Canadian Romance at the Dawn of the Modern Era, 1900-1930
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University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository University of Calgary Press University of Calgary Press Open Access Books 2011 Hearts and minds: Canadian romance at the dawn of the modern era, 1900-1930 Azoulay, Dan University of Calgary Press Azoulay, Dan. "Hearts and minds: Canadian romance at the dawn of the modern era, 1900-1930". University of Calgary Press, Calgary, Alberta, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/48751 book http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives 3.0 Unported Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca University of Calgary Press www.uofcpress.com HEARTS AND MINDS: CANADIAN ROMANCE AT THE DAWN OF THE MODERN ERA, 1900–1930 by Dan Azoulay ISBN 978-1-55238-582-1 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org/content/view/17/33/ Glossary I have determined the meaning of these words mostly from their context – that is, from the many letters I used in my research – and, in part, from Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary and The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Tenth Edition. affinity: a true love; a soul mate bachelor: a man, usually unmarried, keeping house for himself, sometimes with other bachelors backward: shy; bashful; diffident benedict: a newly married man, after a long bachelorhood cap-setting: trying to ensnare or lure a man into marriage; hunting for a husband chaffing: good-natured teasing; joking around double up: to get married double-harness: married fall in with: to get to know (someone) flirting: leading someone to believe you have romantic feelings for him/her forward: bold, almost pushy fussing: caressing or kissing to get changed: to get married hitched: married in earnest about: to love (someone) jake: great; wonderful; terrific to jazz: to dance love-making: courting to make love: to profess one’s love for someone; to court 235 old maid: unmarried woman, at least twenty-three years old, who typically lives at home and cares for parents (reputed to own many cats as well) petting: caressing or kissing prude: a woman who conceals her romantic feelings or shows excessive reserve; who is standoffish, or has little contact, with men slow: not aggressive, bold, or determined enough in seeking a mate to spoon: older word for petting; to talk amorously spunk: courage in pursuit of romance to tie the knot: to get married to trifle: to toy with someone’s emotions; to flirt well-fixed: prosperous; well off 236 HEARTS AND MINDS No t es INTRODUCTION: WHY ROMANCE? 1 10 March 1913, p. 6. out partners and were therefore more likely to find a partner. 2 Exceptions include Paul and Audrey Grescoe, The Book of Love Letters: 5 In his Introduction, Ward states Canadian Kinship, Friendship, and that he draws “heavily on … the Romance (Toronto: McClelland & diaries and letters written and read Stewart, 2005); Charles Fisher, ed., by ordinary men and women,” but Dearest Émilie: The Love-Letters of this is an exaggeration in my view. A Sir Wilfrid Laurier to Madame Emilie few sentences later he concedes that Lavergne (Toronto: NC Press, criticisms such as mine “cannot be 1989); and my own collection, dismissed out of hand. For one thing, Only the Lonely: Finding Romance written records come from the literate in the Personal Columns of Canada’s population and their use inevitably Western Home Monthly 1905–1924 creates a bias toward the higher social (Calgary: Fifth House, 2000). Several strata” and that “even among the good collections of letters between literate, the papers of the noteworthy individual soldiers and their home- are more likely to survive than those front sweethearts during World War I of ordinary folk.” Ward, 5–6. have also been published. Perhaps the best is N. Christie, ed., Letters of Agar 6 The Importance of Being Monogamous: Adamson 1914 to 1919 (Ottawa: CEF Marriage and Nation-building in Books, 1997). Western Canada to 1915 (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2008). 3 Ward, Courtship, Love and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century English 7 Ibid., especially 6–9, 21–22, 27, Canada (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s 53–54, 78. Less convincing is Carter’s University Press, 1990). claim that inter-racial marriage was widely proscribed, by medical 4 Ward argues, for example, that experts, government officials, and the women’s “courtship territory” – that like. Not only does she provide few is, the physical spaces or venues in examples of this, but her observation which they were most likely to meet that the Territorial government tried men – was more circumscribed than to force white men to marry, rather for men, but this is illogical, for a than just live with, native women (to courtship space is, by definition, a ensure child support in the event of place where men and women could desertion) undermines the argument. interact; it would have to have Carter, The Importance of Being been equal for both sexes. What he Monogamous, 68–71. probably means to say is that men had more freedom than women to seek 237 8 Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape Canada, 1919–1939 (Toronto: Copp and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, Clark Pitman, 1988), 84 (quote). 1880–1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), ch. 5. 14 Baillargeon, “Beyond Romance: Courtship and Marriage in Montreal 9 Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: between the Wars,” in Strong-Boag, The Perils and Pleasures of the City, ed., Rethinking Canada: The Promise 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of of Women’s History, 4th ed., 205–19. Toronto Press, 1995). Strange’s book Baillargeon bases her conclusions on is an excellent source of information interviews with thirty women. on the efforts of middle-class purity crusaders in Toronto to protect the 15 Catherine Gidney, “The Dredger’s morality of working girls from the Daughter: Courtship and Marriage in “evils” of city life, but it addresses the Baptist Community of Welland, the issue of romance only indirectly, Ontario, 1934–1944,” Labour/Le mostly in its discussion of the Travail 54 (2004): 121–50. greater opportunities for private and 16 Suzanne Morton, “The June Bride unsupervised heterosexual interaction as the Working-Class Bride,” in Ian in the city. On the extensive efforts Radforth and Laurel Macdowell, of middle-class spokespersons to eds., Canadian Working Class History, protect the chastity of rural women 2nd ed. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars of the West in the same period, see Press, 2000), 408–25. Terry Chapman, “Women, Sex, and Marriage in Western Canada, 17 Silverman, “Women’s Perceptions of 1890–1920,” Alberta History 33, no. 4 Marriage on the Alberta Frontier,” (Autumn 1985): 1–12. in David Jones and Ian MacPherson, eds., Building Beyond the Homestead 10 Gidney, “Dating and Gating: The (Calgary: University of Calgary Moral Regulation of Men and Press, 1988), 49–64. Another brief, Women at Victoria and University though less useful portrait of frontier Colleges, University of Toronto, courtship and marriage – in 1880s 1920–1960,” Journal of Canadian British Columbia – is found in Jean Studies 41 (Spring 2007): 138–60. Barman’s Sojourning Sisters: the Lives 11 McPherson’s study is particularly and Letters of Jessie and Annie McQueen useful in pointing out the more (Toronto: University of Toronto forward and sexualized behaviour of Press, 2003), 66–85.