mclaren and Mclaren, The Bedroom and the State, 44. It should be noted that there was no direcl correlation between medicaJ inlervent'"n in childbirlh and lowered malernal death raIes. Mclaren wriles, "... hospilaJi~tion in and 01 ilsell clearly was nolthe bast way to lower the maternai morlaJity raIe. Il was however, a good way to ensure the centralization and monopolization of medicaJ care by physicians;..... Mclaren, Our Own Master Race, 34. This view is corroboraled by Jo Oppenheimer who sees "better understanding 01 'heailh'" as a major faclor in decreasing malernal morlaJity.. Jo Oppe,heimer, "Childbirlh in Ontario: The Transition !rom Home 10 Hospital in the Early Twentieth Century," Delivering Motherhood, eds. Katherine • Arnup, Andrée Lévesque and Ruth Roach Pierson, 51. 81 • makes a point of telling Mary that she would have gone to a hospital had there been time; she was not someone who did not know any better. Mrs. Olsen says, But, Mis' Shoetecker, you mustr.'t t'ink 1t'ink 1smart for not go to the hospitaf. ... l'm a little 'shamed. 1tell ot'er young women 'go' an' 1don't go myself. But tomorrow Hans iss bringing the doctor out, yust to be safe an' to show we haf some sense.'o ln Below the Salt, set in Northumberland County, Ontario, Vima Sheard associates childbirth unassisted by doctors with the pioneer days. By the 1930s, the community is weil established31 and the traditional birth culture is seen as being thankfully in the past; at least it is for the wealthy O'Sullivan family. Of Grandmother O'Sullivan's experience, Sheard writes, "...-the roads were so terrible no doctor reached her until after the agony of birth.'03~ It would be misleading to conclude that in ail instances the welfare of the women was subordinated to the power struggle over medical jurisdiction. Ace-::rding to the 1987 task force on midwifery, The memoirs of some country doctors describe their early experiences, nominally in charge of the delivery but actually following the lead of the far more experienced local women. Sometimes the relationship between the doctor and the traditional birth helpers seems to have been friendly and cooperative. 33 This image is presented in Lucien. During Lucien's tirst birth she is attended by a doctor because her husband, Estien La Tendresse, is wealthy and the money is no object for him. During her second labour, which is a complicated one, she is attended by a midwife in the doctor's absence. Despite the doctor's elevated social status-which is expressed, clear!y, if obliquely, when he requests a glass

30 Chapman, The Homesleaders, 198.

31 The area's developmenl becomes a justification, on O'Sullivan's part, for his inlolerance of new immigrants. He says, "They think 10 reap benefits they hdve nol sown, and, yes, the like of good roads, telephones, electric Iights, for which 10 this minule they were never taxed." Sheard, Below the Sail, 141. These issues will be discussed further in the nex! chajJler.

32 Sheard, Below the Sail, 164. • .. "A History of Midwifery in Canada", 2 t 1. 82

of wine trom Estien as if he were his servant and not one of the wealthiest fanners • in town34-he and Eupheme, Marie's midwife, share a mutual respect. She wishes he had been present during the labour, as it was, she had to pull the baby out with her hands. The doctor, however, praises her abilities. "He was lucky to have you here, Eupheme. There's not another midwife in the province who could do this.''''' As the above examples attest, whether or not a woman was attended by a midwife or a doctor was influenced both by location and by social class or wealth. In the outport Maritime cornmunities or on the Pacific coast, midwives in the novels are depicted as meeting women's needs. But in other remote areas, such as The Homesteaders pioneer community of Poplar Hill, there is a zeal to gain access to medical facilities for matemity cases. The inadequacies of the traditional birth culture are exemplified in this novel when Alice Archer dies of convulsions despite Mrs. Joliette's best efforts. This tragedy, attributed to their distance tram medical facilities, is redressed when they install a Red Cross Hospital nearby. More intransigent was the discrepancy between the ideal of universal access to medical treatment and the reality that for many Ganadian women during the 1930s a doctor was simply unaffordable. This point is driven

~ ..... home in the following letter to the Ontario Department of Health trom a woman who came to believe in the necessity of medical care but who was excluded by the system: My husband went 2 miles on snow shoes to the nearest phone and called the doctors. They wanted to know if we had $25 to give them. My husband told thtlm, no, that he had not been paid and explained how it happened. They said, ''weil, ifyou have the money, l'II go." My poor husband came back and a kind neighbour, as poor as we, but who by a miracle had five dollars on hand told my husband if the doctor would come for that, he'd lend it to us. My husband hurried back that distance and over the phone otfered $5,

.. Parsons, Lucien, 244. • "lbld•• 244. 83

b..:t they refused to come... so for two days and ail one long night • 1laboured and suffered with only the help of a poor little woman and my husband until at last 1 gave birth to !win boys... One of the babies was nearly dead when bom. For an hour my husband rubbed and the woman worked with the little infant before it acted alive at ail Iike the second one. Anyone who saw the way 1suffered at the time proclaimed it a crying shame. It's a perlect disgrace to Canada that the mothers of the land must suffer without only a part even of the care necessary at the time. 311

CHILDREARING It has been argued the rise of the "experts" and the increased importance placed on doctor's advice in Canadian society undermined women's abilities and their confidence in domestic matters. 37 While medical advice was not without merit, it was often informed by a class bias and difficult for women to implement. Katherine Amup ha:;: shown that women were cautioned against Iistening to the advice of friends and family conceming pre-natal care, childbirth and childrearing. 38 They were told to take the advice of their physician which included getting a lot of sleep, and above ail, relaxing. "One of the strongest wamings one encounters in this literature concerns the danger of worry."311 The problem is that this advice was so impractical, particularly in the Depression years. Amup can only imagine what cold comfort it must have been for a women who was struggling just to keep her family fed to be told not to worry. Similarly, in "Intruders in the Nursery", Veronica Strong Boag discusses the way in which the professional child study movement, which was besed on behaviouralist and Freudian psychological theories, informed advice literature to

.. "A History of Midwifery in Canada". 214.

37 Veronica Sltong-Boag, "Intruders in the Nur::ery: Childcare Professionals Reshape the Years One to Fave", Childhood and Family in Canadian Hislory, Joy Parr, ad. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1982),161•

.. Amup, "Educaling Mothers: Government Advice for Women in the Inter-war Years", 193, 196. • 30 Ibid., 201. 84

women during the inter-war period and empowered health care workers.40 The • preschool years were understood to be formative, and the professional advice designed to "reshape" these years included rigorous scheduling, breastfeeding, and isolation as a form of discip:ine rather than corporal punishment.41 Experimental nurseries based on these principles, serving a mlddle-class clientèle,

were set up in Montreal and Toronto. The "intrusion" Strong Boag is exploring WdS literai in the case of the famous Dionne quintuplets. The Ontario govemment placed them in a specially designed professional nursery under the care of Dr. Allan Dafoe because it was felt that Oliva and Elzire Dionne could not supply them with the care they required. The Dionne case highlights the fact that the new scientific standards of care were often beyond the means and against the traditions of many parents. Reference to the new advice conceming the raising of children is made in a number of these novels. In others, the idea that a member of the medical community could undermine the authority of the mother is advanced either figuratively or Iiterally. In The Master of Jalna when Adeline, Rennyand Alayne's daughter, refuses to sleep, Renny observes that, "The old-fashioned way was to give kids a good hiding when they persisted in anything they were told not to do. But now it's different. You're supposed to study them. Find out what they need and give it to them.'042 It is as if Mazo de la Roche is poking fun at the new childrearing approach when Renny determinas that his daughter has a "Iaughing complex" because her mother, Alyane, is so serious with her. His cure is to take

40 Il should be noled thal this way of thinking was in direct opposition 10 the types of eugenic ideas lhal were also part of the medical discourse in the early part of the twenlieth century. Inslead of e person being doomed by their genelic herilage, there was a sense that patlams of human behaviour could be understood a..,d manipulaled. "KnoWiedge of fundamental behaviourial principles would make the e1iminalion of social abnormality incalculably easier." Strong-Boag, "Intruders in the Nursery", 166.

.. Ibid., 164-166. • .. de la Roche. The Master of Jalna. 61-62. 85

young Adeline with him and the two laugh it out until Aunt Augusta puts an end • 43 to the "foolhardiness" by taking the child into her room for the night. Whereas the character of Alayne, depicted by Mazo de la Roche as being better educated and somehow "superior" to the other women in the novel, seems to adopt the newer methods of childrearing which, as the above quotation suggests, did not entail spanking, thé "old-fashioned" ways are in evidence as weiL At one point, Maurice, Pheasant and Piers eldest son, is falsely blamed for upsetting the jigsaw puzzle on which his great uncles Emest and Nicholas have been working, (It tums out that Emest, in his obsession over the puzzle, has been trying to complete it in his sleep,) "Mooey", however, is taken to the basement and beaten for the offence. When the child's innocence is discovered, only Alayne comments on the cruelty ofthe treatment which he has received. Pheasant defends her husband's actions as follows: "Piers only did what any good father would. He doesn't want his child to grow up into a menace to society, does he?'''' And Aunt Augusta believes the punishment was not wasted since, "...the child was getting out of hand, in any case.'04$ ln this example older methods are supported and, by implication, Alayne's more modem methods ofchildrearing are called into question. They are undermined further by the other characters who find that Alayne fusses over her daughter too much, and through the presentation of Alayne as a perpetually exhausted and harried mother with absolutely no control over her life. Alayne, intelligent as she is, seems always to be at odds with the manner in which affairs are managed at the Jalna estate. It is as though she is the voice of r."lodem times, m(.,"ffled by the strong sense of tradition which defines the Whiteoak family. ln The Homesteaders, the notion that child-raising requires specialized knowledge is emphasized when Peter Shoedecker takes over the task of bathing

'03 de la Roche, Master 01 Jalna, 62-64,

"'lbid.,239. • •• Ibid., 237. 86

their son, John, from Mary who is still weak. The point that education is required • to care for children properly is expressed by Peter as follows, "1 don't mind telling Vou, that's the hardest piece of work l've done in years. 1don't wonder it scared Vou. But it isn't so bad when we both know a little about it. You'd think there'd be some books we could read up on babies.'o4e ln Jessie Beattie's novel, Hill-Top, a doctor and a teacher, both representatives of the experts in society, attempt to intervene in Mimsie's upbringing. This young character has a beautiful singing voice but must suppress this, along with ail of her childt'tood joys, because of her mother's belief that life should be a grim preparation for the afterlife. Her father bows to his wife's wishes with respect to the children. When Mimsie's teacher, Miss Wingate, asks him let Mimsie act in a school play, he answers, "Life is a serious business... and we mustn't let our children adopt too light a view of it." Miss Wingate answers, "It is a serious business, .. so serious that our children live or die-mentally-by our own hand.'04' Mimsie's other champion is Dr. Hugh Fleming. He uses his influence wherever possible in order to convince Mr. Ross to allow Mimsie to develop her talent for singing. The idea that he is intentionally coming between Mimsie and her mother is contained in the following line, "But he came over to her and, as she went to follow her mother, put a restraining finger under her chin. 'Oon't forget me,' he said softJy".·8 ln Cold Pastoral by Margaret Ouley, the intrusion of medical experts into the mother-child relationship is expressed literally by the adoption of Mary Immaculate by Dr. Philip Fitz Henry. Although Mary's parents were still living, it was agreed that lite for her would be better in a dector's housahold in St. John's than in a poor fishing village.

.. Chapman, The Homesteaders, 180•

•, Beallie, Hill-Top, 73. • .. Ibid., 107-108. 87 • As further testimony to the social prestige of the medical profession, the "good doctor" seems to be a stock item in the books during this period. In this survey, the doctors are always men; usually. they are young, attractive and eligible men.40 Dr. Philip Fitz Henry is like Mary Immaculate's knight in shining armour. He saves her physically and then brings her trom a life of poverty to one of privilege and, in the end. also becomes her husband. For Mimsie, Dr. Hugh Fleming is a Prince Charming. and though she is a girl when they meet, her response to him is described in sexual images. "'Wake up, Princess,' he said gently, 'Wake up.' Mimsie thought indeed that she was dreaming as she looked into the face of Josie's doctor, and beheld the Fairy Prince.'.5O Later in response to his presence, Mimsie reacts as follows. "Her surprise was complete and her heart beat until the sound of it in her ears half deafened her. She could not speak because her joy and gratitude swept united into flood."" ln The Grafted Twig, it is a surprise bonus for status conscious Kerry Willet that the man she has fallen in love with, the one she thought was a handy man. is actually a doctor. Dr. Allan Nelson, in With Flame of Freedom, is a visionary young man and the pertect match for the equally reform-minded Honora. Personally and professionally, doctors seemed to command a great deal of respect. As Donald Ross of Hill-Top concludes conceming the two doctors who have taken care of his son, "They're

great men, both of them, ...'2

.. In The Longesl Way Round. lhe good doclor characler is no longer living. bul shines brighUy nonetheless. Sylvia Bye is the widow of Dr. Bye. Their daughler, letitia, decides initially nol 10 marry. then changes her mind, saying she will marry a doclor. MacMurchy, The Lorigesl Way B2!!!!Q, 187. In riainbow al Nighl aiso, a passing reference alone presants the good doclor character. When informing Ingram thal his wife Margaree is going 10 die. the doclor does sa, •...with as much kindness. Ingram knew, as any one could pul inlo an oncoming visil of death.· Sonner, Rainbow al Nighl, 298

"" Hill-Top. 102.

