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Title "Deficient in love-interest": The Sexual Politics of the Office in Canadian Fiction

Authors(s) Galletly, Sarah

Publication date 2012

Publication information Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses, 3 : 91-107

Publisher Universidad del Rosario

Link to online version https://revistas.urosario.edu.co/index.php/perspectiva/article/view/2167

Item record/more information http://hdl.handle.net/10197/11011

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Sarah Galletly* University of Strathclyde [email protected]

Fecha de recibido: 18 de marzo 2011 Fecha de aprobación: el 28 de febrero 2012. Para citar este artículo: Galletly, S. (2012). “Deficient in love-interest“: the sexual politics of the office in Canadian fiction. Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses No. 3, pp. 91-107.

Abstract working-girl literature of this era support Using the concerns of the period over and endorse the image of the indepen- female workers’ susceptibility to office ro- dent, hard-working, emotionally fulfilled mance and sexual harassment as a starting working woman? Or was women’s clerical point, this article will explore the depiction labour instead seen merely as another step of secretaries and stenographers in Grant in their ‘natural’ evolution from girls to Allen’s The Type-Writer Girl (1897) and mothers? This article will also uncover Bertrand Sinclair’s North of Fifty-Three whether the fictional office was presented (1914). It will examine the pressure to as a site of potential female growth and gain economic independence and personal autonomy, or as a hostile and dangerous autonomy through office work, alongside space where women should escape from as the need to conform to cultural ideologies, soon as possible for the safety of the home. which still argue for women’s destiny to be Key words: sexual politics, officer, Ca- centred on marriage and children. Did the nada, fiction

* PhD candidate, University of Strathclyde, Scotland.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 91 Sarah Galletly

Deficient in love-interest’: Palabras clave: políticas sexuales, ofi- the sexual politics of the cin, Canadá, narrativa. office in canadian fiction (1890-1920) Introduction Women’s work in the public sphere was Resumen frequently criticised at the turn of the Con base en las preocupaciones de la épo- twentieth century for the manner in which ca sobre la susceptibilidad al romance y such work allowed women’s bodies to enter acoso sexual de la trabajadora de oficina, the public sphere, thus leaving them open este artículo propone explorar la represen- to sexual advances from male employers tación de secretarias y taquígrafas en The or co-workers. Laura Hapke outlines the Type-Writer Girl (1897), de Grant Allan, common beliefs of the period about fema- y en North of Fifty-Three (1914), de Ber- le workers: “By rejecting the protection of trand Sinclair. Se mirará la presión para the home they were exposing themselves adquirir la independencia económica y to advances from co-workers and emplo- autonomía personal a través del trabajo yers; though their chastity was deemed en oficina. También, la necesidad de ajus- superior to men’s, their inferior powers tarse a ideologías presentes en la sociedad, of judgement would thus place them at que abogaban un destino predeterminado constant risk”.1 de matrimonio e hijos para la mujer. Se Through an exploration of Grant pregunta si el género de literatura working- Allen’s The Type-Writer Girl (1897) and girl de esos tiempos abogaba la imagen Bertrand Sinclair’s North of Fifty-Three de la mujer independiente, trabajadora y (1914), this article will engage with this de- emocionalmente realizada, o si el trabajo bate and highlight two tropes of Canadian de oficina era interpretado como un paso fiction in this period: the office romance natural hacia una evolución de niñas a and the predatory employer. It aims to de- madres. Este artículo también cuestiona termine the extent to which this potential si la oficina ficcional fue presentada como sexual threat is portrayed in these novels una ubicación de autonomía y potencial or whether, conversely, the fictional office femeninos, o si fue vista como un espacio acts as a site of employer/employee ro- hostil y peligroso del que debería escapar mance that ultimately removes the female lo más pronto posible para mantener la worker from the public sphere and safely seguridad del hogar. reinstalls her at home. By situating these

1 Laura Hapke, Tales of the Working Girl: Wage-Earning Women in American Literature, 1890-1925 (New York: Twayne, Publishers, 1992), 9.

92 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" novels within the larger context of contem- jobs as secretaries and stenographers rather porary debates about the conflict between than blue-collar jobs as factory workers or women’s domestic and professional roles, seamstresses. This was likely due to the fact this article will examine the pressures to that female clerical wages were relatively gain economic independence and personal high by female worker standards in this autonomy through office work, alongside period. Indeed, Lowe claims that by 1911, the need to conform to cultural ideologies 85 % of all stenography and typing jobs which still argued for women’s destiny to be were occupied by women.4 However, it is centred on marriage and children. also important to remember that these wo- Many historians and sociologists have men only earned 53 % of the average male focused on the apparent "feminisation" of clerical salary in 1901; tellingly, female the clerical sector at the turn of the twen- clerical workers were still only earning 58 tieth century. However, as Graham Lowe % of male salaries by 1971.5 makes clear in his study of the Canadian One of the reasons female clerical wor- administrative revolution, “Strictly spea- kers earned significantly lower wages than king, stenography and typing jobs were their male counterparts was because wo- not feminised; almost from their inception men were deliberately ghettoised into the they were defined as women’s work”.2 lowest ranking jobs, which fulfilled the The clerical sector was one of the fas- most repetitive and mechanical tasks. Ro- test growing female professions at the turn les such as type-writer and stenographer of century, expanding from 4,710 female were centred on the ability to continually clerical workers to 12,660, between 1891 copy and take dictation efficiently, without and 1901, and from 33,723 to 90,577, bet- necessarily understanding or engaging ween 1911 and 1921.3 Although this was with the intellectual content of the work. a period of mass immigration to Canada, Female clerical workers rarely had op- which led to a boom in population size, portunities to be promoted. Due to the the sheer increase in numbers over this assumption that most women would only period emphasises not only that more work for a few years before leaving their women were entering the workforce, but jobs to settle down and start a family, it was that they were actively seeking white-collar not deemed worthwhile to train women to

