Mapping the Margins : The Family and Social Discipline in Canada, 1700-1975 [1 ed.] 9780773571853, 9780773526983

Citation preview

mappi ng th e ma r g i n s

Mapping the Margins The Family and Social Discipline in Canada, 1700–1975 edited by n a n cy c h r i stie a n d m i c h a e l g au v r eau

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston · London · Ithaca

© McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004 isbn 0-7735-2698-6 Legal deposit first quarter 2004 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-consumer recycled), processed chlorine free. This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp) for our publishing activities. Photographs on pages 25 (Mrs Campbell beside husband Colin’s grave, Fort Macleod, Alberta, 1906, na-3251-3) and 171 (Bachelors doing household chores at sod shack, Delia area, Alberta [ca. 1910– 1913], Bill Herzog, left, washing clothes, Roy Erbe churning and making bread, na-1789-4) are published courtesy of the Glenbow Museum. Photograph on page 269 is from Poverty in Canada: Report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty, 1971 (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971).

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Mapping the margins : the family and social discipline in Canada, 1700–1975 / edited by Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-7735-2698-6 1. Family – Canada – History. 2. Marginality, social – Canada – History. I. Christie, Nancy, 1958– II. Gauvreau, Michael, 1956– hq559.m36 2004

306.85′0971

c2003–906652–5

Typeset in 10/12 Sabon by True to Type

Contents

Acknowledgments Contributors

vii

ix

Introduction: Interrogating the Conjugal Family 3 Nancy Christie

broken fa mi li es Introduction 27 Nancy Christie 1 Gender, Family, and Mutual Assistance in New France: Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in Eighteenth-Century Quebec 35 Josette Brun 2 A “Painful Dependence”: Female Begging Letters and the Familial Economy of Obligation 69 Nancy Christie 3 Itineraries of Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal 103 Bettina Bradbury 4 Marginal by Definition? Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920 141 Peter Gossage

vi

Contents

bachelors and spi ns ters Introduction 173 Nancy Christie 5 The Invention of the Margin as an Invention of the Family: The Case of Rural Quebec in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries 183 Ollivier Hubert 6 The Peddler’s Tale: Radical Religion and Family Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry, 1804–1863 209 J.I. Little 7 “Old Maidism Itself”: Spinsterhood in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literary and Life-Writing Texts from Maritime Canada 235 Gwendolyn Davies 8 Matthews and Marillas: Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881 247 Michele Stairs

institutio ns a nd ma r gi na li ty Introduction 271 Nancy Christie 9 The Lunatic Fringe: Families, Madness, and Institutional Confinement in Victorian Ontario 277 James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli 10 Orphans in Quebec: On the Margins of Which Family? 305 Denyse Baillargeon 11 Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975 327 Suzanne Morton 12 Grizzled Old Men and Lonely Widows: Constructing the Single Elderly as a Social Problem in Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967 349 James Struthers Conclusion: The Family as Pathology: Psychology, Social Science, and History Construct the Nuclear Family, 1945–1980 383 Michael Gauvreau

A “Canadian” Bill of Rights

vii

Acknowledgments

The successful completion of every collective project is contingent upon the commitment and energy of the contributors. In this case, however, we have been inspired and sustained throughout by the extremely high level of interest, enthusiasm, professionalism, and sense of responsibility demonstrated by all the authors of this volume, whose work stands at the cutting edge of the modern sub-discipline of family history. Our first thanks and appreciation go to them for making the preparation of this book such an enjoyable undertaking. Nancy Christie would particularly like to thank Ollivier Hubert and James Struthers for their reflections on an earlier version of the Introduction, while Michael Gauvreau wishes to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Vice-President (Academic) of McMaster University, and the Deans of Graduate Studies and Humanities for their support for a conference held in the spring of 2001, On the Margins of Family/Aux marges de la famille, which launched this volume. We also deeply appreciate the responses we received from the anonymous readers for the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, whose queries and suggestions greatly improved the manuscript. As editors, we are particularly appreciative of the McGill-Queen’s University Press team for their ongoing commitment and support for new initiatives in scholarly publishing. Don Akenson, senior editor at the Press, Roger Martin, and Kyla Madden of the Queen’s end saw the manuscript through the assessment process with sound advice and patiently answered all our queries and concerns. At the Montreal end, Joan McGilvray, coordinating editor, in addition to her usual superlative job of supervising the editing of books, took a special interest in this project and prodded us towards crafting a more reader-friendly manuscript. Elizabeth Hulse, truly a marvel in the copy-editing com-

viii

Acknowledgments

munity, carefully navigated among texts covering three centuries and written in two languages to sharpen our thinking and our prose style. Any remaining errors and infelicities of style are, of course, our responsibility.