51 Ibid.. 107. • S2lbid., 97. 88

WOMEN'S CULTURE? • Women historians have recently argued that in lieu of overt power in society, women formed an altemate culture, one based on shared knowledge and close friendships.53 Such a culture can be found in some of the novels examined here. But more oflen, these authors focus on the male/female relationship and on tension rather than cohesiveness between women characters. The Longest Way Round, by Ma~ory MacMurchy, is based on the notion of an relatively independent woman's community. The book is dedicated to "...girls, mothers, grandmothers and aunts"" and deals primarily with female characters who form a cooperative unit. Sylvia Bye :s a widow raising her daughter on her own. In order to take a job out west, sne leaves Letitia with her sister, a single working woman who boards with an eld€rly lady, Mrs. Trant. Sylvia retums to run the neighbouring household, headed by Blanhammer, a widower who runs a lumbering business up north. Blanhammer's absence is conspicuous and underlines the idea that the women are managing on their own. Evidence of a woman's culture is also contained in the works of Ethel Chapman. Here, men and women '\re exemplary in their ability to work together as a community, but their labour divides them along gender Iines. Mary is taught how to ba~e bread and how to keap house on a homestead by her women neighbours. As we have sean already, in the absence of a doctor, these women characters tend to each other in childbirth or in times of sickness. The sense of a women's community is further expressed through the occasional reference to women-centred activities or women's clubs, such as the poetry reading club in The Master of Jalna and the business girls' guild in The Homesteaders. Despite the evidence of cooperation between female characters, jealousy betweer. women is a recurring dynamic in these novels. And men can usually be

.. Gail Cuthbert Brandt cites Veronica Slrong-Boag on this point "Postrnodem Patchwork: Sorne Recent Trenès in the Writing of Women's History in Canada", 457• • 54 MacMurchy, The Longest Way Round, dedication. 89 • found at the center of the rivalry. In Give Me My Robe, for example, Mrs. Duncan feels threatened by Hannah's youth and beauty. Hannah, for her part, prefers the company of men and says as much: ''l've got no use for women-no, sir.... Because of her beauty and her newly acquired status as an adopted member of one of the best families in Newfoundland society, Mary Immacu!ate in Cold Pastoral does not fit in with her peers. Duley writes, "Schoolmates had bequeathed a wariness of women. They refused to see her for herself, and voices bade her remember the lowliness of her mother."" In The Grafted Twig, aJthough Kerry is new to the community a local woman, Amber, tries to show her up in front of Ted rather than welcome her. In The Master of Jalna, while the women appear to form a cohesive group, their relationships, when considered at ail, are mediated by the men of the novel and fraught with jealousies.07 Even between good friends, women's first loyalty is olten to men. In Crosscuts, for example, Mrs. Brown, Kathleen Evan's neighbor and friend, does not tell her that Robert Evans has a mistrass and a child, even though the whole town knows about it. She remains mum out of loyalty to her husband and in accordance with his wishes. "The husbands of the women in camp would caution their wives not to mention his allairs to her."'·

55 Leigh, Give Me My Robe, 17.

50 Duley, Cold Pastoral, 173. It should be noted that Felice Fitz-Henry, David's wife, leels that seme 01 Mary's difliculties can be attributed to her isolation. She say, "1 think women are her greatest need at the present moment. ...she has missed the rough·and·tumble 01 boys and girls.· (p. 306)

57 J.E.S. Arrowsmith, in a favourable review 01 The Masler 01 Jalna, points out that as a group the women are somewhat undardrawn and that their main reason lor being there at ail is their attachment to the mon. He says, "The wives that these characlerlul young men have acquired, during the course of the seV6ral volumes of their lives, come in rather as details of the picture: but it is reasonable to suppose that such colourlul people would really be best suited with women whose star-light was dim in comparison to their own." J.E.S. Arrowsmith, ·Fiction·l· London Mercury 29 (1933): 72, 73. One might have expected Mazo de la Roche, who in her own lite shared a very meaningful sarne-sex relalionship with her cousin, to recreate this in her fiction. No such a relationship is in evidence in The Master of Jalna• • 58 Riordan, C, "'sscuts, 62. 90 • The fissures in women's culture are present on another leve!. In eight novels out of seventeen, the mother figure is dead. In three, she is either absent or disp/aced: in Co/d Pastoral she gives her child up for adoption: in Below the Salt she live:> in the same house as her child but is not recogr.ized as the mother, and in Waste Heritage she is absent. 1n three, she is alive but !or various reasons does not provide guidance for her daughter: in t:Jill-Top" she is a religious ianatic who regrets having had children and who is fundamentally jealous of her daughter;50 in The Eyes of the Gull she is simply mean and uses her daughter as one would a servant; and in Lucien she is weil intentioned but powerless in a household dominated by her self-interested husband.·o ln two of the three remaining novels, the mother figure is present but her influence is often compromised in other ways. In Rainbow at Night, Margaree has had a strong influence her daughter, Jenny.•Jenny was raised more strictly than the other girls of the Coye and, for this reaso~, is perceived as beiny "superior" to them in some way: "Jenny was forbidding. Ali the lads had thought so. She

put a fort around herself and liked it SO ...·, However, lan Blake later emerges as a far stronger influence on Jenny thar. her mother. Although she is fearful of going against her mother's wishes by engaging in sexual activities and possibly becoming pregnant, her attraction for Jan far outweighs this fear. The decreased

.. In this book, Adelaide Ross's main concern is living in devotion to God. She regrets having been married and wishes she did not have a family at ail. "1 would feel safer," she affirmed, "and sometimes 1think happier, Mr. Simpson, to have my children laid in the grave than to have them go out into Ine world as it is taday. A woman who hasn't <1 family ought to get down and thank Gad." (p. Hl) As a further example of her hostile rather than noly nature, Adelaide is said to have crushed the rose which Mimsie brought to her father when he was sick with a concussion, (p, 47) The character of Adelaide Ross is a good example of the overdrawn pious, hypocrite that June Underwood finds when studying 19th century literature. She says, "Thus piety, one of the primary strengths of historical western women in the nineteenth century, is sean in Iiterature as foolishness, fanaticism, or hypocrisy, It is almost always destructive." Underwood, "Western Women and True Womanhood", 100,

00 For example, although Lucien's mother is long suttering and not given to reproaching her husband, she does try to intervene and allow Lucien to be with Pierre. When Léonce declares, "It's already decided." Marie replies, "Then Gad punish you for il"Parsons, Lucien, 136. • ., Bonner, Rainbowat Night, 173, 91

influence of Margaree on Jenny's life is expressed symbolically by her physical • weakness. At the start of the novel, Margaree is physically very weak, and, at the end of it, she dies of consumption. In The Master of Jalna, the Whiteoak family, once dominated by the strong matriarchal character of Adeline, is now firmly under the control of Renny.1l2 As we have seen, Alayne, the mistress of Jalna, is a mother with distinct opinions about the way her daughter should be raised, but whose influence in her own household is often undermined. Only in The Longest Wav Round is there a strong, even idealized, matemal charaeter. Letitia greatly admires her mother and aspires to become Iike her. But even in this story there are the elements of the absent mother. Letitia and her mother are separated for most of the novel because Mrs. Bye has gone away to work. They are reunited when she is hired by Mr. Blanhammer. Sc, while Letitia and Sylvia's bond is strong, Letitia has to share her mother with the Blanhammers themselves examples of characters without a living mother. She has to fight her inclination to be jealous of her mother's love and attention. MacMurchy writes, "Of course Letty wanted the Blanhammers to love her mother, Mrs. Bye. But no one could love her mother, Letty thought, so dearly as she loved h~r.,083 Since so many of these novels deal with young women striki;,\g out into the world on their own, the absent mother can be understood as a Iiterary strategy to allow them the freedom they need to make their own way, to attain a symbolic independence. Moreover, when the stories deal with romance, the plots usually end with marriage, thereby robbing the married woman or mother of a story. It is, nonetheless, intriguing that in a society where motherhood was, according to historian Katherine Amup, "synonymous with 'normal womanhood','o04 the fiction of so many of its women authors would deny mothers a role.

oz Renny is twice described as a 'power and menace.' de la Roche, The Master of Jal!!!!, 220•

.. MacMurchy, The Lang_ Wav Round, 1SO• • M Amup, 'Educaling Mothels: Govemment Advice for Women in the Inter·War Years', 200 92 • ln her study of Quebec literature, Patricia Smart suggests that inde6d the mother has no story, She attributes this to the lack of power, despite the domestic ideal, of women in Quebec society, Contrary to the notion that exclusion from power in the mainstream caused women to forge a strong counter culture, Patricia Smart argues that patriarchy drove women apart. Of Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute, for example, she writes, "In putting [the complex daughter­ mother relationship] at the center of her novelistic universe, Roy shows how the feminine role as defined by patriarchal society separates women trom each other, thus perpetuating the status quo of a culture founded on their subjection.'oeo ln light of this backdrop, and given that marriage remained a significant goal for most canadian women in the 1930s, the pervasive rivalry among women charaeters in these novels begins to make sense. Contemporary advertisements tapped into this notion of competition between women in the "marriage market". The makers of calay soap, for example, promoted their product by reminding women that, "You are in a Beauty Contest every day of your life."'" *** As we have seen, many aspects of mothering were undergoing change during the 1930s. The traditional birth culture in which a woman would be attended by midwives or female neighbours was rapidly becoming a part of the pasto As the novels reflect, however, access to modem health care in canada varied according to a woman's wealth, class or location. Increasingly also, women began to openly request birth control. Birth control in the 1930s filled a number of personal and political agendas: it was an appealing option for poverty stricken women who could not afford a large tamily; it was considdred by some conservative elements in society to be a viable method of social control; and it was a feminist expression of a woman's control over her sexuality. Ultimately contraception was a practice a women endorsed or rejected according to her own

.. Smart, Writing in the Father's House, 173, • .. Strong·Boag. The New Day RecaUecI. 86. 93

unique personal circumstances. This is clearly conveyed by Lucien who seeks out • contraception information, although it is expressly against the tradition of her small Quebec community, to prevent children in her loveless marnage. As we have seen in this chapter, through the recurnng images of the good doetor, the repeat'3d int"Usion of health professionals and the relatively weak presentation of the mother in these novels, one can find evidence of the increasingly important role the "experts" played in canadian society in the interwar period. Finally, despite the idealization of mothering in the discourse of canadian society at large, the works of these women authors present a far more ambiguous image of the mother's role, often eliminating her completely from the picture.

• CHAPTERV • WOMEN. SOCIETY AND POLlTlCS The majority of novels being examined here have been classified as domestic or regional. Their domestic subject matter places them in the realm of the "personal". As we have seen in the section on love and marriage, however. political implications can be gleaned from domestic circumstances. The female charaeters' attempts to choose their own partners against the \'llishes of their families and communities has been interpreted as a feminist assertion of women's autonomy. What follows is a discussion of several very broad, very "public". aspects of Canadian society such as social reform, wealth and class, and politics. Touching on prevailing social attitudes of, for example, ethnie intolerance, the women authors in this collection simultaneously present and challenge Canadian views during the Depression. SOCIAL REFORM ln the introduction the point was made that separate spheres misrepresented women's roles by overstating their power in the home and understating their economic contributions to the household and their contributions to the public welfare. The public role of social reformers and suffragists in the pre-war Canadian society, for example, is often overshadowed by their apparent acceptance of domesticity for women. As Bumsted writes, Those trom middle-class Protestant bal:kgrounds were at the forefront in Canada, particularly in the areas of temperance/prohibition, public health, education and women's suffrage. Because they were acting out of their traditional functions as nurturers and civilizers rather than protesting "'gainst those functions. Canadian woman were not seriously concemed to restructure gender roles in society.' Tt',is wave offeminism has been dubbed "matemal" since its proponents extended the domestic ideal of the woman as angel in the house to include ail of society and relied on the public acceptance of woman's supposed moral superiority. It • , Bumsted. The Peoples of Caneda. 162. 95

has not, therefore, been interpreted as a challenge to the Camldian social order. • But this analysis understates the extent to which matemal feminism affected society in public and perceivable ways, such as providing a strong argument in favour of women's suffrage and winning the wartime partial prohibition. ln the books of Ethel Chapman and Marjorie MacMurchy, the acceptance of the sexual division of labour, which partly defines the domestic ideal, does not necessarily preclude public dynamic on the part of women. Rather, in these books the woman who conCEms herself with matters beyond the private realm is the exemplary rather than the exceptional woman character, a woman who does not extend her interests beyond her Immediate family is not held in high regard. ln With Flame of Freedom, Adrienne Amott. the prettiest and least socially conscious woman of a group of students. is asked by their teacher Dr. Oarrow to state her philosophy for success in life. She answers, "1 think l'm going to find myself busy enough just being a woman," to which the Oarrow answers "dryly", "Some do,....., Chapman draws a similar character in The Homesteaders. Not only is Nettie Culliver an indifferent housekeeper, she has no interest in building up the settlement. Rather, through her attitude and tendency to gossip, Nettie is presented as a threat to the pioneer community. Of Mary's first encounter with Nettie, Chapman writes. "[Nettie] was trying to be friendly-a sort of we-two­ against-this-whole-stupid-settlement attitude and Mary was positively afraid of her.'" Mary's attitude is opposite of Nettie's. She aspires to being a productive member of the community and is flattered when called upcn for help by other settlers. In this regard. she fashions herself after Mrs. Joliette, whom Chapman has drawn as the embodiment of the domestic ideal which includes, in this case, a prominent public role. Mrs. Joliette, Chapman writes...... was as truly a châtelaine in her sphere as any woman of Old France. carrying the keys te a

2 Chapman. With Asme 01 Freedom. 26. • > Chapman. The Homesteaders, 93. 96

household of some dignity. and holding a position of power and respect in the • community.'04 The settlers of this pioneer settlement work together to build up a real community with a library, a hospital and access to worship for ail denominations. These efforts are in keeping with the kind of "women-centered" initiatives which Veronica Strong-Boag identifies as being typical of the inter-war period.' Although in Chapman's second novel, With Flame of Freedom, Acres County is a settled community already, Honora continues to work towards educational reform. ln The Homesteaders, the doors of Mary Moran's house are not shut

against the public. She always has èI bed in her house ready for a stranger in need. When Emil Krupp, a German immigrant, literally falls upon her doorstep, hungry and outeast, she gives him a place to stay. Back on his feet, Emil works a homestead of his own and then marries, making a strong contribution to the growth of the community. This hospitality is reiterated in The Longest Way Round by Ma~orie MacMurchy. Separated by economic necessity, Sylvia Bye and her daughter Letitia want nothing more than to live together again. They accomplish this, however, by thinking of others first in ail things." Their kindness to Mrs. Trant, a lonely old woman, is retumed by her bequest to them of her house, which they continue to run as a boardinghouse. They put aside one room, however, for anyone in need of lodging but unable to pay, that is ''the Christ Child's guesf'.7 ln the novels of Ethel Chapman, particularty, the social reform concems expressed are reminiscent of those of the matemal feminists active a generation

• Chapman, The Homesleaders, 41.

• Veronica Strong-Boag, Janey Canuck: Women in Canada, 1919-1939, The Canadian HisloricaJ Association Booklel no. 53 (Ollawa 1994), 26.