2 Graham S. Lowe, Women in the Administrative Revolution: The feminization of Clerical Work (Oxford: Polity Press, 1987), 74. 3 Ibid., 49. 4 Ibid., 53. 5 Ibid, 146.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 93 Sarah Galletly carry out the more senior and better paid agent Jack Barrow, intending to give up her supervisory and managerial office roles. stenography job and spend her days “[...] These suited employers could count on a mak[ing] the home nest cozy”.8 Here, Hazel continual, cheap turnover of female em- would appear to be internalising cultural ployees who would require limited training expectations about women’s ‘proper’ place and pay to carry out the least desirable being at home. In her study of American office roles before leaving to marry. As office culture at the turn of the twentieth Meta Zimmeck explains, “[...] providing century, Sharon Hartman Strom claims: work suitable for surplus women was not “[...] working in an office usually meant the same thing as opening the door to all cleaner, safer, steadier work, and a middle- forms of work to all women —that is to say, class environment appropriate for native- equal opportunity”.6 born status”.9 This would seem to suggest This practice of limited advancement that despite the limited opportunities for is illustrated in Bertrand Sinclair’s North advancement and low wages, secretarial of Fifty-Three (1914); the narrator informs work nevertheless provided a safe working us that the heroine Hazel Weir’s work “[...] environment and gave the worker a certain consisted largely of dictation from the ship- status not available to them in blue-collar ping manager, letters relating to outgoing occupations. consignments of implements. She was ra- One of the reasons why the figure of pid and efficient, and, having reached the the female secretary became so prominent zenith of salary paid for such work, she at the turn of the century was due to the expected to continue in the same routine general consensus that women’s bodies until she left Harrington & Bush for good”.7 were ideally suited to typewriting. As John However, it is important to note that Harrison argues in his 1888 typewriting Hazel herself feels no sense of injustice manual, the typewriter “[...] is especially in her lack of upward job mobility. She adapted to feminine fingers. They seem to begins the novel engaged to real-estate be made for type-writing. The type-writing

6 Meta Zimmeck, "Jobs for the girls: The Expasion of Clerical Work for Wome, 1850-1914," in Uequal Opportunities: Women´s Employmen in England 1800-1918, ed. Angela V. John, 153-77. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. 7 Bertrand Sinclair, ed. North of Fifty-three (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1914). http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/19510/19510-h/19510-h.htm. 8 Ibid., ch. 1. 9 Sharon Hartman Strom, Beyond The Typewriter: Gender, Class and the Origins of Modern American Office Work, 1900-1930 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 275.

94 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" involves no hard labour, and no more skill nificantly, professionalism– attached to than playing the piano”.10 the figure of the office working-girl that Typewriting was thus portrayed in the the working-class factory girl appeared to popular culture as a natural follow-on to lack. Thus, despite the often dull nature women’s previous associations with nimble of their work, the figures of the secretary fingers bred by both piano training and, of and the stenographer were still associated course, their work at the sewing machine. with images of adventure, glamour and Women –as the weaker sex– were also seen independence: they were “Dressed up as more malleable and submissive than with somewhere to go”. Two conflicting male clerks, leading contemporary critics images of the female clerical worker thus to argue that “[...] young women are more appear to emerge at the turn of the twen- contented with their lots as private secre- tieth century: was she an independent and taries, more cheerful, less restless, more to liberated young woman eager to explore be depended [upon], more flexible than her surroundings and her newly acquired young men. [The young woman is] more freedom, or was she instead a depressed, willing to do as asked, more teachable... intellectually-stunted drudge eager to es- than the young man”.11 The repetitive, cape the office through marriage? Or was mechanical roles which female clerks were she instead a hybrid figure: enjoying her usually given were similar to the ‘light ma- independence but still merely biding time nufacturing’ roles women held in the facto- until she could begin her “proper” work at ries: “The traditional association between home? And which of these different figures women factory operatives and repetitive were more prominent in the fiction? work also facilitated the identification of women with mechanised and routinized 1. Earning one’s "bread" and the clerking. Dressed up with somewhere to office romance go, the factory girl could be put to work Grant Allen’s The Type-Writer Girl (1897) doing assembly-line clerical work in the (written under the pseudonym Olive Pratt office”.12 Raynor) is often cited as one of the ar- However, as this quotation suggests, chetypal Type-Writer Girl novels of the there was a certain element of glamour Victorian fin de siècle. The novel charts and adventure –and, perhaps most sig- the adventures of young Juliet Appleton,