Contributors

denyse baillargeon is associate professor of history at the Université de Montréal. She has published numerous articles in women’s and family history, and she is the author of Ménagères au temps de la crise (Remue-ménage, 1991 and 1993), translated under the title Making Do: Women, Family and Home in Montreal during the Great Depression (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1999). She is currently writing a new work on infant mortality and the medicalization of motherhood in Quebec between 1910 and 1970. bettina bradbury is associate professor of history at York University. She is the uthor of Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (McClelland and Stewart, 1993), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize of the Canadian Historical Association and the Harold Adams Innis Prize. She is also the editor of Canadian Families: Selected Readings (Copp Clark, 1992). josette brun is assistant professor in the Département d’information et de communication at the Université Laval in Quebec City, where she teaches media history. She did her PhD dissertation (Université de Montréal, 2000) on conjugal life and widowhood in eighteenthcentury New France. She also has a bachelor’s degree in communication, a few years’ experience in journalism and public relations, and a master’s degree in history (Université de Moncton, 1988 and 1994). nancy christie is a former Webster Fellow in the Humanities at Queen’s University and has taught at the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg. She is the co-author of A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canda,

x

Contributors

1900–1940 (1996), which won the Harold Adams Innis Prize, and the author of Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (2000), which was awarded the Sir John A. Macdonald Prize of the Canadian Historical Association. She is also the editor of Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (2002) and co-editor of Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940–1955 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003). She is currently preparing a monograph on the history of the family in nineteenthcentury Canada. gwendolyn davies is currently dean of graduate studies and associate vice-president, research at the University of New Brunswick. A member of the English Department, she has published studies on Atlantic Provinces literature, including four authored or edited books. michael gauvreau is professor of history at McMaster University. He is the author of The Evangelical Century: College and Creed in English Canada from the Great Revival to the Great Depression (1991) and co-author of A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 (1996), which won the Harold Adams Innis Prize. He is the co-editor of Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940–1955 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), and the author of a forthcoming monograph on Catholicism and the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. peter gossage is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quebec with research interests in family life and demography. He is preparing a monograph on the history of remarriage and stepfamilies in Quebec from 1866 to 1920 and is an associate professor of Canadian history at the Université de Sherbrooke, where he has taught since 1993. His book Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999) was awarded a Clio Prize for regional history by the Canadian Historical Association. Peter Gossage was also co-editor of the Canadian Historical Review from 2000 to 2003. ollivier hubert is assistant professor in the department of history at Université de Montréal. His research centres on the concepts of honour, reputation, and sociability in pre-industrial Quebec. He is the author of Sur la terre comme au ciel: La gestion des rites par l’Église catholique du Québec (fin XVIIe – mi XIXe siècle), published in 2000 by Les Presses de l’Université Laval and awarded the Prix LionelGroulx by the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française.

Contributors

xi

jack little is chair of the Simon Fraser University History Department. He has written a number of studies on gender, the family, and religion in the Eastern Townships, his most recent book being Borderland Religion: The Emergence of an English-Canadian Identity, 1792–1852, to be published by University of Toronto Press in 2004. james moran teaches in the history department at the University of Prince Edward Island. His recent publications include Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity, the Asylum, and Society in NineteenthCentury Ontario and Quebec (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), “Dangerous to Be at Large? Folie et criminalité au Québec et en Ontario au 19e siècle,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 10 (2002), and “The Signal and the Noise: The Historical Epidemiology of Insanity in Antebellum New Jersey,” History of Psychiatry 14 (2003). He is currently co-editing a book with David Wright entitled Mental Health in Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives to be published by McGillQueen’s University Press. suzanne morton teaches Canadian history at McGill University and is the author of Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a WorkingClass Suburb in the 1920s (1995) and At Odds: Gambling and Canadians, 1919–1969 (2003), both published by University of Toronto Press. mat savelli is an undergraduate research assistant at the History of Medicine Unit, McMaster University, and an honours student in the History Department. He is currently working on a cihr-funded major research project analyzing the historical epidemiology of mental disorders and the confinement of the “insane” in nineteenth-century Ontario. michele stairs teaches history and politics at Niagara College. She is completing her PhD at York University. james struthers is a professor in the Canadian Studies Program at Trent University. He is the author of No Fault of their Own: Unemployment and the Canadian Welfare State, 1914–1941 (University of Toronto Press, 1983) and The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920–1970 (University of Toronto Press, 1994). david wright holds the Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at McMaster University and is currently an associate professor in the Department of History and the Department of Psychiatry and Behav-

xii

Contributors

ioural Neurosciences. He has published four books on the social history of mental health and psychiatry, including, most recently, a volume edited with the late Roy Porter entitled The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800–1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). He is currently the principal investigator on a cihr project researching the historical epidemiology of mental disorders in Canada c. 1850–1900 and co-investigator (with Professor John Weaver) of a sshrc-funded project exploring the history of suicide in Australia and New Zealand.