" That selflessness is a l

earlier. Among the issues addressed by the largely midd:e-class reform • movementwere, "...prostitution, divorce, iIIegitimacy, "Indians and Chinese", public education, suppression of obscene literature, prevention (of prostiMion) and rescue of tallen women, and shelters for women and children".· The preoccupation with legitimacy in these novels has been introduced already. It will be explored further, however, under the wider issue of the importance of birth, as will the ways in which the predominantly protestant and middle-class fear of "race degeneration" involved eugenic and environmental reform notions, and justified intolerance. At the same time. however, it will be shown that these novels contest the validity of these views. BEING "WELL-BORN" The biological determinism that suggests that ail of one's traits and behaviours can be attributed to one's genes, and that people are in a sense doomed by their ancestry is presented in a number of the novels in this survey. It is the basis for the theory of genetic selection known as eugenics which will be addressed later in this chapter. In The Master of Jalna, the character of Pheasant, an "illegitimate" child who grows up and marries Piers Whiteoak but who has an affair with Piers's brother Eden, is seen by the Whiteoak clan as being inferior. ln excusing Eden's affair with her, Renny says,"He had done no more than many a young fellow would in the same circumstances. Probably Pheasant had inherited a certain looseness from her mother, though, God knew, since that incident her behaviour had been exemplary enough."· ln a similar vein, O'Sullivan feels that his adopted daughter, Gail, has inherited a licentious nature from her mother, Phyllis, a girl who had worked for Mrs. O'Sullivan and whom he describes as, "...a fisherman's daughter. a kitchen wench, of common breed and low,

• ValV8rde, The Age of Ught Soap and Waler, 17• • • de la Roche, The Mast. of Jal"&. 113. 98

licenticus tandencies."'o Of Gail. he says, "She, too, was eager to throw herself • into a man's arms-a man she scarcely knew."" Adelaide Ross in Hill-Top is an o\'ert believer in the idea that parentage determines character. When her husband suggests having a "home boy", a boy from the orphanage. help him out with the farm chores, Adelaide is firmly against it. She says. "Why, Donald. think of what kind of parents allow their children to be put in a place Iike an orphan asylum! The ~um of the earth.., and the children are no better,"" The idea that breeding is everything is expressed even more clearly in the following line: "Adelaide was of the opinion that one's station in life was decided at birth and any attempt to raise oneself j"to a more desirable position was useless and sure to meet with disaster,"'3 One of the main progressions in Hill-Top however, is the realization on the part of the Ross family, Mimsie in particular, that although her mother is religious and devout she is not always right. In this novel, therefore, a challenge to notions of biological determinism is made. ln Givp. Me My Robe, the idea of birth right is explored in a way that simultaneously presents and undermines it as a determining force. Hannah grew up with very little, living a rather rough and ready existence on t:-Je prairies with Steve Sanderson as her adoptive parent. She marries Evelyn Dawson, whom she has met while working at a survevors camp. While planning their return to his home in England, he tells Hannah that he will lie to his parents concerning her background. 1shall tell one glorious white lie and bear ail responsibility for any you have to tell them. It's difficult to explain but you see-Nugent and his wife will never have children, so ours, if we have any, will be the heirs: anyway, that fact makes me crow with delight-and such

'0 Sheard, Below the Sail, 291, Il should be noted, that while O'Sullivan himself was once attracled to Phyllis, the father of Phyllis's child, Gail, is O'Sullivan's brother who has died al sea,

" Ibid., 291,

'2 Beatti~, Hill-Top, 138. • 13 Ibid.. 189. 99

G' lot is thought of the predecessors on the other side of a family • who gets linked up with ours. In a way, bunkum, especially in these days, but the last generation have always lived in a rut and can't change their ideas. '4

Here, the importance of heritage is underscored even as it is criticized as an outdated way of thinking. WEALTH AND CLASS Birth right is also tied into the notion of distinction according to social class or wealth. As we have seen, Mazo de la Roche's novel contains a version of British class distinctions, placing British northem stock at the top of the social hierarehy, wh;ch is undermined at the level of character. In The Master of Jalna, the Whiteoaks are a family under siege. Jack Kapica cites a detractor of de la Roche's, Ronald Hambleton, on the Whiteoak family's world view as exemplified by its late matriarch, "1 see Gran Wniteoak as typifying the mother country, irascible, touchy, crippled with gout. her brood about her, selfishly clinging to her domain."" They are suffering financial crises and guarding their property against the tide of suburban development. Although at the end ofthe novel, the Whiteoak clan is lifted from its financial abyss in what would seem to rJe a vindication of their faith in their own superiority, seen in a broader view t:üs outcome simply continues the narrowing of their world and their isolation from reality. Marked by wife swapping and intra-family marriage-Finch and Sarah, for example, are cousins-the Whiteoak clan is incestuously insular. The remortgaging ofthe manor house to Sarah, which gives Renny the cash he needs at the end, can really be interpreted as a stop gap measure: it does not change the fact that the Whiteoaks are vulnerable. Kapica suggests that even in the first of the series, "...the

'4 Leigh, GMt Me My Robe, 235. • .. Kapica, "The Social Relevance of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche", 5. 100

Whiteoak class superiority had ironically become nothing more than a fond • memory and a;. )mpty façade."'· The class element implicit in the notion of being "well-bom" is evident also in With Flame of Freedom. Although Honora, the main charaeter, is "iIIegitimate", she is not considered by Dr. Nelson, her future husband, to fit into the category of those who were not "well-bom". Financially, she is the most privileged of her group of friends. But on receiving, at the age of 20, the knowledge that her parents were not married, she has her sense of privilege and self worth stripped from her. The reader is told that, ""Honora knew now-she had never known before-what humiliation meant.,,'7 For her, the stain of illegitimacy is not indelible. Great pains are taken to show that her parents' was not a casual :'l.ftair. they had been in love and were separated because of parental disapproval. She was bom before the father even knew of the pregnancy and the mother died before they could be married. Allan is satisfied that Honora was ''well-bom'' and says, "When parents feel the responsibility for a child that your father and mother felt for Vou, l'd say that chiId was very weil bom indeed."'· So, although the idea that "superiority" is a birth right determined according to one's class is presented in these novels, it is also challenged. ln these novels, romantic love often poses a challenge to the idea of a social hierarchy based on wealth and class or birth right. But it does so with varying degrees of success. The typical romantic story, or in Scowcroft's terms, the "patriarchal model of love", is as follows: "...A meets B, runs into antagonistic circumstances, C, but in the end love prevails, O."'· It is often differences in

,. Kapica, "The Social Relevance of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche", 11.

"Chapman, With Aame of Freedom, 37.

'. Chapman, WJIh Aame of Freedom, :r-.s. Pierre, in Lucien, is nol sc fortunale. As the child of tirsl cousins, his heritage, though a1ways a carefully guarded secret, indirectly costs him the love of his lite. l.éonce Charbonneau accuses him of being a bastard which provokes an altercation which forces Pierre ouI of Lucien's lite forever. Parsons, Lucien, 135-136. • ,. Scowcrott, "Escaping the Hegemony of the Wrillen Word", 14. 101

background and wealth or social status which create obstacles for the main • characters. In The White Reef and Cole Pastoral, the obstacles are overcome. At the end of The White Reef, Nona and Quentin are togethE:or, despite differences in their social standing and his abandonment of her after their affair some years earlier. Nona's status as a social outcast, in addition to the crimes of Quentin Wingate's father which have reduced his family's respectability in the Cove, ironically, gives this couple very little to lose. Although Quentin is still married, they decide to be together, despite public censure. The theme is also present in Cold Pastoral when class boundaries are bridged by the adoption and later marriage of Mary Immaculate, a fisherman's daughter, to Philip Fitz Henry. But, in the isolated Newfoundland cf Cold Pastoral, the pressures of social class are not insignificant. In order to be worthy of Philip Fitz Henry, the main character has to be a girl of extraordinary beauty, intelligence and character. She has to sacrifice, or conceal at any rate, her "elemental" self and transform herself into the well-spoken, poised, and tasteful type of woman associated with the Fitz Henry social circles for their love to be possible. Even then, she is called "bay noddy" by her peers at school. Furthermore, the fact that the Fitz Henry's have lost their ship business and come down considerably, at least in terms of wealth and social standing, seems to help narrow the enormous social gap Mary must leap. ln the tragic stories, Eyes of the Gull, Give Me My Robe and Rainbow at Night, there are obstacles which the main female characters, despite the strength of their love, cannot overcome. ln Chapman's works class distinction is repudiated. In The Homesteaders c~aracters are evaluated not by the class to which they were born, but by who they are, and what they do. Describing Peter. Chapman writes "There was a gentleness and fineness about this farmer that would mark him with the stamp of good breeding wherever he might go."~o Similarly, in With Flame of Freedorn, through Honora's own ability to rise above her "iIIegitimate" birth and in her efforts • '" Chapman. The Homesteaders, 21. 102

to improve life for the mountain folk. the idea tl1at one is only what one is bom to • is refuted. ln Below the Salt, by Vima Sheard. the patriarch. O'Sullivan's, concem for class distinction is presented in the title of this book but ultimately rejected, Hired workers on O'Sullivan's farm in Ontario are made to sit below the salt cellar at the dining table so that they would be distinct from the family, However, in the course of the novel, O'Sullivan becomes isolated by the prejudice which his family members do not share. The breakdown of his class conscious value system is made explicit by his son, Shannon, in the following quotation. "The old salt cellar does not know what it is there for. Dad. Its mission in life, to mark the masses from the classes, seems ended."" EUGENie AND ENVIRONMENTAL REFORM With the rise of the medical experts after World War 1 and scientific discoveries in biology and genetics. a new light was cast on social problems. As Mariana Valverde has pointed out, religious or moral beliefs and science were not seen as antithetical. She suggests, ...the dichotomies of theory vs. practice, science vs. charity, were eliminated in favour of a holistic image of a knowledge that would be simultaneously scientific and charitable, true and useful. ...the physician was perceived to combine the highest reaches of modem science with old-fashioned tender care of individual bodies and souls.2\!

Like Valverde, historian Kathleen McConnachie singles out the physician as embodying the goals of reform. Boistering the drive for professionalization in the "expert society" was the equation of science with rational reform. The professor, the doctor and the social worker who could interpret and apply the raw knowledge ofthe biological and social sciences gained both greater social status and social responsibility. More than other professions, the role of physician bridged the scientific and social roles of the

21 Sheard, Below the Salt, 294, • 22 Valverde, The Age of Ught Soap and Water, 35. 103

reformer and doctors were convinced of their responsibility to guide • society."" This transformation placed health professionals at the vanguard of social refo'7l1, and, in the context of the Depression, inspired medical solutions to social problems. There were those within the medical community, however, for whom guidance involved shaping society according to a eugenic vision. Birth control. and in some extreme instances. sterilization, were advocated to serve eugenic goals. Dr. Helen MacMurchy, in her 1934 book Sterilization? Birth Control?, identified some 10 out of 1000 people who represent a financial drain on society. "Of these 10 about three are suffering from mental defect, about three or four from mental disease, and the remaining three or four are suffering from physical disease.... or they are law breakers and criminals; or they are unemployable; or they have become chronic paupers-they do not want to work".24 "Illegitimate" births were a red flag for Dr. MacMurchy, indicating that reproduction was out of control and the genetic vigor of the off-spring was being compromised.25 Arguments for sterilization were predicated on the notion that the "character"-a common Depression era term for the moral substance of a person-was hereditary and that this morally deficient group was reproducing more quickly than the " "better elements" of society. According to MacMurchy, "..the progeny of these 10 troublers out of every thousand of our nation [was] increasing much faster than the progeny of the nine hundred and ninety good capable citizens.,,211 Similarly, by introducing the means of family limitation to the working-class, middle-class

'" Kathleen McConnachie. 'Methodology in the Study 01 Women in History: A Case Study cl Helen MacMurchy, M.D.' Onlerio Histcry 75, no. 1 (March 1983): 66.

.. Helen MacMurchy. C.B.E.. M.D. Sterilization? Birlh Centrol? A 8cck fer Family Welfare and Safely (Toronto: MacMillan, 1934).3.

.. Helen MacMurchy cites the 'Report on the Feeble-Minded in Onlerio fer 1913' as fellows: "The facls are as fellcws: A married wcman who is hersell none tee wise has an iIIegitimate daughter. aged about 28 years. who is leeble-minded. and is the mcther cl twc illegitimate children." Ibid•• BO.

,. Ibid.. 5. 104 • refonners were attempting to shape social demographics according to their own criteria. As historians Angus and Arlene McLaren have suggested. Though [eugenically minded doctors] claimed to be protecting "quality" of race, their own criterion of ''fitness''. namely high socio· economic status, predisposed them to categorize those of a lower class or different culture as genetically inferior. ~7

Ethel Chapman's concem for race regeneration and social refonn is contained in a quotation by John Addington Symonds which she uses to open her novel Wrth Flame of Freedom, These things shall be: a loftier race, Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise. With Flame of Freedom in their souls, And Iight of knowledge in their eyes.~· ln this novel, Dr. Allan Nelson, a young "radical" doctor, believes in the importance of being "well-born". He brings this message to the mountain cornmunity where the people, according to Chapman, "... kept to themselves, the mountain folk, and were looked upon as a wild lot, illiterate, given to petty thieving and too much intennarrying.,,211 Giving a speech at the mountain school on "The Rights of the Child", he begins with a line that might have been directly quoted from the tracts ofthe Women's Christian Temperance Union. He says, "A child's first right is the right to be weil born,''"o and continues on to discuss how the "rnisfortunes of

'" Mclaren and Mclaren, The Bedroom and the Stale, 31. However. as we have sean, birth control was an issue which served many differenl and confticting philosophies. For example, socialista who favoured the dissemination of birth control information 10 working class couples were motivaled by a class analysis of society which suggesled thal by withholding birth control information trom thase women the capitalists were ensuring their supply of workers. As the McLarens stele, 'The first reason for the defence of birth control by the mainstream Canadien lefl was a consequence of its suspicion thal business, the military, and the churches ail soughl 10 maintain the exisling stetus quo by inciting the labourer recklessly to reproduce: (p. 75)

os Chapman. Wilh Rame of Freedom, titie page.

,. !l!!!!., 4. • 30 Ibid., 195. 105

heredity" pass on the "sins of the fathers."31 The following quotation trom With • Flame of Freedom shows the importance of birth, and conflates the issues poverty and morality in a way which is typical of many early twentieth century social reformers: On their visits about the mountain, Allan and Honora found not only poverty and iIIness but the tragedy of defective mentality, a degeneracy of moral standards, and here and there a family that had held fast to better traditions, or an individual who must have been a throw-back to a finer strain somewhere in the family line.32 ln With Frame of Freedom, Allan shocks an elderly housekeeper by expressing his views in support of birth control when a boy comes to him because his mother rat is attacking her babies. Allan says, "She couldn't feed them right, her hOllsing was bad and evidently it ail got on her nerves so she just Jammed into them. And yet, every time a doctor comes out and says a word about spacing babies, he ail but loses his Iicense to practice.'033 This type of birth control defense is typical of the middle-class reformer eugenicist. It does not emphasize the inherent right of a women over her own body, but expresses concem that the profligate reproduction of a certain class shouJd be preventElCl. Indeed, the image of rats suggests plainly enough that the Jess fortunate classes were seen as polluting the gene pool.34 Environment and education were also factors in the battle against "race degeneration". Because, as Mariana Valverde has pointed out, the scientific and the social were not seen as antithetic, the line between these types of reform is

.. Chapman, Wrth Asme of Freedom, 196. "Every child has the right 10 be weil bom" in cited in VaJverde's book as one of three moltos of the Moral Educetion Department of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Valverde, The Age of Ught. Soap and Weter, 60.

32 Chapman, Wilh Asme of Freedom, 177.

:13 Ibid., 54.