10 John Harrison, A Manual of the Typewriter (London: Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1888), 9. 11 "Pernin´s Monthly Stenographer" s. d., 1883. Leah Price and Pamella Thurschwell, Literary Secretaries/ Secretarial Culture (Hampshire: Ashgate, 2005), 46-47. 12 Strom, Beyond The Tipewriter, 174.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 95 Sarah Galletly who is forced to make her own living in of Canada (1976). Similarly, in a 1900 book Victorian London following the death of review of an Allen memoir, one Canadian her father. She begins working as a type- Magazine reviewer commented: “If Grant writer girl and, inevitably, ends up falling in Allen was not a Canadian, in the strict sen- love with her employer, Mr. Blank, whom se, the associations of his family with this she dubs her personal ‘Romeo’. However, country, and his own birth here, entitle us Allen’s novel strays from the traditional to a special interest in his personality”.13 office-romance with its ending: Juliet re- Allen’s novel opens rather abruptly fuses to marry her Romeo once she hears with the admission: “I was twenty-two and he is engaged to another woman; instead, without employment”.14 From its very be- she decides to return to the employment ginning, the novel thus makes it clear how market. necessary is Juliet’s work to both her physi- Grant Allen (1848-1899) was born near cal and economic survival in London. The Kingston, Ontario, spending his childhood struggle to find employment is made even in Canada. At the age of 13, he moved to more stark when Juliet explains to the rea- the United States with his parents, studied der: “I did not then know that every girl in for his degree at the University of Oxford, London can write shorthand, and typewri- taught in Jamaica for several years and, ting as an accomplishment is as diffused as finally, he settled in England in 1876. He the piano... however, a type-writer I was, was a prolific novelist and journalist; his and a type-writer I must remain”.15 fiction covers a wide range of genres, from Indeed, there are several points in the crime and mystery to more science-based novel when she struggles to pay her rent or narratives. He is perhaps best known today even buy herself a meal. One of her main for the controversial New Woman novel marketing tools to potential employers The Woman Who Did (1895). is the fact that she owns her own typing Although Allen never returned to Ca- machine, so when she is forced to pawn it nada (much like Sara Jeannette Duncan) in order to pay her rent, the extent of her and is largely considered an English author poverty and the need to work become even by adoption, he still holds a place in Cana- more evident. As she announces early in dian literary history, even garnering a short the novel on acquisition of a new post: “I biography in Carl Klinck’s Literary History could earn my own bread-butter doubt-

13 Edward Clood, "Review of the Grant Allen: a memoir". The Canadian Magazine 15 (4) (1900): 380. 14 Grant Allen, The Type-Writer Girl (Mississauga: Broadview Press, 2004), 23. 15 Ibid., 28.

96 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" ful. In the Struggle for Life I had obtained The pulpy youth ran his eyes over me as a footing”.16 Nevertheless, despite Juliet’s if I were a horse for sale... “That’s good perilous position, constantly on the verge enough”, he said slowly, with a side-glance of utter poverty, her humour and the ac- at his fellow-clerks. I had a painful suspi- tive imagination she regularly exhibits in cion that the words were intended rather her narrative prevent the story from being for them than for me, and that they bore read like a social-realist novel of the mid- reference more to my face and figure than nineteenth century. It is read instead more to my real or imagined pace per minute.19 as a “[...] mock-heroic journey towards employment”.17 A common concern of the period was The position that allows Juliet to earn the manner in which women’s bodies we- her bread is at a small law firm called Flor re being made public through their desire & Fingelman. She responds to a newspaper to obtain work and how this left women advertisement for a “Shorthand and Type- open to the perils of the male gaze. This writer (female)”.18 However, this position sense of being visually appraised, much as is notable less for the job itself –at which slaves once were, is continued in the chap- she only lasts four days before quitting– ter when she is brought to Mr. Fingelman, than for the portrayal of the interviewing whom Juliet refers to as Ahasuerus: “He process: perused me up and down with his small pig’s-eyes as if he were buying a horse, “How many words a minute?” he asked scrutinising my face, my figure, my hands, after a long pause. my feet. I felt like a Circassian in an Arab I stretched truth as far as its elasticity slave-market. I thought he would next pro- would permit. “One ninety-seven”, I ceed to examine my teeth. But he did not”.20 answered with an affectation of the preci- As Victoria Olwell has argued in her sest accuracy. To say “two hundred” were work on Allen’s novel: “She is constrained commonplace. to feel that she is not alienating and selling [...] labour –words per minute or hours per week– but that she is sinking bodily into