Introduction

mappi ng th e ma r g i n s

1

2

Nancy Christie

Reconstructing Canadian Culture

3

Introduction Interrogating the Conjugal Family nancy ch ri s tie

This volume carries the striking image of two elderly female inmates of a Montreal church home. What combination of social, economic, and familial circumstances led to the exclusion of these particular women from their circle of kin relationships? Were they rendered marginal because their society had constructed a “structure of dependency”1 that stigmatized the elderly as deviant by virtue of their age and perceived lack of usefulness, or did these two women represent the aberrant minority – traditionally less than 10 per cent of the aged2 – who were placed in institutions? In many respects, the homelike atmosphere evoked in the photograph made these women an even more select minority of the population, by virtue of a combination of their gender and class; for as historians have demonstrated, elderly men and the poor were far more apt to be confined in workhouse-type environments and therefore explicitly segregated from “normal” social relationships.3 Were these women widows who had lost, upon the death of their spouse, their economic and social position, or were they elderly spinsters, whom Michael Anderson has categorized as the “residuum” in society?4 Were they forced, by a complete deficiency of kin support, into a reliance upon forging ties with unrelated individuals, or did these women seek out one another in preference to remaining in conflicted family scenarios? Did the cultural norm of familialism, which dictated the obligation to support dependent kin beyond the nuclear family, still obtain by 1921, the year this picture was taken, or does the experience of these women represent a new demographic and cultural departure, in which children left home earlier and their life choices

4

Nancy Christie

were guided more by calculations of individual interest? In short, do these women represent the cusp of modernity, in which one’s social relationships were defined more by associations of strangers than by connections with kin?5 The purpose of this volume is twofold. First, it seeks to examine the ways in which the family defined membership, dependency, and exclusion and, in turn, how it was the agent in articulating institutional and state constructions of marginality; and second, it explicitly sets out, through an examination of those who fell outside the demographic measure of the conjugal household, to test the prevailing historiographic assumption that the nuclear family was irrevocably normative in Western society. This volume explores, therefore, the historical experience of widows, spinsters, reconstituted families, bachelors, orphans, the insane, the elderly, and unmarried mothers in order to determine which conjunction of variables – gender, class, or socio-economic and marital status – combined to marginalize and stigmatize specific family members. And by so doing, the book advances the central theoretical proposition that the family must be conceived like any other set of social relationships, as a regulatory institution resting upon a system of unequal hierarchies of age, gender, and social status. To date, historians of the family have largely ignored what Ludmilla Jordanova has termed the “lesser figures” of the family6 – namely, widows, spinsters, orphans, and non-biological household members such as servants and apprentices – because of a preoccupation with uncovering the “normative” structuring of the family, which as demographers have shown, had achieved the nuclear form even in pre-industrial societies. The prevailing historiographic consensus among historical demographers of the Western family form is as follows: after 1770, traditional society, in which broader social identities were primarily formed within the family, had come to an end. And attendant upon these cultural and social changes, the family was irrevocably transformed into its modern, nuclear structure. Prior to the late eighteenth century, the family had been hierarchically organized and characterized by patriarchal control over female dependents, children, and servants within the household, in which there was an elision between public and private structures of authority. Thereafter, patriarchy was replaced by a contractual notion of the family in which its members functioned more or less as autonomous individuals whose freedom of choice was conditioned by the fact that children left home much earlier and therefore shed their sense of obligation to the older generation. This more modern family was defined by weak intergenerational links, a priority on individual choice exercised by children and youth, the exclusion of non-blood dependents, greater equality in the distribution of property

Introduction

5

through inheritance, and the rise of affectional, rather than economic, ties as the bond that ensured family stability. In short, around 1800, as Roger Schofield has concluded, there was a dramatic shift whereby social relations came to be predicated upon individualist, rather than familialist, criteria, and the loss of a collectivist, interdependent model of the family in turn engendered a crisis that shifted the burden of assistance from the family itself to the community through the erection of structures of state relief and public charity. This transformation redefined the family as a distinctly private entity hived off from the wider culture.7 Because this particular periodization of the emergence of the modern nuclear family form locates the dominance of community institutions as the primary determinant of social relationships, thus dissolving the importance of the family’s economic and social power, the proponents of the immutability of the nuclear family have marginalized it as a key historical agent. More significantly, however, for our purposes in this volume, the focus of this historiographic literature on the conjugal couple and its offspring and its tendency to approach the family as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as a set of complex social relations characterized by divisions of gender, status, wealth, age, and economic function, has generally either ignored the experience of those family members who occupy a role beyond the nuclear norm or labelled them as deviant. Within this historiographic trajectory, single women (and less so, single men) have been referred to as very marginal figures; households without married couples have been termed “defective,” while stepfamilies, though very common, given the high rates of both widowhood and remarriage in the past, have been defined by Peter Laslett as “ambiguous” families.8 The conclusions advanced by historians of women’s work have critiqued demographers for ignoring power relationships along gender lines within the family, but ironically, this scholarship has served largely to reaffirm the image of the “highly abbreviated nuclear family.”9 In approaching the historical problem of how workplace hierarchies have been translated into the family, historians of women’s labour prior to and during industrialization have focused their attention primarily upon the work of married women within the home. For the most part, these historians have concluded that the new valuation placed upon the waged labour of married women raised their status within their family and especially garnered them greater equality of power vis-à-vis their marital partners. While recent historians of the waged and the unwaged labour of women have critiqued this older scenario for underemphasizing both the changing work roles of single women and the unpaid work contributions of