34 That there is a eugenic edge to Ethel Chapman's reform message is evident in the foIlow1ng line,"Honora had a vision of 8 new generation of super men and women growing up ln Acres • county." Ibid., 117. 106 • not a1ways drawn finnly. Despite his emphasis on being "well-bom", Dr. Allan Nelson believes in the possibility of improvement of people's lot through education on topies such as hygiene, preventive medicine and sexuality. He is, according to Chapman, on a ".. crusade of prevention and education" in order to make people aware of ".. the preciousness of the human body and the common sense regard they should have for their own and others, for whom they were responsible.... Therefore, while Chapman's refonn novel does contain eugenic refonn ideas, these are presented in concert with environmental refonn ideas. The marriage of medical expertise and education as a means of social refonn is made both directly through Dr. Nelson's crusades, and metaphorically through the marriage of Allan, a doctor, and Honora, an educator.3e ln this way Chapman's refonners, Honora and Allan, represent also, and perhaps more fully, the "environmental" refonners who sought to improve people's quality oi life by improving their social conditions. These men and women, in historian Carol Bacchi's words, were "..humanists who defended the need for environmental change.,037 Honora fights to integrate the schools of the Ridge, Acreville and the Mountain so that educational advantages would be more evenly distributed. Allan, the character most reminiscent of the eugenicist, believes that assimilation would solve the problems of the mountain folk. "If you could lift the whole lot," Allan says, "and set them down in parts of the North where everything is new and ail

os Chapman, Wrth Asme 01 Freedom, 173. The term "crusade" in the above qUOlation reinforces the association between the physical and the moral. The character 01 Dr. Nelson is reminiscent 01 a Dr. Charles Hastings, who Mclaren cites as follows, "Psychologists assure us that mental, moral and physical degeneration go hand in hand.... Insuflicient and improper leeding, badly ventilated homes, environments 01 lUth and dirt constitute the very hot-beds in which criminaJs are bred." Mclaren, Our Own Master Race, 36.

.. In Hill-Top. Jessie Beattie, Iike Chapman, makes a relorming unit of education and science through the marriage 01 a teacher and doctor.

37 Carol Becchi, "Race Regeneration and Social Purity: A Study 01 the Social Attitudes of Canada • English Speaking Sulfragists", Histoire Sociale 11 (1978): 482. 107

men are equal and there are already enough staunch souls to make an • upstanding framework for the commlJnity, they'd be assimilated in no time.... ETHNIC INTOLERANCE The fears of "race degeneration" mentioned above as an argument for secietal reform, also fuelled hostility towards immigrants. Immigration of groups from outside the British Isles during the 1920s was changing the demographic make-up of Canada. By the end of the decade, when fertility rates had reached an ail time low and the economic hardship was intense, many Canadians felt threatened and called for restricted immigration. Prospective immigrants were judged according to a pseudo-scientific hierarchy, based on racial "characteristics". which placed the white Anglo-Saxon at the top."" Aise rural immigrants were chosen over urban ones. According to an Order-in-Council. from 1930 on the govemment allowed into Canada only agricultural immigrants who had enough money to establish themselves on a farm. 40 Historian Irving Abella interprets this as barrier to Jewish immigration because of the perception held by immigration officiais that "...Jewish people do not...take to farming.·..' British and American farmers. therefore. were the favoured immigrant group. Jewish and Black immigrant groups were placed at the bottom of this Iist.

30 ChaplTlan, WIlh Rame 01 Freedom, 1n.

.. Mclaren, Our Own Masler Race, 47. This inslilutionalized prejudice is explored by historian Irving Abella who discovered thal Canada. between the years 1933 and 1945, leI in the lewest Jewish relugees, le\ver even than Bolivia and Chile, and thal ils restrictionisl immigration policy was, .... !rom the oUlSe!, an immigration policy with unabashed ethnic and racial priorilies." Irving Aballa, None is Too Many. Canada and the Jews 01 Europe. 1933-1948 (Toronto: Harold Tropar, Lesler & Orpen Dennys, 1982), x. According 10 Abella, the Depression is only one of the lectors contribuling to the Canadian govemment's lack 01 sympathy 10 the plight of Jewish relugees. He says, "Thus. the unyielding opposition 01 certain key officiais, the depression, the general apathy in English Canada. the outright hostility 01 French Canada, the Prime Minister's concem for votes and the overlay of anti-5emilism that dominated official Ottawa combined to ensure !hat no more than a mere handlul of Jewish relugees would find a home in Canada.· (p. 66)

'" Aballa, None is T00 Many, 5-6. Abella goes on to point out tha!, ·In the following year another Order-in-Council elleclively banned ail non-agricultural immigration unless either British or American.· • Cl Ibid., 54. 108 • Although essentially a romance story, Below the Salt by Vima Sheard touches on the immigrant experience in canada. Despite the restrictive canadian policies, the family of Basques, headed i:>y Gabriel Benedict, are allowed to enter canada because of their wealth and their promise to farm. Sheard writes, "[Benedict] spoke of the ease with which they were passed into the country by reason of the influential English names of his friends, and the fact that they were provided with money, and also desired to farm.''''' Having successfully entered canada, Benedict and his family are met with hostility trom men such as O'Sullivan who organizes an attempt to drive them out of the community. O'Sullivan says, "We'lI make it too hot for them. They'lI have no chance to take root here.'o4:l The shivaree intended to chase them away fails because Benedict disarms them with his music and offer of hospitality. It fails, aise, because the men who were sent out by O'Sullivan to harass the Benedict family did not share equally in his anger or his prejudice. ln the books surveyed here, the language of ethnic prejudice is in evidence. ln Waste Heritage, Harry, the restauranteur who befriends Matt, prefers his own kind. He is happy to visit with Matt, because, as he says, "Every once in a while 1get to feelin' lonely an' there's nothin' but a bunch of lousy Greeks an' kikes to talk to around here.'044 ln a number of these books, however, the authorial message challenges these narrow views. ln Laugh in the Sun, the presence of Mr. Fu at the camp near Mount Sulphur in Western canada is difficult for the other campers to deal with because of their prejudice. But the racist views are altered as the novel progresses. When Jack Reed, Agnes's future husband and the nephew of the camp's owner, asks his uncle Dick who is registered for the summer, Dick answers, "Americans, canadians, English and, above ail things on God's earth, a Chink. Big bug in his

.. Shelll'd, Below the Salt, 1e3.

.. Iblcl.. 118• • .. BlIird, Wasta H!!r!!!!ge. 58. 109

own country, or his father is. Sporting lad, 1 must say, and willing to take a • hand. 04S Mr. Fu's good nature and tolerance, despite their attitudes, wins them over. Another camper describes her and her husband's initial reaction to Mr. Fu. "When we first came, my husband and 1didn't much Iike finding him here," Mrs. Hall confided. "In fact, Philip called him John. In America ail Chinamen are John, but he didn't take oftence, and said quite seriously: 'My name :s Fu. 1have other names if you like, but Fu is short and easy to remember'..... Agnes is embarrassed by the slurs Mr. Fu endures and she apologizes. Mr. Fu is in love with Agnes but betrothed to a woman back home. In this novel, then, Amy J. Baker undermines racist attitudes by making a Chinese man a sympathetic character, but she stops short of allowing a physicallove relationship to develop. Mr. Fu says, "East and West cannot meet except in friendship. 1am young and 1 dreamed, but my dreams must die'7 carol Bacchi has argued that pioneer Canadians experienced "status anxiety" when they felt they could no longer control the character cf the country in the face of demographic change.'8 This anxiety is weil represented in the character of Q'Sullivan in Vima Sheard's Below the Salt. The fo:lowing is an example of Q'Sullivan's polemic on immigrants. In this passage, he is ordering his family not to go near a family of Basques who have just moved into the farm next door. Q'Sullivan says, Leave the foreign rift-raft alone. We are the dumping-ground for too many of them. What with the yellow peril they have let in on the Pacific coast, and the naked Doukabours [sic] in the west and the rabid reds in the cities, it has come to a fine pass! The scum of

.. Baker, Laugh in the Sun, 114•

.. Ibid., 121 .

• 7 Ibid., 253. • .. Bacchi, "Race Regeneration end Social Purity", 468. 110

Europe and Asia has been passed through the gates. God help • US!40 When the Basques occupy the farm next to O'Sullivan, he is enraged. When the handsome spokesman for their group falls in love with his daughter, Gail, he literally imprisons the girl in her room to keep them apart. Although the family is tolerant of O'Sullivan's ideas on race superiority, the author makes the final comment on his prejudices by having O'Sullivan die at the hands of his housekeeper and by writing for him a deathbed retraction of his previous statements against his daughter's suitor. Metaphorically, through his death, his racist views are put to rest also. Ethel Chapman also challenges this racism in her books. In The Homesteaders, Mary Shoedecker and her husband, and the French Canadians, Ukrainians, and ltalian homesteaders up north, judged neighbours according to their willingness to help out another person, and not their looks, social standing, wealth or ethnie origin. Mary's own introduction to the rough life of the bush was eased by her neighbour's warmth and generosity: And missing nothing, Iiking these people who were being so kind to her, Mary noticed how much of their fun was due to ''the foreigners": Tony, the ltalian,-the one regret of the party seemed to be that he had not brought his accordion; the Joliettes, though of course they were more truly Canadian than any of the others-their ancestors had been among the first settlers of Quebec; the young Eraschucks and some Ukrainian cousins who put on a dance that moved like a whirlwind through the kitchen. Oh there was colour enough here for anyone who had eyes to see it!··

Similarly, in Give Me My Robe the author recognizes that racism exists, but challenges these prejudiced views. It is suggested that some people looked down on Steve, Hannah's adopted father, because he was half Blackfoot. The bank manager, Mr, Beasley, says, "No one could make me believe after knowing

.. Vima Sheard. Below the SaI!. 104. • 50 Ethel Chapman. The Homesteaders. p. 68. 111

Steve Sanderson that mixed blood is as bad as its made out to oe." He continues • on the same page, saying of Steve, "He only spoke of that once and then it was to say he wasn't ashamed of his Blackfoot mother and that if he'd got any good in him i! was as likely to come from her as the white man that had gone and left her."" It is through the character of Steve in particular that prejudice is chailenged. For example, he is friendly towards the group identified in the book

as "dagoes", and to whom is generaily attached a pejorative stereotype.52 Because of this, Hannah wants these farmers informed of Steve's death, "...for Steve had befriended some of them times they had !Jeen down on their luck. oo53 ln the books discussed above. then, the notion that one social class or ethnic origin is superior to another is presented as a part of the ambient Canadian discourse of the 1930s. At the .same time. however, these authors in varying degrees publ!cly challenge this notion through their writing. COUr·nRY VERSUS CITY The reform movement of the early twentieth century has been interpreted by historians as being defensive. In the wake of urbanization, the rise of city siums, and the falling birth rate, many Canadians saw a need for social cleansing and a revival of the founding notions in Canadian society As Mclaren expresses it, Individualism, materialism, feminism, and social'sm were said to be rampant. The purported surges in venereal dis~e, tuberculosis, a1coholism, divorce, and labour unrest were poi~ted to by the nervous as evidence of the erosion of traditional values. 54

•• Leigh, Give Me Mv Robe, 38.

.. In the following quotation, for example, the implication is that members of this group are inclined te steal. "The curlains were drawn across the window sc that no dago fanners nosing around, could look in and see that no one was home." Ibid., 74.

'" Ibid., 28. • .. McUlnln. Our Own Master Race, 27. 112 • ln her work on moral reform in Canada between 1885 aud 1925, Mariana Valverde has examined the writing of the social purity advocates. She argues that their f10rid prose was not just stylistic. but contained meaningful symbols, which were "... to the audience. the inconspicuous vehicles in which truths about moral and social reform were conveyed to the public."" Images of light and cleanliness were used to point out the route to reform. Valverde says, "Purity work was like washing dishes, like c1eaning sores, like striking matches, and like tuming garbage into useful composf'.se Similarly, although their settings are a decade later or more. being 'clean', in a number of these books, means more than being free from dirt. It signifies an honest and religious nature and a dignity that does not come from breeding but from personal integrity. For example, Mary Moran, in The Homesteaders, describes her husband in the following way: "And there was that something of rugged cleanness about him, from his lean, hard hands and strong, white. teeth to the straight, clear look in his eyes."57 ln With Flame of Freedom, also by Ethel Chapman, Honora. in answer to Dr. Darrow's request to cite a quotation that best describes her idea of success in life, replies, "'God keep a clean wind blowing through my heart,."sa ln Cold Pastoral, cleanliness stands for chastity. Although accused of having carried on a sexual relationship with her friend Tim, Mary Immaculate is sexually innocent. Her friend, Maxine, who is unmarried and pregnant, says. ''You look so clean. 1 hate the sight of your face."so Similar images are used by Jessie Garden Smith Riordan in her novel Crosscuts to describe the loggers of British Columbia. They are "..clean-cut,

os Valverde. The Age of Ughl Soae and Water, 34.

50 Ibid.. 41.

57 Chapman. The Homestead!l!S. 40.

50 Chapman. WIlh Rame of Freedom. 27•

.. Margaret Culey. CoId Pastorlll. p. 318. Tim. in defence of her honour. says of Mary. •...she is • as clean as Gad..... p. 279. Her name lIlone. Immaculate, signifies cleanliness and virginity. 113

muscular in strength; and in nerve seemed independent and self-reliant.'.eo They • have substance, whereas refined appearances, just like civilized behaviour, can simply be a veneer. This is the case with Robert Evans. He is suave and sophisticated. He is weil dressed and physically attractive. This physical attractiveness is described in a way that presents it almost as a weapon, which indeed is how he used it to seduce women for their money or whatever else he might have wanted: "He was weil dressed and weil groomed. His clothes were faultless-almost aggressively 50.''''' ln the course of the novel, Robert Evans proves himself to be a self-centred gigolo responsible for the death of his own unbom child. Jessie Riordan's underlying message, therefore, is that wealth and sophistication are no reflection of the character of a person. Since, as the McLarens point out, urbanization was associated with the degeneration of values, the city, in particular, was seen to be "inherently anonymous and immoral".·' ln many of the books of this survey, the presentation of city Iife as immoral and small town or country living as being healthier and more virtuous is a recurring theme. ln Give Me My Robe, the main character, Hannah, is an orphan raised in a shack on the Prairies by Steve sanderson. Although he did not have much, he has given her a strong sense of values. He tells her, "Courage,...lt counts for everything. There wouldn't be no wasters in the world, no skunks, none of them as you see wasting their lives in towns if they was to leam courage at school same as other things.'''''' Town Iife is associated with promiscuity and drinking. "Sc many of the men who Iived hard on the Prairie seemed to break up when they were middle-aged but that was more often when they had drunk more than was

00 Riordan, Crossculs, 4.

•' Ibid.. 21 .