16 Ibid., 32. 17 Pamela Thurschwell, " Supple Minds and Automatic Hands: Secretarial Agency in Early Twentieth-Century Literature", Forum for Modern Languange Studies 37(2) (2001): 155-68. 18 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 28. 19 Ibid., 28. 20 Ibid., 31.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 97 Sarah Galletly the status of property”.21 Allen appears to once she is settled in her new post at Mr. be making the impropriety of such encoun- Blank’s publishing house, she still describes ters clear, emphasising the threat many her own labour in commodified terms: type-writer girls faced: being judged less “A table was set for me in Romeo’s own on their ability and more on their physi- room. I feared to invade that sanctum. ‘Am cal appearance. Whilst such tactics were I to sit right here?’ I asked. He smiled and highly discriminatory, the real peril of such answered: ‘Right there’. So I took my place hiring practices stems more from the po- under protest. Thenceforth, I was part of tential risk of sexual harassment which the the furniture of his study”.24 However, Juliet female office worker faced. However, Juliet appears happy to lower herself to the status is portrayed as being keenly aware of such of furniture –even initially questioning her threats, leaving her post when she begins eligibility to take on such a role– when it is to fear her employer’s interest is moving for someone she admires (her Romeo), su- beyond the merely professional: “He had ggesting a certain double standard at work not yet ventured anything rude to me, but within the text and perhaps even within I scented prospective rudeness in the way the experience of female clerical workers he watched me come in and out –the way themselves in this period. he beamed on me benignly, with his small It is important to note that it is not un- pig’s-eyes”.22 til half-way through Allen’s novel that the The other reason why Juliet leaves her “love-interest” emerges. This allows Allen post at Flor & Fingelman, after only a few to have Juliet comment self-reflexively on days, is due to her sense of boredom. Much her own narrative: “‘This story’, you say, ‘is of the recent criticism on this text has fo- deficient in love-interest’. [...] My dear cri- cused on the increased mechanisation and tic, has anybody more reason to regret that commodification of female labour at the fact than its author? I have felt it all along. turn of the twentieth century. This concern Yet reflect upon the circumstances. Ten is hinted at early in the novel when Juliet thousand type-writer girls crowd London remarks: “So I continued to click, click, today, and ‘tis precisely in this that their life click, like the machine that I was...”.23 Even is deficient [in] love-interest”.25

21 Victoria Olwell, “The Body Types: Corporeal Documents and Body Politics circa 1900," in Literary Secretaries/ Secretarial Culture, eds. Leah Price and Pamela Thurschwell (Hampshire, Ashgate, 2005), 48-62. 22 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 35. 23 Ibid., 35. 24 Ibid., 85. 25 Ibid., 73-74.

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Juliet therefore seems to be sugges- as Juliet discovers, referring to oneself as a ting that every type-writer girl is merely girl conveyed a sense of modesty and pro- biding her time until she meets her own priety that had great appeal to their (largely love-interest, the man who will make her male) employers? Finally, it is important truly fulfilled. It could also be seen as a to note how Juliet’s narration clearly diffe reflection by Allen on how romance narra- rentiates the hiring tactics of Mr. Blank tives affected readers’ expectations of their from those of Mr. Fingelman, emphasi- own lives. Juliet is awaiting her own love- sing how she “[...] was aware that he was interest because novels (such as the one she unobtrusively observing my dress and exists in) nearly always provide them. For appearance, not as Ahasuerus had done, Juliet, this process begins when she finds like a cross between an Oriental monarch an advertisement for a “Lady type-writer, and a horse-dealer, but like a gentleman with good knowledge of shorthand”.26 Con- of keen insight, accustomed to take things trasting this with the previous application in at a glance without disconcerting the for a type-writer (female), she explains to object of his scrutiny”.28 Thus, by treating the reader: “My theory is that a type-writer her with a level of respect in both his ob- girl should call herself a type-writer girl; servations and his advertisement for a lady, but that an advertiser should do her the Mr. Blank is set up for the reader as both courtesy to speak of her as a Lady Type- a good employer and also an appropriate writer, or something of the sort: certainly potential suitor. not as a (parenthetical) female”.27 Given the romantic relationship that The gender politics at work here are grows between Juliet and her employer, the especially intriguing, suggesting that wor- trend of referring to personal secretaries (a king-girls saw the necessity of diminishing role Juliet fulfils to a large degree when she their status and respectability by referring to takes up her new post inside her employer’s themselves simply as girls, but holding private office) as “office wives” becomes those employers who did them the honour oddly appropriate, especially given that, of calling them ladies in higher esteem than unknown to her, he is already engaged to those who did not. Perhaps due to their sta- another woman. Pamela Thurschwell re- tus as working women, they felt themselves fers to this trend: unworthy of the title of ladies? Or perhaps,