6

Nancy Christie

married women within the household, they have likewise questioned the easy translation of one’s status in the workplace into power relations between husband and wife in the home. Mary Beth Norton, one of the foremost critics of the “golden age” interpretation of women’s work prior to industrialization, contends from the evidence in husbands’ wills that men did not recognize women’s economic contributions either inside or outside the home,10 while Joanna Bourke’s important work on housework in Ireland in the late nineteenth century has reversed the interpretive framework offered by historians of the emergence of separate spheres, such as Lenore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, who have esteemed the paid work of married women and thus viewed domesticity as a confining culture for women. Bourke questions the equation between the prevailing value placed upon paid labour and the social status bestowed on individual women, since women themselves saw their status in terms of the power they wielded in the home through efficient housekeeping and the raising of children.11 Although it is imperative to further explore the gendered complexion of the workplace, historians of women’s paid labour have tended, as have demographers, to overemphasize the individualism of labour at the expense of familial economic interdependence. Thus these scholars have taken as their focus the work of the conjugal couple and their immediate offspring, and have tended to evaluate women as either agents or victims solely in terms of their ability to work outside the home. Again, this approach undermines the agency of the family itself as an important locus of gendered power relationships. Finally, their theoretical framework revolves around determining the emergence of separate spheres, which associates masculinity with the public workplace and femininity with the private domestic circle. These historians, in extolling the culture of moral motherhood in the nineteenth century as a counterweight to the economic power of men,12 have inadvertently truncated the periodization of the patriarchal family in a way that converges with the timeline set forth by Peter Laslett, Lawrence Stone, and Philippe Ariès. While the inquiry into the status of female dependents within the family and their relationship to the male head of household is a crucial historical question, many of the contributors to this volume have expanded the concept of the family economy to include the transmission of property to widows and unmarried daughters and have thereby explored gendered dynamics within the family that include economic and social relationships with male kin beyond the primary breadwinner. For several decades, the nuclearity thesis has remained largely intact. However, recent scholars who have approached the question of

Introduction

7

the shifting boundaries between the family and the community – namely, cultural historians of the family, historians of welfare provision, and revisionist demographers themselves – have queried some of the major contours of the thesis. While most historians concede that the nuclear family form may have been a predominant one, they have critiqued Laslett’s use of demographic statistics which captured the experience of families only at isolated points in the life course. Historians who work from a life-cycle perspective and who insist upon longitudinal studies linking generations through time have found that all simple families have experienced a complex phase at certain times in the life course. For example, David Wright’s findings indicate that, for the most part, “idiot children” in Victorian England were kept within the family and cared for, and that their expulsion into asylums was dictated by life-cycle poverty. What Wright’s work on the asylums demonstrates is that historians need to pay close attention to the permeability of the family form between decennial censuses. The linking of institutional and demographic information, as welfare historians have done, reveals a greater frequency of complex families than the nuclearity hypothesis allows.13 Barry Reay and Philip Greven have shown that in both the United States and England, families may not have lived in extended stem households. By employing sources other than the census, they have concluded that extended families lived in near proximity and thus preserved close intergenerational bonds which, the demographic conceptual lens maintained, were irrevocably eroded after the eighteenth century by changes in the family economy.14 Thus during old age, widowhood, illness, and poverty, one could discover distant kin. Moreover, these kin may not appear in census data because they may not have lived in the same household. Historians, such as Pat Thane, who study the systems of cultural obligation and welfare relief for the aged in England have taken the demographers severely to task because they deem the household a toonarrow focus for analysis, one that may not have accorded with the prevailing cultural views of the family. For example, a widow may have lived alone but depended for her material and emotional sustenance upon a married daughter living in close proximity – what some historians have called “hidden kin,” whose existence can be uncovered through conceptualizing the family in ways other than those defined by census takers. More significantly, historians of aging, youth, and domestic service have undermined Laslett and Schofield’s contention that individualism overtook familialism and broke down intergenerational systems of obligation by showing that children did not leave home as early as has once been thought, and even those young men and women who were put out to service returned home