.. Mclaren and Mclaren. The Bedroom and the State, 16• • "" Leigh, Give Me My Robe, 13. 114 • good for them and gone into town for a bust whenever they got a few dollars together. ,084 Hannah's own tirst experience of town contirms this impression. She goes to town to look for work and the tirst Iighted building she enters is a brothel. 1n Rainbow at Night, despite the depietion ofthe cove inhabitants as coarse and sexually "easy", the merits of their lifestyle compare favourably with those of the city. lan Blake, the New York musician who spends a summer in a tishing village in Nova Scotia, comes to appreciate the scaled down Iifestyle of the cove. ln the absence of "m.:.· entertainment" such as movies and radio, he comes to see the pleasure: .y :ife as "vacuous". lan thinks the following about the cove inhabitants: "W,.en death stood as a continuous neighbor to life did it cany a greater realization of the importance, the value of one's brief time on earth? Or were they merely imbuing him with their freedom from urban restlessness?'''' The perceived problem with the city, as we have seen, is more than just its distracting entertainments; urban life is associated with a decayed value system. Jack Kapica sees this element in Jalna, Mazo de la Roche's tirst Whiteoak novel. He interprets it as follows: "The city, with its more Iiberal morality, therefore evolves as a symbol of unsettling change and trauma for the Whiteoaks. Conversely, the Whiteoaks' attachment to the soit can be described as a symbol of conservatism, particularly in the question of moral concems.,,.. This idea is aise present in The Master of Jalna. Mazo de la Roche employs simple irony to convey how far from the ''traditional'' values the Whiteoaks have moved, despite

.. Leigh, Give Me Mv Robe, 14, 15. One can read in this quotation an advocacy 01 temperance.

os Sonner, Rainbow at Night, 68-69. A similar value system is in operation in Allistene Starkey's The Grafted Twig, set in fictional "CresUand". which is 011 Nova Scotia When the main character, Kerry, compares the values 01 this island to those 01 the city, "She began to understand the CresUanders on whom the vastness 01 the sea had lelt ils mark-their perception 01 rnaterial insignificance-their stress on livable virtues, lundamentaJs as deep as humanity and as necessary to the universe. Even though they might be lar !rom perteet in the over- or under emphasis 01 their beliefs, their standards were based on integrity, and built with simple laith. Kerry wenders about her own heterogenous collection 01 standards, culled !rom careless observation or fin arresting werd. A hodgepodge without much depth or vision." Starkey, The Gralted Twig, 254• • .. Kapica, "The Social Relevance 01 Jalna by Mazo de la Roche: 50. 115

their pretention to the opposite. Their financial difficulties have been overcome, • the encroachment of modem housing on Whiteoak land has been forestalled and, it wo'Jld seem on the surface, that the status quo has been reasserted. At the end of the story, however, Alyane who has been going through a rocky period in terms of her relationship with Renny says, "Ali old fashioned things are coming in again. ...Conjugal bliss will be coming in next....7 What she does not know however is that her husband Renny has begun a sexual relationship with his long time friend, Clara Lebreaux, who is now established on Whiteoak property. This celebration of a simpler life, govemed by Christian values, is advanced in Ethel Chapman's books, particularly in The Homesteaders. Ali in life that is needed, according to the sage old homesteader, Jane Meadow, is ''work, play, love and worship..... Chapman also emphasizes the need for neighbors to help one another and advocates cooperation as a Christian way of life.... John Erskine, a minister in With Flame of Freedom, is one of the "nervous" McLaren identifies, who believes that Canadian society in the 1930s is in a state of crisis, and that intervention is necessary. Poverty and isolation were not the only misfortunes in the world. It was not only the youth of the mountain who were losing their way, but individual boys and girls everywhere, and sometimes it seemed that everything was failing them-the state, the home, the school, the church. The last was his responsibility-but were they not ail his responsibility and everyon~'s.70 Similarly, Pearl Foley, in The Gnome Mine Mysterv, presents northem Ontario as a new frontier of sorts and sees the cities as being dominated by the superficial values and criminal activities of big business. Speaking to Felix Landroit. a representative of a business group, Roger castigates unfair practices

0' Mazo de la Roche, The Masler 01 Jall!!l. p. 336•

.. Chapman, The Homesteaders. 97.

"Ibid.. 130. • '" Chapman. Wilh Flame of Freedom, 229. 116 • of big business cartels. He asks. "Is it any wonder the wheels of commerce are growing rusty, and the prison gates swinging easily? ... if the public were a little more educated as to what lies behind these speculative ventures they are lured into, there would be no such panics as occurred last faU."" Roger sees Rolland and Marcile St. Lambert, his partners in the northem mine adventure, as typifying traditional and simpler values. The following is his impression of Rolland on first meeting him: Tawny-headed, fair of skin and blue of eye, he appeared to Roger an incamation of bygone ages-some young Viking or Norseman descended to glimpse a modem world-a personality that exuded the atmosphere of places where men remained young of soul and unsmeared by the sooty hand of commerce.'""

The Grafted Twig is a study of the virtues of life in a small community where long-standing traditions are respected. The setting is an island of 300 people called Crestland located off the coast of Nova Scotia. Kerry Willet has come to Crestland from New York and the comparison of urban versus rural values is a major theme of the book. Kerry is brought to the island by her aunt Hattie whose expressed intention in willing her house to Kerry, is to re-introduce Kerry to truer values. Hattie's friend, Matilda Coon, tells Kerry, "For years [Hattie] waited for the time when she might see for herself what life was doing to you-what notions vou

were picking up-the traits vou were developing. ,,7:\ Among the traits that Kerry has te reevaluate are her tendency to judge people in terms of wealth and appearances and her attitude that housework is beneath her. It is ironie that Kerry feels superior to Ella who comes in to help with the housework and only refrains from referring to her as a "servanr' out of respect for the villagers' pride.74 Vat Ella

" Foley, The Gnome Mine Mystery, 195.

'" Ibid., 34.

73 Starkey, The Gretled Twig, 39• • ,. Ibid., 55, 117

is shocked at how badly Kerry keeps her house and generously makes excuses for her. Ella says, "Why-Iook at this kitchen-and those lamps! Imagine letting things go this way! It simply shows that she hasn't had anyadvantages-and we'lI

have to overlook a lot that seems strange to US.,,75 Kerry is constantly shocking the isolated community with her New York style. Her brief bathing suit scandalizes the older neighbors and fills her rival, Amber Pentworth, with jealousy, while her shorts and halter outfit causes Claw Smithers to stop coming to do the gardening. "Here she comes-and she ain't dressed!" he says, later claiming that her house, "oo.ain't no place for a decent

man _00.,,70 Kerry's use of make-up is an especially contentious point and highlights the way in which the community values can be normative and coercive. When Ted tells her n'Jtto "paint up", she resents this advice and says, "Butthafs­ personal" to which he responds, "No-ifs of interest to the community."n Making herself up is the outward sign that Kerry is resisting assimilation.70 Having decided to stand up Mrs. Pitkin, a local woman who does her laundry, in favour , c of a luncheon date with a summer visitor to the island, "a reallady", Kerry is made , r up and ready to go out. Ted tells Kerry she should cancel the luncheon and ~ Kerry refuses. Ted becomes angry and feels that Kerry needs to be taught a t lesson: "His eyes fixed on Kerry's lips, and the sight of their blatant redness ~ , against the whiteness of her face choked him with anger."711 He grabs her and ~, '"> O' begins to scrub her face clean. ,0- 0, ,~ ~ " Starkey, The Grafled Twig. 90. F.

'" Ibid., 116.

n Ibid.. 47.

'" WhUe rnake-up is frowned upon on Crestland. il was obviously appropriale to Kerry's Iifestyle in New York City. Although make-up, according to Veronica Strong-Soag, was ·not qulte respectable· in the 1920$. •...in the 1930$ high coloured Iips and cheeks received more emphasis­ wera identified as the keys 10 ·poise and self-confidence: A New Day Recalled, 85.

7ll Ibid.. 155. 118

ln a minute!" he assured her grimly, sloshing a wet rag over the • cake of soap, "Then-if you still want to go to the hotel, you may! This," he growled, scrubbing vigorously, "IS the best 1 can do towards preventing you from wantonly insulting an unfortunate woman who"-the words were emphasized with more soap and water-"is obliged to work for her living, and isn't asha'Tled of it!.00 Through the use of the word "wantor,ly" one can read an association of promiscuity with the use of make-up. Furthermore, the act of washing awa,>' with soap and water echoes the symbolism of the social purity campaign as it addressed "sins" of city life. Surprisingly, it is after this drubbing at the hands of the man she loves that Kerry begins to recognize the merits of his value system. But even when she tries to assimilate, meeting the demands of this society is not easy. As Ted points out, thinking of Kerry, "It wasn't that she meant any harm, but the Crestland code of honor was so adamant, so strictly literai, that it condemned

the slightest deviation, or sign of intrigue. "el Canadian society in the early twentieth century underwent a number of fundamental changes, including, as has been mentioned, urbanization. Many worried that these changes were not for the best. With the onset of the Depression, the sense that things were going terribly wrong was confirmed. This context helps to explain why so many of these authors tended to idealize the merits of country Iife. Waste Heritage is the only novel in this survey with an urban setting and its subject matter does not reflect weil on its setting either. Through their novels, it seems, authors such as Allistene Starkey attempted to publicly reassert the importance of a value system they perceived to be under siege. DEPRESSION POUTICS The 1930s saw notable changes in the Canadian political Ianc:lscape. Entirely new political parties, William Aberhart's Social Credit anc:I Maurice

oc Starkey, The Grafted Twig, 156• • 01 Ibid., 1n. 119

Duplessis' Union Nationale, rose to power in Alberta and Quebec respectively. • liberais replaced Conservatives in the New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, saskatchewan, and British Columbia legislatures. Yet, the promise of charge was rarely met. Finlay and Sprague interpret the priority of the Depression era

govemments as recapturing "... a pre-1929 status quo... ,,82 The conservative reality of these govemments, despite their Iiberal or populist discourse, is exemplified by Mitchell Hepbum, Liberal premier of Ontario. Having come to power vowing to defend "the little guys", he supported General Motors management in Oshawa in 1937, helping defeat the auto workers' strike organized by the CIO. 53 RADICAL ALTERNATIVES: SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, a conglomeration of labour, socialist and agricultural interests led by J.S. Woodsworth, was founded in 1932 and consolidated in 1933 by the Regina Manifesto. It offered, in Woodsworth's own assessment, "a distinctly Canadian type of socialism"." Members lobbied for radical social reordering and for the institution of universal healthcare and unemployment insurance.85 Woodsworth, once a Methodist minister, envisioned reform through peaceful means only. canada's communists offered a even more revolutionary altemative during this period. Though never very numerous, they were responsible for organizing groups of unemployed workers and, as the engine behind the Relief camp Workers' Union, helped to mobilize strikes in relief camps in British Columbia in 1934 and 1935 which culminated in the On-to-Ottawa-Trek.8lI However, the

., J.L Finlay and D.N. Sprague, The Structure of Canadian History (Ontario: Prenlice Hall, 1989) 345. Michiel Hom concurs, suggesling tha!, "Most of the talk about change during the Depression was merely talk." The Great Depression of the , 930$ in Canada, 19.

83 Ibid.. 347.

54 Bumsted, The Peoples of Canada, 196.

"Ibid• • .. Hom, The Great Depression of the 1930$ in Canada. 13. 120

Communist Party of Canada, under the leadership of Tim Buck, won few votes • during this period and, due to his prosecution under Section 98 of the Criminal code, was actually ilfegal between 1931 and 1936. The Govemment's suppression of communists, despite their lack of success in mainstream politics, is a testament to the perceived danger associated with the spread of radical ideas. The clashes between the establishment and the organized unemployed were violent, and, as Finlay and Sprague conclude, "The radical leaders of the 1920s not only lost ground in the 1930s, some lost their freedom ...87 The influence of agrarian socialism is apparent in the works of Ethel Chapman while communism is referred to in Pearl Foley's Gnome Mine Mysterv and explored more fully in Irene Baird's treatment of striking unemployed workers in Waste Heritage. Although the ideal of community cooperation in The Homesteaders is couched in the idiom of Christian love of neighbour, one could argue that Peter's views on farmers cooperation and his speech at a political meeting place him among the socialist reformers of the time. This Iink is made much more explicitly in Chapman's next novel, With Flame of Freedom. Phil Strong is Peter re-worked. Living in Ontario, he is a simple farmer who cares about his community. In the face of lowering crop prices, he encourages his neighbors to band together and not to undercut each other. He .....had a Utopian scheme for buying up vacant land and starting a co-operative farm in Old Acres. It seemed pretty visionary, but some of Phil's other co-operative schemes had seemed just as impossible, and they were working now...ae He was appalled by the poverty and starvation and felt that the farmers should be distributing their surplus through public relief. The rast of the group are similarly radical in their beliefs. Allan, the doctor, argues against capital punishment and the capitaJist system which neglects their sick and aged. He says,

87 Finlay and Sprague, The Structure of Canadian History, 348. • .. Chapman, With F1ame of Freedom, 170. 121

It's hard to explain why countries that cali themselves Christian can • leave their aged and sick and handicapped to shift for themselves as they do, while a nation that scorns Christianity has at least "a plan" to take care of everyone.....

Although they are often taken for "reds", these characters would likely have been supportive of the reformist politics of J.S. Woodsworth and fit in among the minority of Canadians who believed that socialism would retum justice and prosperity to Canada. Repudiating the basic premises of acquisitive individualism they demanded an economy geared towards "..the supplying of human needs instead of the making of profits."oo ln Phil Strong's words, they have to "...get away from this competitive every-man-for-himself attitude, and leam the art of

living together. ,,01 It is clear that Ethel Chapman intended her work to make a political staternent. In a review by Lady Willison (Ma~orie MacMurchy), the author of The Longest Way Round, With Flame of Freedom is described as a "social document" and Ethel's Chapman's "...purpose undoubtedly has been not only to tell an interesting story, but to arouse interest in the social problems of a countryside.,,02 MacMurchy concludes that Chapman has succeeded. ln the Gnome Mine Mystery it seems that communism might be read into any criticism of capitalism. Felix Landroit, a representative of a high powered business group, says to Roger, when they are disagreeing about certain

.. Chapman, WIlh Asme 01 Freedom, 120.

00 Finlay and Sprague, The Structure 01 Canadian Historv, 339.

•, Chapman, WIlh Asme 01 Freedom, 133.