26 Ibid., 64. 27 Ibid., 75. 28 Ibid., 76.

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[...] the tricky disappearing act of the ideal Poverty emancipates. It often occurred secretary at the fin de siècle was two-fold: to me how different things would have to feminise the office, making it seem mo- been had my dear father lived and had re like the domestic space of the home –a I remained a young lady. In that case, I place apart from the strains of work; and, could have seen Romeo at intervals only, simultaneously, to make herself look like under shelter of a chaperon; as it was, no an unmarking medium, a straightforward one hinted at the faintest impropriety in conduit for the words and thoughts of her the fact that the type-writer girl was left employer, while in reality functioning alone with him half the day in the privacy to edit and improve those words and of his study.30 thoughts.29 Nevertheless, although their relations- This was one of the central tensions hip is able to develop into an inappropriate faced by secretaries in this period (and employer/employee romance due to the still, in part, today); the struggle to appear “improper” proximity they share for large insignificant and passive whilst still pla- periods of the working day, Allen’s heroi- ying an active role in editing their emplo- ne is also keen to emphasise that it is this yers’ words, so that they were fit for public admiration for him that helps make her a consumption. The position of the private better employee: “I wrote rapidly and well secretary or stenographer inside their –more rapidly, I think, than I had ever employer’s office was also significant, as it before done, and I knew why: he was a left them even more vulnerable to sexual R o m e o”. 31 Although her affection makes harassment (as Bertrand Sinclair’s North Juliet a better worker, it is also important of Fifty-Three highlights) or, in the case of to remember that if such a romance had The Type-Writer Girl, the opportunity to been fulfilled (the narrative ending with develop an employer/employee romance. their marriage instead of their separation), However, it is important to note that even she would still have been forced to give up the novel’s heroine is shown to be aware of her role, transitioning from “office wife” to the potential impropriety of their relation- actual wife and mother. ship and that it is only made possible due The novel’s ending –“For I am still to her reduced status as a type-writer girl: a type-writer girl –at another office”32–

29 Thurschwell, "Supple Minds", 158. 30 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 86. 31 Ibid., 77. 32 Ibid., 139.

100 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" has received a variety of different critical keen to emphasise Juliet’s potential do- responses. On a more positive comment, mestic ability and suitability for mother- critics have claimed that it is “[...] an en- hood: she worries about the dust at Flor ding truly liberated from the dictates of & Fingelman’s;37 criticises the anarchists’ conventional romance”,33 and that “Juliet gardening skills,38 and even tries to reform is ultimately a victor in the struggle for life, their kitchen during her brief stay, which but despite being the fittest to survive ... increases her “[...] vogue among the men because of her ethics she chooses not to be of the Community”.39 one of the women who carry on the race” .34 In fact, her decision to forsake her Ro- However, less hopeful critics have instead meo, who offers to break his engagement seen the novel as an example of “[The] to his fiancé, is largely based around her culturally-shared anxieties about the loss maternalistic desire to protect the young of modern women’s ability to bear children girl from heartbreak: “You shall not wrong because of the dangers of excessive educa- that child! ... Much as I love you, Romeo, tion”; Allen’s heroine ends the novel: “[...] not even for my sake will I allow you to smart and sassy, but significantly single”.35 wrong her. She is right and we are wrong; Here, Price and Thurschwell appear to be the years must count ... I will not allow you relating Allen’s novel back to his earlier to wrong her”.40 piece Plain Words on the Woman Ques- It can thus be argued that Allen’s tion (1889), which claimed that “Both in treatment of the "office-romance" for- England and America, the women of the mula is far from one-dimensional. Whilst cultivated classes are becoming unfit to be Mr. Blank clearly offers a more positive wives and mothers. Their sexuality (which authority figure than the lecherous Mr. lies at the basis of everything) is enfeebled Fingelman, the romantic relationship that and destroyed”.36 blossom between Juliet and Romeo is far However, I would argue that throug- from professional, especially given his hout the novel Allen appears especially status as an engaged man. However, it is

33 Arlene Young, Culture, Class and Gender in the Victorian Novel (Basingstoke: Macmillan,1999), 146. 34 Clarissa J. Suranyi, Introduction to The Type Writer Girl (Mississauga: Broadwview Press, 2004, 16. 35 Price and Thurschwell 2005, 9. 36 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 457. 37 Ibid., 35. 38 Ibid., 53. 39 Ibid., 55. 40 Ibid., 132.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 101 Sarah Galletly important to note that it is Juliet –not her a little more than fair play, in the struggle employer– who corrects such inappropria- for existence’”.41 te behaviour, breaking her ties with Mr. Thus, even if Juliet Appleton does ulti- Blank so he can fulfil his duty to another mately dream of the “St. George who will woman. This said Juliet’s Romeo is not de- come to rescue [her]” from her day-to-day monised in the novel, he is instead (much struggle and the fact that she remains fully like the heroine herself) characterised as prepared to “face the dragons”42 that one being caught up in circumstances and fa- must overcome in the life of a fin de siècle milial obligations he cannot fully control. type-writer girl, still make her an enjoyable It is also unclear whether Allen leaves Juliet literary figure, as well as one ripe for conti- significantly single, without a Romeo, and nued critical debate. thus without a way to fulfil her reproducti- ve potential (as expressed in Plain Words), 2. Female "office units" and the or such a decision instead of allow him to lure of the Canadian wilderness offer an alternative future for the Type- Bertrand Sinclair’s novel North of Fifty- Writer Girl, outside the confines of the Three (1914) follows the journey of young conventional romance genre. Hazel Weir from her stenography job in It is also important to remember that the Eastern city of Granville to her even- this love-interest does not even enter the tual settling out West in the Canadian wil- narrative until almost half-way through the derness and marriage to the woodsman, novel; its early focus remains solely on the Roarin’ Bill Wagstaff. Unconventionally, adventures and perils of the city for those they met when Bill essentially kidnaps in search of employment. Allen obviously Hazel after she gets lost in the woods. He had great affection for the urban working- refuses to take her back to the nearby sett- girl, even if he did enjoy poking fun at her; lement but tells her she can come with him he even admitted in Plain Words: “[Whilst to his home further north. After a winter, the] ‘self-supporting spinster’ [was] ‘a de- she is released by him, but, unsurprisingly, plorable accident of the passing moment’, while she was his captive, she falls in love his contemporary society ‘ought to remove with him and also develops great affection all professional barriers, to break down for the wilderness, ultimately turning her the absurd jealousies and prejudices of back on civilisation to raise a family with men, to give her fair play, and if possible him and live off the land.