8

Nancy Christie

frequently. Moreover, historians of welfare and charity such as Pat Thane have shown that even after marriage, children felt a very strong sense of obligation to care for aged parents – so much so that a filial sense of duty often led to lifelong singleness.15 The historian of Ireland Timothy Guinnane, himself a demographer, has disputed the omnipresence of the Western family form as presented by the Cambridge school of demographers, and he has used an analysis of census and parish records to postulate a greater variability of the family form which shifted during the life course from nuclearity to complex households of both vertical and horizontal kin. Moreover, Guinnane’s approach reveals a much higher incidence of bachelorhood and spinsterhood and the consequent creation of reformed nuclear families in which brothers and sisters lived in family units that mimicked the gendered division of labour exhibited by the conjugal family. By emphasizing such individual’s economic and cultural role, Guinnane has effectively disaggregated the historical existence of a fixed family form,16 and in this way, his open-ended conceptualization of the family resembles that of Keith Wrightson. By viewing the family as an authority structure and thus a political system, Wrightson has critiqued what he calls “the anachronistic categorisation of nuclear, extended or multiple family types which we impose for our own analytical purposes.” Rather, he advances the theoretical proposition that the family is “a cluster of related and unrelated dependents living under the authority of a household head who was usually, though not always, an adult male.” For Wrightson, the family is a protean and constantly mutable entity whose major purpose is the formation of identity, sociability, and authority and which can thus include non-biological participants beyond the framework of the conjugal household.17 If revisionist historians of the family have queried the convergence between definitions of household and family that animate the demographic project, and indeed, have reassessed the meaning and interpretation of those socially constructed statistics, then historians of gender relationships and women’s property rights, by analyzing the way in which legal structures organized family relationships, have substantially reoriented the timeline in which familialism gave way to contractual individualism, and patriarchal forms of authority, both within and outside the family, receded in the face of gender egalitarianism prompted by the cultural rise of maternalism. Historians in the United States have linked moral motherhood and the consequent rise of egalitarianism within the family with the republican political tenets of the American Revolution, and in a similar fashion, French historians have situated the collapse of the hierarchical, patriarchal family in the nexus

Introduction

9

of the French Revolution.18 The simple equation that these historians have posited between political and social change and fundamental reorientation in the way the family was defined has come under some critical scrutiny from scholars who have problematized the intersection of economic, legal, and cultural dynamics in a much more nuanced way. Working from the perspective of the economy of the family – namely, through studies of credit relationships and domestic service – Craig Muldrew and Sarah C. Maza have questioned the direct penetration of market values into the family. For his part, Muldrew, through his study of the culture of credit in England, has recast the periodization of the rise of the “liberal, self-disciplined, autonomous self” by showing that, with the relative lack of public credit structures, the bonds of familialism were preserved well into the nineteenth century because kin depended almost exclusively upon one another for both credit and welfare assistance.19 Thus Laslett’s idea of the overshadowing of the family by the structures of community support and systems of public relief is stood on its head. Here, the social location of authority and, indeed, of capitalism itself as it operated in practice at the micro-level were a function of family networks. In a similar vein, Maza and Tim Meldrum assert that contractual relations did not immediately replace patriarchal social dynamics at the end of the eighteenth century. Rather, these historians, like Muldrew, have emphasized long-term continuities by insisting upon the persistence of rhetoric of patriarchy alongside the rise of waged labour. More significantly, they argue that the patriarchal household remained the key site for enforcement of the social order and cultural norms into the nineteenth century.20 Though historians agree that a rhetoric of domesticity emerged in the United States and elsewhere from the late eighteenth century onwards, historians of family law such as Peter Bardaglio have shown how the incipient egalitarianism implicit in the notion of moral motherhood was offset by a range of legal provisions that functioned to slow the permeation of individualistic and contractual ideas into family practices. Women were granted only very narrowly conceived rights over their property and over the education of their children even as late as the early twentieth century.21 What these historians remind us of is the need for specificity and the need to juxtapose normative prescriptions of family life against the actual experience of members within that structure. Thus Susan Staves, an historian of married women’s property in England, argues that the rise of the sentimental family did not lead either to the privatization of the family or to the undermining of patriarchy. Rather, she interprets the affectionate family as a constraining force on women, because it rendered them even more reliant