•• Lady Willison (Marjorie MacMurchy). "Rural Canadiana", Saturday Night. 21. It should be noted thet Chapman hersaI! was raised on a larm in Ontario, worked lor the Departrnent of Agriculture and, according to Clara Thomas, edited the home section 01 Toronto's Farmer's Magazine, and was involved in Women's Institute organizations. Clara Thomas, Canadian Novelists 1920-1945. • 21. 122

monopolistic business tactics, "At ail events it's something to know your sympathy • isn't from socialistic tendencies."" ln Irene Baird's Waste Heritage, communists form the leadership for the organization of the unemployed in their strike against the govemment. While their role as organizers fed the tendency in the 1930s to blame "reds" for the problems in society, Baird directs the criticism at the establishment. She writes, "S'pose the Reds is at the bottom of the trouble. You can't let a swamp lay around year after year an' not expect to breed mosquitos," to which another responds, "The whole damn system is at the bottom of the trouble."" Baird's clear political statement was, by sorne accounts, inappropriate for a woman author. Eleanor Godefroy, who reviewed Waste Heritage for The Canadian Forum in 1940, acknowledges the unique value of Baird's work as social commentary. She described the book as, "...a social indictment in a literary form only too rarely found in this under-written country. Even more than that, however, it is a lesson and an example to Canadian writers in the energetic and searching study that must be done before a truly vigorous, indigenous Iiterature can be established." Godfrey's objection to Waste Heritage, however, is that it is an example of a woman writing a man's story, which to her mind, never works: A few women writers can write of men and women in relationship with equal insight into either sex as long as it is the impact of one upon the other that is under observation. But 1know of no woman writer who can write of men alone and in a man's worfd with any sustained credibility. Miss Ba.ird has tried harder than most but with very Iittle more success. The grammar and the vocabulary may be authentic, the behaviour and attitudes of her strikers correctly described; nevertheless, for ail the tough prose, the jargon, the gutter-epithets, Waste Heritage is the work of one who guesses rather than knows what is going on below the surface. That this

.. Foley. The Gnome Mine Myslery, 192• • .. Irene Baird, Waste Heritage, 165. 123

fault can be ascribed to the gender of the writer rather than to any • lack of talent does not make it any less obvious.gS It seems that by allowing women to write of men in terms of their interactions with women, Godfrey was leaving room for love stories and domestic scenarios in women's fiction. Political comments are rare but not completely absent in the novels covered in this survey. In Lucien, which is the only novel set in Quebec, there is a distinction made between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Parsons writes, "The land about Charbonneau was ail taken up by men who were deeply rooted in their farms. When they died, their sons went on about the business of planting and harvesting as their fathers had belore them. Whatever happened in the rest of Canada would be of no concem to Charbonneau.""" Also, in the following quotation there is further expression 01 the distinction between Quebec, as a francophone province, and the rest of Canada and the way in which education, at the time, obscured this difference. Pierre is attending school in Trois-Rivières and talks about the history he is being taught by the school master. He says, He read to them about Canada. Some of them leamed that, though they were French, they belonged to England. Pierre did not think Wolfe so great a man. He had heard this tale before. He wished the book the Master had told more about Montcalm. He resolved to tell Lucien about him, because he didn't want her to think belonging to England was as fine as the book said.g7

oc Seanor Godfrey. "Reviewof Waste Heritage", The Canadian Forum 19, no. 229 (February 1940): 365. Margaret Atwood has written, that as late as the 19605, women authors who wrote on "men's" topies had to be prepared for scathing reviews: "And Lord help you if you step outside your 'proper' sphere as a woman writer and comment on boy stuff like, say. polilies. You want to see the heavy artillery come out? Try Free Trade." Margaret Atwood. "If You Can'! Say Something Nice, Don't Say Anything at AIr. Language in Her Eye: Views on Wriling and Gender by Canadien Women Writing in English, Ubby Scheier. Sarah Sheard and Seanor Wachtel, eds. (Toronto: Coach House Press, 1990). 20.

.. Parsons, Lucien, 11-12. • '7 Ibid.. 67. 124 • GENDER POLITICS The feminism of many of the women characters in these novels is not expressed within organized politics but through their attempts to assume control over their own lives and resist restrictive social conventions. Kathleen Evans, in Jessie Garden Smith Riordan's romance Crosscuts, is independent and proud of it. Angry with her husband, she thinks to herself, "Robert gets on my nerves! Does he think 1am a c1inging vine? That is absolutely wrong! Haven't 1taken care of myself, even to supporting myself ever since my marriage?"·· If Kathleen has a f1aw it is having been foolish enough to love Robert Evans and behaving according to his wishes. However, when their marriage is finally over, she reasserts her individuality. They are living apart by this time and Robert Evans reminds her that they are one only in the eyes of the law, to which she responds, "Apparently vou have been laboring under the impression that you are that one­ that when 1married Vou, 1lost my identity. You are mistaken."" The feminist content in Crosscuts is more explicitly expressed in the thoughts of Buck MacAulay, who runs the logging camp. The majority of women, he realized, were normal human beings, not because they had been Iiberated and had secured a degree of independence, self-sufficiency, and self·assurance unknown to their sisters of the past, but because of their nature. He knew that although they were known as the weaker sex, they often fought and won battles against not only their own nature, but against those stronger than their own. •00 It is interesting how the gender stereotypes are present and yet undermined in the above quotation. With the marked exception of Ethel Chapman's main female characters, the women charaeters in these novels feel, to varying degrees, entrapped by

.. Riordan, Crosscuts, 34.

.. Ibid., 198. • '

restrictive social expeetations.'o, Some characters live in rebellion against these • pressures, longing for some kind of independence. Others choose to conform and still others end in tragedy because they can not find their own way. In this way, one can read a feminist element in these traditional story types. As we have sean, social expectations in Allistene Starkey's Crestland, Nova Scotia were rigid and the behaviour of the residems weil monitored. Initially, Kerry is rebellious. She attempts to maintain her own style and sense of proper deportment. However, isolated on the island, she begins to fealless secure in her opinions. "There was no escape from this lonesome land, nor from her own lonely uncertainties-the confusion of a heart forced to unwilling acceptance of a strange mode of Iife.",o2 Because of this uncertainty and the desire to please Ted Soutrwick, whom she has grown to love despite their differences, Kerry tries to model herself on the Crestlander code of ethics. What begins as a superficial modification of her behaviour designed to please Ted develops into a sincere attempt to change. Still, as is indicated in the following quotation, her choice to conform springs out of her overwhelming Ic~',~ for Ted. In this way, although her rebelliousness is subdued by societal pressures, she is making a choice te be with Ted. This choice, as with a number of romances in this survey, involves an element of self-sacrifice. At the end of the novel, she says to Ted, '''Everything 1 tried to be-to please you'-Kerry's hand stole up and touched his cheek­ 'Suddenly meant more than just that. 1think it was what you tried to show me ail along - but 1love you so much; 1didn't know anyone else existedl,,,,Q3

101 The main female characlers in Chapman's The Homesleaders represenl the normative standard by which other secondary characlers are judged in Poplar Hill. Chapman's depiclion of Nettie Cultiver. the unenthusiaslic pioneer and somewhal wayward wife, is lelling. Founding mother Jane Meedows tries 10 direcl Nettie's energies lowards her appropriale tasks. She deliberately sends her home trom a visil •...in lime 10 cook her husband's supper: (p. 93) Nettie disturbs Jane. Chapman writes, ·Jane was getting old; a woman Iike Nettie Culliver worried her, but to have !!2!!!!!!! [emphasis mine) young people like the Shoedeckers around was balm to her soul.· Chapman, The Homesleaders, 95.

102 Starkey, The Grafted Twig. 150. • 100 Ibid., 318. 126

Nona Damel, in The White Reef, is defined by her rebellious nature. She • feels literally suffocated by small town life. The community expects Nona to marry Ivar to be "made respectable": "That was the way the Cove shaped your destiny for you. As if, once inside the White Reef that guarded its entrance, you did what was expected of yoU.,,'04 But, as was discussed earlier, she gives birth to an "iIIegitimate" child and raises him in the cove for his six short years of life, despite society's disapproval. Having Si highlights Nona's rebelliousness because, as critic Patricia Smart suggests, "illegitimacy" strikes at the foundations of patriarchy.'os Nona lives in confrontation with her society. Shs dresses in a style which shocks and, ultimately, abandons any effort at ingratiating herself with her community. For seven years l've gone around among people who have done everything they can to remind me of the disgrace 1brought upon the town and upon my own family when 1 ran away with Quentin Wingate....But l've taken enough. l've paid ten times over for any wrong l've ever done. But l'm through paying-today was the end. Paul and Eva and Hesper Thorpe and Selina Patterson-the whole crowd of them can do what they like and say what they like from now on. l'II live my own life in my own way and they can go to hell!'oe She only stays in the Cove because of her love for her father, and because she believes that with no special training or experience, she couId not find work or independence by running away. "Nona's heart shrank back into a cold depth and

'04 Ostenso, The White Reel, 52.

'05 ln her study 01 Quebec Iîterature, Smart has wrillen, "Butfrom the moment she contravenes the Law 01 the Father by becoming an unmarried mother (lhat is, a woman who reproduces the species without having been exchanged between lather and suitor), a gap opens up in the pabiarchaltext that will never again be closed." Smart, Wriling in the Father's House, 172. It is perhaps worth note lhatlhis gap in The White Reel is parlially c10sed by Si's dealh before school age. • 100 Ostenso, The White Reel, 194. 127

told her that ail her courageous planning for independence was just so much • stuff. 1I107 The rebellious daughter is in evidence in Below the Salt as weil. Gail chafes against the dictates of her father and resents the double standards applied to men and women. Sheard writes, "No insufferable restrictions were placed on the men of the family such as exasperated Gail and often Kathleen."'o. In direct opposition to her father's wishes, Gail persists in meeting clandestinely with their new neighbour, Gabriel Benedict, and they end up happily together. Lucien, in Vivian Parson's work, is engaged in a prolonged rebellion against the man she was forced to marry and the powerful institutions in her society, particularly the Gatholic Church. She even tries, unsuccessfully, to suppress her love for her own children in order to stay aloof from a Iife she has not chosen for herself. Mimsie, in Hill·Top, though only a girl for most of the novel, finds the sober religious world of her mother restrictive and without joy. She clings pathetically to any softening of the strict rules against demonstrative love and builds, as she grows older, a strength which her mother fears will transform into open rebellion against her. "[Adelaide] wouId not admit it to herself, but she lived in constant dread of Mimsie's first resistance to her dominance. When it came, what would happen. Whose will would prove stronger?"'Oll Isabel Pyke in The Eyes of the Gull is thoroughly isolated from her peers and unhappy in her circumstances. She too is defined in opposition to her surrounding as the following quotation from the second page of the novel suggests, "Isabel Pyke had been in spiritual rebellion to Newfoundland ail her

'07 Ostenso, The White Reef, n.

1,," Sheard, Below the S!\!t 197.

,,. Beatlie. HiII.Top. 230. Mimsie's fundamental opposition la her environment and laten~ rebelliousness is implied in a description of her haïr. which. according te Adelaide's philosophy • should Il(' kept neat and bound close le the head, but which was 'rebelliously-curty." (p. 5) 128

Iife.""D ln Duley's Cold Pastoral, Mary Immaculate's rebelliousness is more • ambivalent but she clearly finds it difficult to meet social expectations and, until the end of the novel, is generally out of step with her peers. As a chiId she is set apart from her family of origin by the accident of her birth at sea, by her beauty, and by her affinity for the land rather than the sea upon which her fishing community depend. Her ready adoption into the Fitz Henry family and her sincere efforts to meet their expectations conceal her growing confusion over her own identity.'" Despite their protection, she has to endure the snubs of classmates who, either from jealousy IX snobbery, never fully accept her as a member of the

Newfoundland elite, and 50 remains isolated. Furthermore, although she dreams of furthering her education, and perhaps of spending a year travelling, she is fettered by her gratitude to the family and by Philip's love for her, which becomes a kind of shackle in itself. Mary experiences a kind of identity crisis by living to please others. She says, "Felice, take me where 1can be ordinary, where l'm not always playing up to something. 1want to be something by myself. 1think l'm deceittul.""2 Hannah McLeod, in Give Me My Robe, also feels at odds with her world. But whereas Mary Immaculate at the end of CoId Pastoral manages to reconcile the opposing influences in her life and choose her future with confidence, Hannah's story ends in tragedy. Although Hannah loves her adoptive father, Steve Sanderson and appreciates the beauty of their prairie home, she has always felt herself te be somehow superior to the life she has known and imagines a different future. She does not, for example, intend to marry any of the men who live nearby, saying, "It was not for what a man could give her that she would

110 Duley, The Eyes of the Gull, 10.

'" These expeclalions are not negligible. Angry with Mary for having wandered 011 to pick ft0W8rs without permission, Philip tells her. 'Also you will remember conclusively and irrevocably that you will conforrn to tha lite we plan for you.' Duley, Cold Pastoral, 107. • "' Ibid.. 285. 129

marry him but for what he'd be himself and that was a good many pegs above the • boys she'd met, hitherto, on thefarms around.",,3Instead she sets out on herown after Steve's death. This moment of freedom and independence is one she looks back on longingly after her marriage to Evelyn Dawson and on the eve of their intended trip to his home in England. She is deeply in love with Evelyn but does not consider herself to be his equal. Despite attempts to refine her diction and manners, she worries that she will never be accepted by Dawson's family and will be a source of embarrassment. Leigh writes, "Sometimes she felt that if she remainsd herself and remembered, instead of trying to forget, that she had once been Hannah McCleod, she was more Iikely to combat the feeling of inferiority which constantly dismayed her.,,"4 At the same time, however, she feels guilty for trying to change herself, and rationalizes this feeling in the following way: "...she was n<:ither disloyal or foolish to imagine she had been fitted for years into the wrong peg. Perhaps, later, when she would find herself more definitely, she could rerum and face the people who had meant so much to her in the past with a freer conscience."'" Stuck between two worlds, and overwhelmed by the expectations placed on her as the new wife of Evelyn Dawson, she ends the ambiguity by reruming to her room in the buming hotel. Many of the rebellious characters discussed above are imbued with a strong affinity for the natural elements. Mary Immaculate, in Cold Pastoral. is described as an "elemental", who "...understands the winds in the trees.,,11e ln The VVNte Reef, Nona Damel guards herself against more pain after the death of her son, Si. She is described as follows by Quentin Wingate, "But she was incalculable, maddening, elusive as something not quite earthly-she who had

... Leigh, Give Me My Robe, 76.

" •.Ibid., 231.

". Ibid.. 258-259. • ". DulliY, Cold Pestoral, 75. 130 • been rich and deep as the earth itself-....,,117 Isabel Pyke is described as the wind's lover, and in Peter Keen's painting, "She was there as an elemental creature ofthe sea and the sky, her body the mistress of the wind, but on her face above he had drawn out her lonely thoughts and disharmony with her native land."'" Gail, in Below the Salt, is said to have the eyes of a lynx and young Mimsie of Hill-Top "... [Ioves] the earth as some children love their mothers.""· This association of woman with nature can be understood as another expression of spiritual rebellion. Writing about Quebec novels, Patricia Smart suggests, "There appears to be a strange alliance between women and nature ... and even to some extent between women and the 'foreigners' who threaten the continuity of the national heritage-an alliance whose function in the tradition is to subvert the patemallineage.,,'2o Their natures are depicted as being as wild, inscrutable and indomitable as the elements themselves. Jenny Macdonald, in Rainbow at Night, has a close affinity with nature and is at odds with the social expectations of her fishing community in Nova Scotia. She feels so complete- "...a part of the woods and sea, blown by them sc naturally that she did not notice,,'2' -that unlike the others her age, she has no interest in marrying a local man and settling down. Because she has no interest in men before she meets lan, she believes herself to be missing an essential element in her personality. "She was certain that there had been something left out of her when she was bom, or that she should have belonged to the world of nature which felt and trembled and shivered so without anything sc personal, such

117 Ostenso, The WhIt8 Reer. 239.

"' Duley, The Eyes of the Gull. 100.