41 Grant Allen, "Plain Words on the Woman Question," Fortnightly Review 52, (1889, October: 448-58. 42 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 26.

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Bertrand Sinclair (1881-1972) was Sinclair’s narrative instead seems to born in Scotland and moved with his fa- focus on highlighting the negative, mate- mily to Saskatchewan when he was only rialistic traits of urban office-work, when eight. However, at the age of fifteen he compared to the (in his mind at least) moved further south, spending seven sea- far nobler roles men and women held in sons working as a cowboy in Montana. He the less hospitable environments of the returned to Canada in 1912, living briefly West: hunting, prospecting and generally in Vancouver (where he wrote North of providing a safe home environment to Fifty-Three), before finally settling in Pen- raise their children in. However, before der Harbour, B.C. this can be accomplished, Sinclair has to Western Canada remained a central characterise the urban office as a place of focus of his literature throughout his lifeti- economic corruption and sexual depra- me, as did his idealisation of the pioneering vity, something he achieves through the labourer who worked in harmony with the character of Mr. Bush, Hazel’s predatory Canadian wilderness. Nevertheless, Lind- employer. Although Hazel could be seen sey McMaster says: “[...] few of these works as naive in her unwillingness to unders- feature female characters as prominently tand her employer’s true intentions, her as does North of Fifty-Three, and none of response to them suggests that by the early them sold so well’.43 Indeed, the novel was twentieth century readers could expect so successful that it was even made into a their heroines to fend off these workplace silent film in 1917. advances themselves, without needing to Sinclair’s work is studied here to offer be rescued by a man. a contrast with Allen’s novel. The heroine In a vocational guide for young women of North of Fifty-Three works as a stenogra- published in 1910, Sarah Louise Arnold pher at the tale’s opening, seeing her work outlines the main distinction between the merely as a form of necessary drudge-work secretary and the stenographer: to support her until she can marry her fiancé Jack Barrow, a real-estate agent. For The ability to deal easily and pleasantly this reason, there is very little of the sense with the various persons with whom one of adventure and independence we associa- is brought in contact is indispensible to te with Juliet Appleton’s quest to earn her the secretary. Invariably courteous, gentle, daily bread and seek out her future ‘Romeo’ cheerful, tactful, sunny, courageous, opti- at this novel’s start. mistic, she creates the atmosphere of the

43 Lindsey McMaster, Working Girls in the West: Representation of Wage-Earning Women (Vancouver: BC press, 2008), 8.

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office... While serving as stenographer, she with utmost truth—that Miss Weir was is merely the channel for the message, and a capable stenographer.45 her own personality for the time being is lost in the impersonal act.44 Hazel is thus immediately dehumani- sed, reduced to the status of an undiffe- Thus, as Arnold outlines, the personal rentiated office “unit” during her working secretary was required to convey a certain hours, her worth measured only by her effi- amount of “personality” that was not ne- ciency. When asked what “sort” of girl she cessary for the more mechanical work of is –a question that could bear upon many the low-grade stenographer, whose sole differing character traits—, she is again purpose was to act as a “channel” for the defined only by her professional status as transmission of information within the a ‘capable stenographer’. By presenting the office. Sinclair draws on this perception of workplace as a site of female disempower- stenography as an “impersonal” profession ment –Hazel is only one of many similar from the very opening of his novel when “units”– from its very opening, the novel characterising urban female employment: portrays Hazel’s work as something that must be endured, without any redeeming Dressed in a plain white shirt waist and benefits for one’s personal well-being and, an equally plain black cloth skirt, Miss ultimately, something to be escaped for Hazel Weir, on week days, was merely a the more appealing professions of wife unit in the office force of Harrington & and mother. Bush, implement manufacturers. Neither However, although she jokingly refers in personality nor in garb would a casual to herself as a “pore wurrkin’ gurl”,46 in the glance have differentiated her from the novel Hazel is portrayed as being reasona- other female units, occupied at various bly well-off. She has no dependents and desks... The measure of her worth there easily lives within her means; the lack of is simply the measure of her efficiency parental influence allows her to be free to at her machine or ledgers. So that if any choose her own future husband. member of the firm had been asked what In fact, the narrator is keen to emphasi- sort of a girl Miss Hazel Weir might be, se that whilst emancipated from the office he would probably have replied—and realm: “Miss Weir then became an entity

44 Sarah Louise Arnold, "The College Woman as Secretary," in Vocations for the Trained Woman, ed. y Agnes F. Perkins (Boston: Educational and Industrial Union, 1910), 203-204. 45 Sinclair, North of Fifty-Three, ch. 1. 46 Ibid.