10

Nancy Christie

upon the goodwill of male relatives, who continued to have legal supremacy within the family.22 Within this interpretive framework, more “modern” middle-class ideologies are merely superimposed as a cultural gloss over an endemic system of patriarchal dominance. When it is read from the perspective of legal ideologies, rather than from cultural prescriptions or demographic norms, the primary conception of the family as an institution for preserving social order and, indeed, gender order retains a potency not simply in pre-industrial society but throughout the period of industrialization. According to Laslett’s paradigm, once the modern nuclear family form was established around 1770, its characteristics of individualism, weak kin networks, and inward-looking sentimentalism became ineluctably enshrined in Western culture. Such an interpretation followed from his assumption that, with industrialization and the concomitant crisis in the family, community and state responsibilities automatically expanded throughout the nineteenth century. However, his contention that industrialization radically transformed the economic integrity of the family has been largely overturned in the past two decades by the work of Tamara Hareven, Michael Anderson, and Bettina Bradbury. Anderson, in particular, has argued that far from upholding the nuclear family, industrialization increased family ties with wider kin, that larger numbers of non-related kin – namely, boarders, orphans, and servants – were taken into families, and that even after marriage, despite the fact that this occurred at increasingly early ages, because of the work patterns of married men and women, ties with parents were necessary for the purposes of child care. Onequarter of the Lancashire working-class families that Anderson investigated had kin in their households, and far from living alone, as Laslett and others contended, the elderly, especially women, often lived with their adult children, most notably their daughters, instead of seeking poor relief.23 Historical treatments of women’s work, such as that of Pamela Sharpe, have forcefully critiqued the “female marginalization thesis,” the belief that because industrial capitalism made women marginal to the workplace, this station was automatically translated into family relationships, creating a whole category of single women who lived outside the increasingly closed and exclusive nuclear family without support or connections.24 Similarly, David Vincent, in his cultural study of working-class autobiographies, critically assesses the English historiographic convention which, in his view, has unduly emphasized the timelessness of the notion of affective individualism. His working-class subjects evinced little desire to live alone, one of the supposed truisms of English family life, and though in times of poverty or illness, working-class families

Introduction

11

sought help first and foremost from the nuclear family, there existed an equally powerful system of obligation between both horizontal and vertical kin. In a telling critique of Laslett’s conception of an overweening system of community relief, Vincent shows that resort to institutional care was avoided at all costs and that the family remained the primary social unit in shaping working-class notions of identity, sociability, and economic self-sufficiency.25 And as the demographic work of Steven Ruggles demonstrates, this same pattern of extensive kin networks appears to have been a growing characteristic of middle-class families in both England and the United States.26 Where Ruggles has argued that the expansion of kin networks was due to the growing prosperity of the upper bourgeoisie, Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, in their examination of nineteenth-century Glasgow, contend that non-nuclear kin networks – in particular, the horizontal connections between nieces, nephews, aunts, and uncles – were more firmly entrenched by industrialization, reaching their peak in 1871, when 31.2 per cent of lower-middle- and working-class families encompassed such members.27 What the conclusions of these historians suggest is that during the nineteenth century the family was mutating and becoming more inclusive and permeable, rather than exclusive, a phenomenon that has particular resonance for the study of widows, single men and women, orphans, and other collateral kin. As the growing historiography of the impact of economic change upon family structure indicates, if one was a member of a working-class family in the nineteenth century, depending on variables such as one’s employment status, level of health, age profile, or gender throughout the life course, one could experience a variety of family forms, ranging from the simple nuclear to the complex. Thus, though one might inhabit a nuclear household as defined by census takers, one’s cultural and social world may be characterized by contacts with a range of kin, both close and distant. Indeed, as Wally Seccombe has recently argued, although the standard of living of English working-class families was beginning to rise between 1880 and 1914, the breadwinner ideal and its corollary, an exclusive nuclearity whereby familial reciprocity was no longer needed beyond the generations, was only fully achieved in the post–World War ii era.28 How do these historiographical trajectories translate into the social and cultural experience of new societies of settlement such as Canada? What was the boundary between the family and the collectivity in a society where there was an almost virtual absence of both state poor relief and charitable organizations and where welfare systems remained relatively weak until after World War ii? Through