"' BeaIlie, HiII-Top.38.

'''' Smart, Writing in the Fa!her's House. 71 • • '21 Banner, Rainbow st Night. 251. 131 as humans knew...122 She is content to live in a different way from her peers until the arrivai of lan Blake and the romance they share. A:ter he leaves, nothing, not even the surrounding environment of which she had been so completely a part, holds any beauty for her. In this way, hers is a tragic ending. ln the following examples, the main characters can not be considered rebellious, but neither do they conform completely to their surroundings. Agnes Brook, in Laugh in The Sun, a thoroughly cheerful, responsible young English woman, is essentially a misplaced "country girl" being stifled by a London lifestyle. After vacationing for a summer in canada's Rocky Mountains, she begins to dread her retum to i..ondon and the job at a beauty salon which meets her financial needs. She does not hesitate to marry Jack and move with him to a Hudson Bay post, despite the prospect of cold and isolation. She readily leaves behir.d the Iife in England which she realizes is not in tune with her true character. Letty Bye, in The Longest Way Round, although a well-behaved and long suffering daughter, is not an entirely conventional character either. She is keenly interested in sports, something which was popular in the 1930s but endorsed only in moderation as it was never supposed to compromise a girl's biological eligibility for the role of wife and mother.'23 Instead of marriage, Letty's personal goal is financial independence for herself and her mother. Marcile St. Lambert, in Gnome Mine Mystery, is a financially independent working woman. She is aware of the

122 Banner, Rainbowal Nighl, 45-46. lZ1 The inlerwar period has been dubbed the 'Golden Age of Sports' for women. The enthusiasm for young women's sports involvemenl was lempered, however, by a concem for thoir physical and reproductive well-being. 'Sports for girls were encouraged so long as they were neither 100 aggressive nor tao competitive. Organizers were cautioned about the possible adverse efTects of strenuous activilies during puberty. care was 10 be taken 10 ensure normal menstruation patterns were established and maintained, and thal no damage occurred 10 the temale reproductive syslem.' Prenlice el al. Canadian Women, 250 ln The longesl Way Round, thase values are expressed. Winning seerns 10 be of no concem 10 the Woodycreslleam; MISS Tooke, the director of the school says, 'HeaIth, well-being and fine conducl are the only considerations in games al Woodycresl Hall. We will be bealen, of course, but if Miss Uppingham and Letty Bye who is the captain, bring the team through in good lamper and honest well-controlled play, without a single girl on the team baing either over-strained or sarry, 1shall be salisfied.' MacMurchy, The longes! Way Round, 218. 132

negative view of career women, so in order to avoid public censure, remains a • silent but involved partner in the affairs of the mine. Finally, Alayne, in The Master of Jalna, is a female character depicted in total opposition to her immediate environment. She finds the Whiteoak traditions oppressive and is observably out of step with the rest of the family. Young Wakefield points this out by comparing his love interest, Pauline, to Alayne in the following quotation: "She is far more suited to the life we lead than-well, Alayne, for instance.,,'24 Despite being the wife of Renny, the master of Jalna, she seems to exert little influence over the affairs in her own home. Piers feels Alayne should have more influence with Renny, saying, "It's your show, and your kid's show, as weil as his. He should have been made to feel that."125 Despite her apparent powerlessness, Alayne loves Renny with a passion, and naively or not, believes in their future together. Nona, Gail, Letty, and Mimsie ultimately live the lives of their choice. In othe:;r instances, the characters sotten their rebellious stands and find fulfilment within the limitations imposed upon them. Lucien, for example, accepts her marnage, and Mary Immaculate, in the end, does marry Philip as expected, but in her own time and of her own accord. Alayne, despite her troubles, puts renewed faith in her future with Renny Whiteoak. Marcile, by becoming involved with Roger Memton might manage to combine mamed Iife and her involvement in the mine, as it was an involvement they both would share. Agnes happily embarks on a new life with Jack Reed which she knows holds many challenges but many possibilities. Other characters find only f1eeting contentment and their stories end in tragedy. Isabel, Hannah and Jenny cannot, by force of will, overcome the o!:lstacles which differences in background and class create in their respective love affairs. Yet, il is in the response of the femaJe characters to

,.. de la Roche, The Master of Jalna, 143. • '25 Ibid., 293. 133

restrictions and through their choices in terms of work and marriage that the • feminist element in these novels is expressed. *** What has been explored in this chapter is the "public" message conveyed by these women authors despite the "private" contexts of their fiction. They endorsed or challenged politica! and social trends through their fiction. The socialism of the CCF, for example, can be read in Ethel Chapman's emphasis on community cooperation. Also, eugenic notions about the importance of birth and attitudes of ethnic intolerance permeate many of these works. These views are often ultimately rejected however, as in Vima Sheard's Below The Salt. Finally, these authors convey feminist messages, not for the most part, by portraying their female characters in untraditional "public sphere" roles, but through the choices these characters make in their private lives.

• CONCLUSION These canadian female authors were, in many respects, a marginal group • during the 1930s. The financial benefits of writing fiction in the underdeveloped Canadian publishing market of the time were questionable. While Mazo de la Roche was undeniably popular and other authors in the group received some positive critical attention, one gets the sense that the work of women such as these was often dismissed as "feminine" or sentimental. "Women's writing" was not seen to lend itself to realism at ail. That Irene Baird, whose work Waste Heritage is gritty, realistic and political, was criticized for being a woman writing in a man's genre, confirms that gender could affect a work's reception. This gender bias supports Patricia Smart's suggestion that even in the act of writing, women subvert the social order which is based on the male writing canon. It has been suggested that the Depression was a period of retrenchment during which women's recent gains made were being lost. Women, particularly married women, for example, were encouraged to leave the paid workforce and give men priority in terms of acquiring paid labour. Out of economic necessity, however, single women continued to work outside the home. These novels reflect this pattem of Canadian women working before marriage, and treat the isolated career woman with considerable ambivalence. Ann Sevem in The Homesteaders is portrayed as being shallowand materialistic for choosing to work as a joumalist in the city, and, a1though MarcHe St. Lambert in The Gnome Mine Mystery represents a positive portrayal of a business woman, she is depieted as exceptiona!. Essentially, work outside the home and marriage are presented as divergent paths for women in these novels. When one interprets the "personal is political" slogan Iiterally as Wayne Fraser does, however, there is no reason not to examine these works of fiction, many of them domestic in emphasis, for evidence of women's role in canadian society. Domesticity was an important goal for women in the 19305, but its fulfilment did not necessarily preclude a public role for women. This message is conveyed most clearly in Ethel Chapman's novels, particularly through the • charaeter of Mrs. Joliette, the "châtelaine" of the domestic sphere, in The 135

Homesteaders. Moreover. the merits of domesticity are not presented uniformly • by these women authors. Although most of their women charaeters marry, some choose passionate affairs over the "security" of marriage. For others, such as the main character in Lucien, marriage is not depicted as the safe haven of dominant discourse. Similarly. motherhood, rather than being idealized in these novels, is generally neglected. Baird, in Waste Heritage, undermines the domestic ideal by suggesting that the economic crisis of the Depression prevented young women trom realizing the dream of marriage and motherhood. These novels are social documents trom the 1930s. They can help to shape the way subsequent generations, such as ours, understand the period. Certainly, by reading them one leams a good deal about the Depression period. The economic crisis has been seen to affect work, courtship, and marriage pattems and to fan fears of "iIIegitimacy" in a society hostile to single motherhood. One can also see the way in which the competing philosophies of determinism and behaviouralism were influencing the authors and the works which they produced. These novels contain evidence of the "rise of the expert" in Canadian society through their presentation of the "good" doctor figure. The impact of the educational campaign of healthcare professionals, particularly in the area of pre­ natal care and childbirth, is reflected in the concems of Ethel Chapman's characters. Evident also. in this collection. is the persistence of the traditional birth culture in rural and outport communities in Canada which suggests that Canadians did not yet have equal access to medical attention in the 1930s. Beyond simply mirroring trends, however, these women authors challenged the prevailing social mores through their women characters. their presentation of contemporary issues, and through their choice of topics. This is clearest in the rejection of marriage and the "domestic ideal" by certain charaeters, but it is evident aise in the lovers and husbands chosen by other women charaeters. This challenge can aise be read in the reforming zeal of the charaeters in Chapman's novels who want to build and shape the future based on values that are less • hollow to them than birth right or money. It :s evident in the partial repudiation of 136

nativist sentiment and of prescribed gender roles in Irene Baird's writing of the • highly political Waste Heritage. This was viewed as a "man's" novel at the time. The authors in this surJey were influenced by their times in unique and individual ways. As Gwethalyn Graham points out. women in the 1930s were conditioned to believe that the one natural choice in a woman's life was marnage and motherhood. But women in the past, as today, did not accept every prescribed standard and meet it. They also, as June Underwood suggests. interpreted and redefined prescribed gender roles, and, in some instances, simply rejected them.

• • APPENDIX: STORY SUMMARIES Below the Salt by Virna Sheard. Setting is Northumberland, Ontario. It tells the story of a proud and prosperous farmer named Marcus O'Sullivan who, though born in Canada, attaches great importance to his Irish ancestry and to his family's success homesteading in Canada. His household consists of his aged mother, his son Shannon, his orphaned nephew Bob, his two beautiful daughters, Kathleen and Gail, and his mute housekeeper Phyllis. Although his children love him, he is a strict patriarch who is unable to let go of old world values. For example, as a mark of their lower station, he seats his farm hands at the family table below the salt cellar that his father brought trom Ireland. The conflict of the story arises when the youngest daughter, Gail, falls in love with a recent immigrant trom the Basque area who bought the property next to O'Sullivan. Because of his prejudices and because he wanted the ne:ghbouring property for himself, O'Sullivan resents their arrivai and tries to hê.ve them run out oftown. He literally imprisons Gail in her room to prevent the two lovers trom meeting. Phyllis, who it turns out is actually Gail's real mother, whom she bore out of wedlock, helps the lovers communicate. O'Sullivan is furious and threatens to tell Gail the truth of her "iIIegitimate" birth. Phyllis shoots him. O'Sullivan seems to recognize the error of his ways. He claims he shot himself by accident and condones Gail's match on his deathbed.

Cold Pastoral by Margaret Duley. Setting is Newfoundland. The main character, Mary Immaculate, is the daughter of a poor fisherman and his wife and is brought up in a society which is both deeply religious, and superstitious. Born on a skiff during a storm, Mary is marked for a special future trom birth. In her early teens, after being lost in the woods, or rather being "held" by the little people of the woods, she is taken to a hospital in St. Johns where she meets and is later adopted by the young Dr. Philip Fitz Henry and his mother. A1though only thirteen, Philip loves her and intends to wait for her to grow up in order to marry her. Mary is very beautiful and intelligent and has an almost animal love of nature and life that puzzles her new family. They go to great lengths to protect Mary, and to teach her the behaviour which fits their higher station in Newfoundland society, but in the process overprotect and alienate her from others her own age. Looked down upon in school - she is called "bay noddy" - she has only one friend, Tim. Together they hide away in the garden as if it were a world of its own. As they grow older their innocent play gradually tums into innocent love. Philip discovers they have been meeting, and, wrongly assuming they have been lovers, in a fit of jealous rage tums Mary out of the house. Out of desperation Mary and Tim marry that same night, but she is hurt and confused and runs away from Tim, who gets into a car • accident and dies. It becomes obvious that this tragedy is due in large part to 138

the tact that not only had Mary been misjudged, but she was brought up ln such • a sheltered way and spent so much time trying to conform to the rules, she h:ld not been given the frcedom to find out about Iife or make her own decisions. Philip reluctantly gives her freedom. The story ends with Mary, as an adult now, deciding to marry Philip after a lengthy absence from the home in St. John's.

Crosscuts by Jessie Garden Smith Riordan. Setting is Loughborough Inlet, Vancouver. Kathleen Evans is the naive and loving wife ofthe slick Robert Evans who leaves her to go to Vancouver where he invests her money in the logging company of Buck MacAulay. There he becomes involved with a married woman named Grace Bond. Her husband, Frank, dies and shortly thereafter she gives birth to a baby girl who is clearly Robert's chi/do Kathleen, pining for her distant husband, against Robert's wishes, follows him to the Inlet and begins living with him. He continues his affair with Grace while at the same time wooing wealthy Marion Bryant in Vancouver. She is a rich woman who loves him dearly and to whom Evans has pretended to be Buck MacAulay, his partner, in order to trade on Buck's good name in the logging business. To make a long story short, Kathleen, after much time spent in ignorance of her husband's trysts and in lonely isolation at the camp, cornes to know the truth. At the same time, however, she leams that she is pregnant with Evans chi/do For this reason she does not confront Evans immediately, but waits in order to reclaim her right to the money invested in the logging business. In this she has Buck MacAulay's help. When she does confront Evans with the news that she is pregnant he is furious. It causes a rift between he and Grace. For this reason, he lashes out at Kathleen and kicks her in the side causing her to lose the baby. Marion Bryant dies and leaves her entire fortune to Buck MacAulay. Of course, this makes the real Buck wealthy, not Evans. Evans bad fortune and bad behaviour result in his own death. After a fist fight with Buck, he tries to escape his troubles but the skiff he takes out capsizes in a storm. Buck and Kathleen are together in the end. Grace ends up a reformed mistress who feels remorse now for having deceived her husband.

The Eyes of The Gull by Margaret Duley. Setting is Newfoundland. It is the story of Isabel Pyke who is thirty years old and unmarried al'ld who is basically a servant in her mother's home. She dreams about travelling to Spain, but does not have the money to make this dream a reality. One summer a dashing artist named Peter Keen rents a house nearby, which, according to the local folklore, is haunted by the troubled soul of Josiah Pyke, whose fiancée died giving birth to another man's child. Isabel and Peter have a secret love affair. When he leaves, he gives her the money for a trip to Spain, • but before Isabel can go, her mother has a stroke leaving her completely 139 helpless and dependent on Isabel. Sick and desperate in the face of her • shattered dream, Isabel wanders out to Peter's old house in the midst of a storm and dies there of pneumonia.