104 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" at which few persons of either sex failed scandal. Nevertheless, despite her lack of to take a second glance”.47 It is only when responsiveness, it is not long before Bush one of her employers, Andrew Bush, sees feels compelled to admit his feelings to her her outside the offices of Harrington & by asking her to marry him one afternoon Bush walking with her fiancé that he takes without any forewarning: notice of her and offers her a more privi- leged role as his personal stenographer. As Perhaps I’ve surprised and confused you the narrator notes, “There was an air of by my impulsiveness, [he continued] but quiet in the private office, a greater luxury I’ve had no chance to meet you socially. of appointment, which suited Miss Hazel Sitting here in the office, seeing you day Weir to a nicety”.48 However, it is with after day, I’ve had to hold myself in check. Hazel’s removal from the public sphere of And a man only does that so long, and no the stenography pool to Mr. Bush’s “private longer. Perhaps right now you don’t feel office” where she leaves herself open to one as I do, but I can teach you to feel that of the most common threats at the office: way. I can give you everything —money, sexual harassment. social position, everything that’s worth Early, into her new post as Bush’s pri- having— and love. I’m not an empty- vate stenographer, Hazel notices signs headed boy. I can make you love me.50 of his affection when he starts bringing flowers to the office for her benefit: “Hazel Unlike the slow-burning and mutually accepted the tribute to her sex reluctantly, assured office romance of Juliet and her giving him no encouragement to overstep Romeo, Bush’s advances are wholly one- the normal bounds of cordiality. She was sided. He concedes the impropriety of such absolutely sure of herself and of her love a proposal by admitting he has been unable for Jack Barrow”.49 Thus, given her status to meet her “socially”, and that he had tried as an engaged woman, Hazel feels herself his best to hold such feelings “in check”. safe from the potential threat that Bush’s However, most telling in this exchange is romantic gestures might have on a more his apparent awareness that his affections emotionally susceptible employee, but are not shared but that he can convince her is equally keen not to encourage Bush in to see him differently –to make her love any way for risk of causing office gossip or him—. In fact, he is so sure he can win her

47 Ibid. 48 Ibid. ch. 2. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 105 Sarah Galletly over that he even tries to kiss her, causing female vulnerability to male sexuality. It is Hazel to act rashly to assert her unwilling- thus still presented as a place that the fe- ness to give in to his advances: male worker should escape from as soon as possible, ideally for the safety of the home. He kissed her; and Hazel, in blind rage, Due to her skills and experience, Hazel freed one arm, and struck at him man fas- is swiftly able to secure a stenography post hion, her hand doubled into a small fist. at another local firm. However, when Mr. By the grace of chance, the blow landed on Bush becomes injured in a horse-riding his nose. There was force enough behind accident and later dies, he leaves her a large it to draw blood. He stood back and fum- sum of money which causes great public bled for his handkerchief. Something that interest and suspicion as to the nature of sounded like an oath escaped him. their working relationship. Hazel stared, aghast, astounded. She Female propriety and innocence were was not at all sorry; she was perhaps a trifle still greatly valued at this time, a woman’s ashamed. It seemed unwomanly to strike. name being one of her most prized posses- But the humour of the thing appealed to sions, and also something easily tarnished her most strongly of all. In spite of herself, through slander and gossip. Bush asserts she smiled as she reached once more for earlier in the novel: ‘If you drive me to it, her hat. And this time Mr. Bush did not you will find yourself drawing the finger of attempt to restrain her.51 gossip. Also, you will find yourself unable to secure a position in Granville. Also, you In successfully fighting off such ad- may find yourself losing the—er—regard vances, Hazel epitomises the image of the of this—ah—fortunate individual upon working-girl as a woman who could fight whom you have bestowed your affections; her own battles when the need arises. She but you’ll never lose mine”52. His claim is shocked by her own actions but does not seems to hold true, as Hazel’s new emplo- regret them, even finding the “humour” in yers soon dismiss her without any explana- them. Nevertheless, despite Hazel’s asser- tion and her fiancé Barrow disbelieves her tion of female independence in fending off reassurances that there was no relationship Mr. Bush’s advances, the office itself is pain- between her and Bush. Despite her claims ted in Sinclair’s novel as a site of potential of innocence she is shunned by the local