12

Nancy Christie

his “nuclear hardship” hypothesis, Peter Laslett has posited a causal link between the prevalence of the nuclear family form and a dominant system of support by the collectivity. If we turn this equation around, what effect does a weak collectivity have upon the shape of family structures?29 And given the weakness of institutional frameworks for social control, did the family in Canada remain the primary site for ordering social and gender hierarchies?30 Further, what effect does the experience of immigration have upon kinship relations, especially when, as Donald Akenson has maintained, vast numbers of brothers and sisters travelled together to form what he has called “congeries of non-patriarchal families?”31 And if the immigration experience itself created transformed nuclear households composed of male and female siblings, which mimicked the more traditional gendered division of labour between husbands and wives, nuclearity was further compromised, for as immigration historians have collectively concluded, systems of familial obligation were so strong that they straddled vast distances. What effect did land settlement have upon the family economy? Did the availability of much relatively free land lead to the undermining of patriarchal control because sons had greater freedom of choice in establishing independent households, as David Gagan has maintained,32 or were older cultural forms translated almost unchanged into new economic crucibles, as Gérard Bouchard has suggested for settler communities?33 From another perspective, did immigration reinforce patriarchy because there were more youthful servants and apprentices in farm and urban households, as the letters of Sussex immigrants to Upper Canada make so abundantly clear,34 and the notion of in loco parentis was embedded in law? When combined with the urgent need for cheap labour, did this situation create greater opportunities for allowing “fictive” or non-biological kin – namely, child apprentices and servants – to be added to the nuclear base? For how long were these artificial families the norm in Canada, given the persistence of organized child immigration until the mid-1920s?35 Did the notion of familialism persist for a much longer period – perhaps beyond the 1920s as Kenneth Sylvester has posited – because of the limits of rural capitalism?36 For as the work of Lisa Dillon and T.W. Acheson has shown, not only did the persistent and ubiquitous reliance upon family rather than hired labour (only one in six families in rural Ontario in 1871 employed waged labour) keep adult children at home longer, but it also reinforced systems of family obligation in a context where the cultural practice of economic production remained within the family.37 In keeping with the findings of James Henretta and Toby Ditz, historians of the rural United States, Kenneth Sylvester has

Introduction

13

likewise concluded, through his study of inheritance patterns and economic production in rural Manitoba, that customary communal bonds and an emphasis upon the interdependent family, rather than individualism, were the predominant social characteristics of the families he studied.38 In short, the family remained the primary social and economic entity, and it tended to be patriarchally organized, despite the more equitable distribution of property among children. Moreover, this “premodern” family form rested upon a notion of communal work and property, a concept which, as Bettina Bradbury has so well elucidated,39 obtained even among working-class families at the height of industrialization and urban expansion. If, as Canadian historians have argued, the rise of the market economy was in full flower by the later decades of the nineteenth century, at least in central Canada, a central question remains: to what extent did notions of contractual social relations, individualistic notions of wages and labour, and the separation of public and private spheres of workplace and home attendant on this process actually reshape cultural customs within the family?40 And if familialism remained dominant at the expense of individual self-identity, what implications did this have for the way in which inclusivity and exclusivity were constructed for specific family members? Here, the experience of the Dougall family, who emigrated from Scotland to Canada in the early nineteenth century, is particularly illuminating and suggestive of the need to revise the notion that the traditional Western family form was simply imported wholesale into the Canadian settlement frontiers. First, this working-class family was not a completed family in the traditional sense, because it was headed by a widow who arrived with several adult children, who remained at home on the new family farm in Upper Canada. All the siblings contributed their labour to the farm, and thus their vision of the family was clearly one of economic interdependence and mutual obligation; though they participated in a market economy, they did not hire any waged labour, preferring to rely exclusively upon the family. Indeed, the first wage paid to a sibling was in exchange for working his brother-in-law’s farm while the latter was absent participating in railway construction. In addition, the female members of the family all went out to service, a custom of the old country that was imported into the new and one that reinforced hierarchical dependencies within families, as these young women came under the authority of other household heads. Although family members were geographically separated from kin beyond the nuclear core, the cultural relationships with extended kin, especially along horizontal lines, were reinforced by letters to an older brother who remained behind in Scotland.

14

Nancy Christie

Moreover, this family was extremely tribalistic, to such a degree that they labelled an unmarried brother a deviant not because he chose to remain single but, rather, because he insisted on clearing a farm that was distant from the rest of the family and because he chose to live alone without even a servant. Far from seeing the proclivity to living alone and its implicit individualism as a positive social asset, as Laslett has contended, the Dougalls not only viewed this as aberrant behaviour but, in fact, believed that it was the absence of kin relationships that had led a neighbour to madness and consequent incarceration in the local jail and asylum. Moreover, these family members had fully imbibed the prevailing cultural imperative of intergenerational obligation and kin support, for they helped to give a start in life to an unmarried niece (who later established her own business in Montreal), and the oldest sibling, who took over the original family farm, continued to live and care for the aging widowed mother. Indeed, the experience of this family with regard to child rearing was liminal, for while they had a nurturing concept of childhood, referring frequently to children and their toys, at the same time they viewed them as potential economic assets whose primary function was to care for their parents in their old age. Indeed, the example of the Dougall family reaffirms the conclusions of both Gérard Bouchard and Toby Ditz that, as farmers became more capitalistic, family practices did not exhibit contractual or individualistic characteristics supposedly dictated by the free market economy.41 Instead, traditional customs of parental control were preserved, and a sense of filial duty remained the central bond between the generations. The major flaw in the trajectory of the changing relationship between family and society outlined by historians of family structure and culture, principally those inspired by the work of Laslett and Ariès, is the propensity to interpret the family as simply a repository of private affection and emotional bonds, as an institution bereft of inequalities and relationships of power and discipline, and thus to abstract it from the wider nexus of social and economic exchange. The theoretical approach adopted by the essays in this volume is to conceive of the family as an entity analogous to other social institutions. Hence the family must be seen primarily as a political institution as fundamental to the creation of social codes and social identities, which functioned as a mediating structure between private and public interests. Rather than viewing social categories as the creation of what would once have been considered the exclusively public domains of work, institutional regulation, and state-generated ideologies of citizenship, which posit the family as a generally passive receptacle for the imposition of these values and practices, we should view the family as