The Gnome Mine Mysterv :A Northern Ontario Mining Storv by Paul de Mar (Pearl Foley). Setting is Kirkland Lake, Northern Ontario. As the title the book IS a mystery story having to do with a gold mine in Northern Ontario called the Gnome Mine. It focuses on Roger Merriton and his quest ,0 find out who killed his uncle Austin Maxwell, a wealthy New York business tycoon whose death is taken by ail except Roger to be suicide. It turns out that Austin did take a serious beating in the market crash in October of 1929 but he managed to keep 1/2 interest in the Gnome gold mine in Ontario by buying $80,000.00 worth of shares in Roger's name. Roger therefore, is left with the task of running a gold mine, and discovering that this task and his goal of finding his uncle's murderer are related. There is a romantic sideline to the book in that Roger is engaged to Miriam Branscombe, the niece of Clyde Brent, a successful business man in New York. Brent, for reasons that become clear only at the end of the novel, does not want Roger involved in the gold mine and uses his niece to try to manipulate him. That is, unless Roger manages to become rich and successful as is not likely to be the case if he pursues this dry mine, he will not be a suitable husband to a woman like Miriam who is accustomed to luxuries in life. The lite in New York, however, comes to seem less and less appealing to Roger as he spends time in the North of Canada. His values come to be more synonymous to those of Marcile St. Lambert, his female partner in the mines and it is with her that he becomes involved at the end. As it turns out, rather than being good friends, Clyde and Austin had been in a bitter battle over control of the mine and Clyde had attempted to take advantage of Austin's recent financial losses to gain the upper hand finally. Acting behind the veil of a clique offinanciers collectively known as the Cresswell Syndicate, Clyde tried to drive the mine to bankruptcy. He was also responsible for false reports as to the mines potential and to withholding assay results that would have shown the mine as a winner. Ali this becomes known in the end when Claude Miroux, alias Richard North, lets it be known that a swindler wanted in the States known as Max Whitely but going under the alias of Stanley Scranton had killed Austin Maxwell because Maxwell had evidence against Scranton for previous crimes. Clyde had incriminated himself, however, by not admitting to having seen Austin on the night of the murder and by keeping in his possession the fingerprint evidence. Marcile helped North put the pieces together by overhearing a conversation between Scranton and Brent in which the former is blackmailing the latter into appointing him Vice-President of one of his companies. This he feels is fair payment for the phoney report on the mine that Scranton signed, and for Scranton to conceal the fact that Clyde visited Austin on the night of his death • and was concealing the fingerprints. 140

• Give Me My Robe by Ursula Leigh. Setting is Alberta. This is the story of 3 young girl named Hannah McLeod whose parents died when she was very young and who was taken in and raised by Steve Sanderson. They lived in a small shack on the prairies. She did the cooking and the cleaning and he was very proud and protective of her. In particular, he tried to protect her from the men she would meet out there. It was as if she was being saved for something "better" in the future than he was able to offer her. Steve dies of cancer at the very beginning of the novel and Hannah goes to their neighbours, the Duncans, for solace and assistance. With Mr. Duncan making advances towards her and Mrs. Duncan jealous, Hannah decides to leave Iife on the prairies, although a permanent home with the Duncans is offered. She goes to town, but is thrown trom her horse and after walking the rest of the way, winds up napping on a packing crate in the local brothel. Evelyn Dawson, a man who works on a surveying camp, carries her to his room and lets her sleep there. She ends up taking a job as cook at the ail men camp because she has always preferred to work for men. She becomes Evelyn's wife. Although Hannah is madly in love with Dawson, her heritage presents a problem for his family. She commits suicide rather than bring disgrace on him.

The Grafted Twig by Allistene Starkey. Setting is Crestland, a small island off Nova Scotia; Nova Scotia according to Canadian Catalogue of Books. This is a combination romance and morality tale. It centers on Kerria Willet, a girl trom New York whose mother died when she was quite young, who comes to a small island off Nova Scotia named Crestland to inherit the house her Aunt Hattie left to her. Aceording to a stipulation in the will, however, Kerry has to live in the house for three months before she can sell il. Hattie's idea was that by staying in the house, Kerry would be reintroduced to the simple values and community values that dominate the small town, and would choose these over what she perceived to be the more decadent and materialistic values of the city. She believed that although her late sister left the island, her niece could be brought back. Ted Southwick, a neighbour, is the love interest. but as with most love stories there are obstacles to overcome before the couple can be together. These include differences in values. Ted tries to teach Kerry to be more community minded, Jess selfish, and less snobbish while Kerry initially snubs Ted because she mistakenly thinks that he is the local handyman while he is in fact a Doctor. She becomes as close to a Crestlander as she can and by the end of the novel, Ted is satisfied witll her progress. His mother was never a complete insider, and so on some level, Kerria's sophisticated ways appeal to him. They become engaged. • 141

Hill-Top by Jessie L. Beattie. Setting is Rural Ontario • This is the story of a young girl named Mary Margaret, Mimsie for short, who lives with her father, Donald Ross, sickly brother, Josie, and her Mother, Adelaide. :t is Adelaide who creates the conflicts in this story. Her religious convictions are so uncompromising that she prevents Mimsie trom many of the simple joys of childhood, including laughing and singing. Dr. Hugh Fleming, however, overhears Mimsie singing to herself in a farmers field and along with the school teacher, whom he marries, makes it his business to heip Mimsie blossom and develop her musical potential despite her mother's strictness. For Josie, Adelaide's ascetic mothering style means that an iIIness he is suffering trom worsens until a dangerous operation is required to make him weil again. Basically, in Adelaide's piety there is no strength. She lets her family down when they are most in need of her.

The Homesteaders by Ethel Chapman. Setting is Northern Saskatchewan. Is the story ofa young couple, Mary and Peter Shoedecker, who, in order to escape drought conditions, move trom Southern Saskatchewan to a northern settlement called Poplar Hill. The story is really about the growth of their settlement into a real ;,community with a church and a hospital. It is a place built on the simple values of honesty and cooperation between neighbors.

Laugh in the Sun by Amy J. Baker. Setting is Banff. Two young sisters working as beauticians in England end up being taken under the wing of an elderly woman client named Dame Caroline Norton. She used to live on a ranch by Lake Ontario and has fond memories of Canada. She ends up sponsoring Agnes Brook on a trip to Canada to a hiking camp at Sulphur Mountain near Banff and introducing her sister Fanny to her future husband. The story is a romance. Both women marry at the end, each taking different paths in lite but both spared the drudgery of working in a beauty salon.

The Longest Way Round by Ma~orie MacMurchy. Setting is Hiawatha Harbour. Tells the story of Letitia Bye and her widowed mother, Sylvia Bye who are separated when Letty is 14 because her mother has to go to a hospital out west to work as a housekeeper. Letty lives with her Aunt Lilian in a IOOging house owned by a cantankerous old woman named Mrs. Trant. She becomes best friends with her neighbours, the Blanhammers. Their household, run by Mr. Blanhammer's sister, Alinda, is in disarray since Mrs. Blanhammer's death, and Mr. Blanhammer is away most of the time on a logging site. Later in the novel, Mrs. Bye takes over as housekeeper which brings her close to Letty; later still, she becomes house mistress at WoOOycrest Hall where Letty gces to school. • The Longest Way Round is really about Letty. She is a strong girl with a goOO 142 character, who is always ready to sacrifice her own needs in the interest of • others. This is exhibited early in the story when shn stops attending school in order to take private tutoring with Mary Blanhammer 0; a way of helping to nurse Mary, who is suffering from sorne iIIness which saps·. .strength, back to health. Although she is industrious and helpful, her secret w.. is to be able to live with her mother in their own home, without having to share r with the Blanhammer children or with ail her school friends as she has a~. ys had to. This wish cornes true at the end when Mrs. Trant wills her small house to them, in appreciation for their kindness.

Lucien by Vivian Parsons (Lajeunesse). Settings are Trois-Rivières, Magloire, Montreal This is the story of Lucien Charbonneau, the daughter of Marie and Leonce Charbonneau. It is set in Trois Rivières, time frame is unspecified. The novel is not, however, shaped by the Depression. The characters are farmers and while sorne are better off than others, depressed economic conditions are not explicitly a factor. The focus of the novel is really Lucien's powerlessness against the wishes of her father, her husband and society more generally. Lucien's birth is not celebrated by her father who desires sons to help him on the farm. When the sons he hopes for do begin to arrive, Lucien's place in the household is even less enviable. She works harder than is fair and only grudgingly allowed to attend school at ail. Against the wishes of her mother, a sympathetic but equally powerless character who dies after a bad fall carrying a stillbom baby, Leonce Charbonneau promises his daughter to an older man, Estien La Tendresse whose wealth and position would mean profit for Charbonneau himself. Lucien is prevented from marrying Pierre, her childhood friend and true love, and feels that she was nothing short of sold into marriage. Pierre, however, is forced to f1ee Trois Riviêres and pursues his education in music, always thinking he will retum for Lucien. She plods along in her empty marriage, dreading the attentions of her husband, yet at his jealous mercy. She becomes a bitter disillusioned women. She abandons her church and withholds her love from not only her husband but from her two boys. When Pierre does retum sorne six years later she considers leaving her home with him, but realizes the damage running away with a married woman will do to his career. She decides that the best thing she can do is leam to accept and enjoy her Iife as it is. • 143 The Master of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche. Setting is Ontario. • This nover continues the Jalna saga of the sprawling Whiteoak clan. In this instalment, financial difficulties assail Renny, the master of the house. The fina!1cial stress is exacerbated by a feeling of being under seige. Haughty and zealous about their estate, Renny in particular feels threatened by the taking down of trees around the bend from the manor in order to put up bungalows, and is appalled by Maurice and Meg, his brother-in-Iaw and sister, when they consider subdividing and selling parts of the Whiteoak land for profit. By the end of the novel, these measures are no longer necessary. Renny has remortgaged the house to cousin Sarah, brother Finch's future wife, and the death of Aunt Augusta, though genuinely lamented, gives Uncles Nicholas and Ernest the financial ease they crave. The book ends with the manor house having been newly renovated, and the financial pinch over. On the personal side of the tale, Renny has engineered matte~ 50 that his mistress, Clara Lebreaux, lives on Whiteoak property; her daughter Pauline and his brother Wakefield are to be wed as are Finch and cousin Sarah. Finch is becoming an increasingly successful musician/composer, while brother Eden, who had an affair with his brother Piers' wife Pheasant, dies. Alayne is hopeful about her future as Renny's \Vife and the mother of their strong headed (;1.i1d named after and resembling the Jate matriarch of the clan, Adeline.

Rainbow at Night by Mary Graham Bonner. Setting is Nova Scotia. Rainbow at Night. by Mary Graham Bonner is set on Gulls' Cove, Nova Scotia. The characters are poor fisher people, marked for their brave acceptance of the hardships which living off the sea involves, as weil as for their unashamed acceptance of ail facets of human nature. One of the main characters, lan Blake, an aCl.:omplished New York pianist and composer, spends the summer at the Cove and comes to describe its natives as a people who are people given to "rough pleasures" as weil as "rugged bravery". This he concJudes after attending a dance at which the obvious lustfulness ofthe young and profanity of the young and old alike surprises him more than it does Jenny, his date. The focus of the story is on the relationship between Jenny Macdonald and lan Blake. She is a young woman from the Cove who, at the start of the story, is distinguished from her contemporaries in that she is sexually innocent. Rather, ail the emotion that she feels is bound up with the elements of her environment. She refuses an offer of marriage from a local fisherman who she Iikes and respects because she does not love him. When lan Blake comes to the Cove she falls in love with his music and with him in a way that is so complete that it eclipses entirely her love of the Cove. The affair is doomed however, because their worlds are so far apart. Because Jenny is too proud to say how lost she will be without lan and because he cannot enllision giving up his Iife in the city or bringing her into it, he comes to believe that for the both of • them a beautiful passionate summer romance is the best that they can have. 144 This, for him, is enough. He writes her cheerful letters full of fond • remembrances of their time together and appreciation for the inspiration she gave him during his period of composing. She, however. suffers from a love for him that is as constant as the sea. The story, therefore, ends sadly. She loses her brother, Jamie, in a storm at sea and her mother. Margaree, to consumption and continues to live on with her father at the Cove although her life there has lost its beauty and color.

Waste Heritage by Irene Baird. Setting is British Columbia. The book focusses on the problem of unemployment during the Depression and on the sit-down strikes which were used by an organization of unemployed men to pressure the government into creating sorne kind of work program. The main character is Matt Striker. He is a man of about 23 years of age who has spent most of the Depression travelling from one province to another, not really welcome in any of them anymore. He has come to British Columbia to join the sit down strike as a last attempt to build a life for himself. The police and the strikers are adversaries in the book; Matt Striker's best friend Eddie was beaten so badly during a raid that he suffered brain damage and is so punch drunk that Matt has to make certain he does not get into further trouble. Thl~ strike is dissolved without achieving any tangible gains, and the story ends quite tragically when Matt, in the process of protecting Eddie, loses his control and beats a policeman to death.

The White Reef by Martha Ostenso. Setting is Vancouver Island. Action takes place in a small fishing village on Vancouver Island. There is a morbid kind of fatalism about the world view of the people in this closed community, and every thing that happens is understood in terms of Cove justice. The story centers on Nona, the daughter of Silas who has an affair with Quentin Wingate, the son of the rich packing plant owner, Edmund Wingate. Nona has a son. She and the boy, Si, live with her father, although she is ostracized from the social Iife of the Cove because of her "iIIegitimate" son. The only other person who supports her entirely is her old time friend Ivar and though they toy with the idea of marrying, a marriage of convenience does not appeal to Nona. The boy dies in a boating accident when he is six. At this same time, Quentin retums to the Cove, unaware he ever had a boy, and, he discovers, still in love with Nona. He is ashamed of the mistakes he made in his youth and determined to redeem the Wingate name which was sullied in the Cove not only because he jilted Nona, but because his father defrauded the Cove residents out of investment money in a phoney development scheme. In the end, Nona overcomes her bittemess, and realizes that in the hatred she has felt for • Quentin, there was sorne of the passion of love. They decide to be together 145 again, whether or not he manages to get a divorce from the woman he married • 6 years previously because of the family pressure he was under to do so. With Flame of Freedom by Ethel Chapman. Setting is Ontario. The book follows the fate of a group of teenagers, Honora Courtney, Ken Dalton, Phil Strong and Janet Strong, John Erskine, Allan Nelson, as they choose their paths in lite. Acres County, Ontario is a microcosm of a class society; there is Old Acres, The Ridge and the Mountain. The first area is peopled by a dwindling group of old gentility whereas the people on the ridge do not have a heritage of prosperous working farms and orchards but they can make a living, and the mountain people are poor and insulated. The socialism and reform tendency in this book is strongly expressed as is the need for these classes to mix. The story focusses on Honora who is a gifted teacher from the weil established family in Acreville, but who discovers that her parents were not married when she was born. She throws herself into her work in the mountain school, and eventually marries Dr. Allan Nelson, who shares her interest in improving their community and her optimism for the future.

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