51 Ibid. 52 Ibid.

106 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" community and many of her friends, finally time, readers were supposed to find such deciding to start afresh out West. behaviour despicable, especially his later However, even out West, in the remo- plot to ruin Hazel’s name by leaving her te post of Cariboo Meadows, B.C., issues his inheritance. surrounding Hazel’s dubious reputation Nevertheless, as modern readers we persist. When she is kidnapped by Roarin’ cannot ignore the fact that Sinclair’s in- Bill Wagstaff, her first worry is again for tended romantic hero, Bill Wagstaff, all- what the locals will make of her being alo- but-kidnaps the novel’s heroine under the ne in the woods with a man: “If we wan- assumption that he is attracted to her and der around in the woods much longer, I’ll that, given time, she will reciprocate his simply be a sensation when I do get back feelings. Although he does not actually to Cariboo Meadows. I won’t have a shred argue: “I can make you love me”55 like Mr. of reputation left... You’re a man, and it’s Bush, his tactics and endgame are ultima- different with you. You can’t know what tely the same. However, unlike Mr. Bush, a girl has to contend with where no one he states: “I’m going to play the game my knows her”.53 way. And I’ll play fair. That’s the only pro- However, it could also be argued that mise I will make”.56 Thus, as readers we are through losing every shred of her repu- meant to forgive Bill his crude romancing tation, Hazel becomes emancipated from tactics due to his determination to “play the social mores that she associates with fair” and never force himself upon Hazel. her previous urban lifestyle. Bill takes Whilst such wooing methods might her North into the Canadian wilderness, seem misogynistic to modern readers (as where such matters of reputation and does his tendency to refer to Hazel as “little scandal become irrelevant, allowing her p e r s o n”, 57 Sinclair justifies Bill’s roughness to reconstruct her identity and femininity through the narrator’s declaration: “In her along new lines. heart every woman despises any hint of the During his attempted proposal, Mr. effeminate in man. Even though she may Bush claims: “I’ve never failed in anything decry what she is pleased to term the brute I ever undertook, and I don’t care how I in man, whenever he discards the domi- fight, fair or foul, so that I win”.54 At the nant, overmastering characteristics of the

53 Ibid., ch. 8. 54 Ibid., ch. 1. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., ch. 8. 57 Ibid., ch. 11.

Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 107 Sarah Galletly male she will have none of him. Miss Hazel ping stone to her eventual profession as a Weir was no exception to her sex”.58 Thus, mother, the polluting influence of the Ca- for all her apparent independence and nadian office –as evidenced through Bush’s feistiness in physically repelling unwan- sexual harassment–, portrayed as a space ted suitors and travelling across Canada to be escaped from as soon as possible for on her own to find work, we are supposed the more gratifying and cleansing environ- to believe that Hazel ultimately desires to ment of the Canadian North. be dominated and made subordinate to a *** man, ideally her future husband. These novels would thus appear to Despite her initial post as a steno- suggest that the fictional office could act grapher, and her ability to defend herself as a site of potential female agency and physically (when required), Hazel Weir’s economic independence, but that this ultimate destiny would appear to be highly could only be achieved through the denial conservative and firmly entrenched in a of women’s inherent maternal instincts. In pioneer narrative, which still placed the Sinclair’s novel, from the outset, the office highest value on women’s roles as wives is perceived as a space to be endured only and mothers. In her study of the Canadian until the protagonist can be reinstalled into pioneer woman, Elizabeth Thompson her rightful place —at home—. argues that many authors felt the need to Conversely, whilst the failed office- “[...] rewrite and revise the definition of a romance of Allen’s The Type-Writer Girl feminine ideal so that it [became] compati- might appear to suggest that women could ble with a backwoods, Canadian setting”.59 choose to centre their lives around em- However, in the case of Sinclair’s novel ployment, instead of the household, Juliet I would argue that the author felt the need tellingly ends the novel “[...] still [as] a to deliberately reinforce the culturally type-writer girl –at another office”,60 forsa- prescribed feminine ideal: a woman with king her Romeo less out of a desire to work, the ability to be independent and self- than an unwillingness to hurt another sufficient, but who willingly chooses to be woman (Romeo’s fiancé). However, whilst subservient to her husband and prioritise his decision to deprive his heroine of a her role as a mother. Hazel’s work in the man might seem a form of eugenic plot- novel as a stenographer is merely a step- manoeuvring to appease a still largely

58 Ibid., ch. 7. 59 Elizabeth Thompson, The Pioneer Woman: A Canadian Character Type (Montreal and Kingston: McGill- Queen´s University Press, 1991), 24. 60 Allen, The Type-Writer Girl, 139.

108 Perspectivas Colombo-Canadienses • Vol. 3, 2010 (91-110) ISSN: 2011-6888-ISSNe: 2145-4523 "Deficient in love-interest" conservative readership (suggesting wo- her time was drawing nearer, even if at the men like Juliet are still an aberration rather fin de siècle a woman’s decision to choose than the norm), Allen’s obvious affection employment over marriage and a family for the working-girl perhaps suggests that remained unthinkable.

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