Introduction

15

having agency and as an active instrument for the articulation of the languages of marginality.42 Thus it is critical to recognize that gender roles and one’s sense of status, deference, and social obligation, as well as one’s economic valuation and dependency, are formed primarily by the regulatory functions of family relationships.43 While publicly constructed ideologies necessarily penetrated the culture of families, it was the everyday performance and application of these values within the experience of family relationships which gave ultimate meaning to those prescriptive codes of behaviour. Moreover, as the essays in this volume indicate, to understand the growth of the state in Canada, it is necessary to begin, not with the gaze of public regulatory institutions, but the ways in which changes in conceptions and experiences of the family itself determined and shaped the parameters and pace of those very state interventions, a perspective that takes into consideration the extent to which quasi-familial relationships impregnated the ideologies and practices of public social policy. Indeed, the state often sought to reaffirm, rather than replace, normative familial bonds.44 Due consideration should be given to the fact that, prior to the state policing families, the family was one of the primary social institutions that constructed notions of public order.45 The family must be seen as a social body for regulating behaviour and as a primary locus for the social construction of marginality and deviancy, especially in a society such as Canada, where institutional frameworks remained relatively weak well into the twentieth century. One of the central purposes of this volume, therefore, is, by examining the penumbra of the Canadian family, to discern the changing boundaries between simple and complex families, the balance between economic and emotional ties and its impact upon definitions of dependency, the relationship between family needs and the growth of public and state institutions, and the very periodization of the rise of modern values in Canadian society. Whether we should view the Dougall family experience as a representative one or as a survival of traditional cultural practices that were soon to change will be addressed through the questions posed by the contributors to this volume, who by studying census data, literary evidence, wills and inventories, state policies, diaries, and family letters, consider the juxtaposition of cultural and legal prescription, economic context, and lived experience in order to map the changing contours of marginality within the Canadian family. The essays in this volume seek to provoke new interpretations that place the culture of the family at the centre of narratives of social history, as integral to the articulation of social identities and to the process of state formation. Indeed, any historical elucidation of the transition towards modern social practices must begin with the study

16

Nancy Christie

of the form and function of the family, for as these essays show, far from being divorced from the ebb and flow of history, it was a fundamental determinant of the pace of social change.

no tes 1 Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2. On age as an important variable in building models of social relations, see J.A. Sharpe, “Disruption in the Well-Ordered Household: Age, Authority, and Possessed Young People,” in P. Griffiths, Paul Fox, and Steve Hindle, eds., The Experience of Authority in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 189. 2 James Struthers, “‘A Nice Home-Like Atmosphere’: State Alternatives to Family Care for the Aged in Post–World War ii Ontario,” in Lori Chambers and Ed Montigny, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Scholars Press, 1998), 335–51; Thane, Old Age in English History, 2. 3 Stormie Stewart, “The Elderly Poor in Rural Ontario: Inmates of the Wellington County House of Industry, 1877–1907,” in Chambers and Montigny, Family Matters, 417–36; Margaret Pelling, “Old Age, Poverty and Disability in Early-Modern Norwich: Work, Remarriage and Other Expedients,” in Margaret Pelling and Richard M. Smith, eds., Life, Death, and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 19; Timothy W. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 62. On the combination of gender, class, and health considerations leading to institutionalization of the elderly, see Sherri Klassen, “Old and Cared for: Place of Residence for Elderly Women in Eighteenth-Century Toulouse,” Journal of Family History 24 (Jan. 1999): 45–6. 4 Michael Anderson, “The Social Position of Spinsters in Mid-Victorian Britain,” Journal of Family History 9 (winter 1984): 392. For a diverging view, see Amy Froide, “Old Maids: The Life-Cycle of Single Women in Early Modern England,” in Lynn Botelho and Pat Thane, eds., Women and Aging in British Society since 1500 (London: Longman, 2001), 89–110. 5 On the persistence of familialism with regard to care for the elderly, see J.G. Snell, The Citizen’s Wage: The State and the Elderly in Canada, 1900–1951 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); Suzanne Morton, “Elderly Men and Women in a Halifax Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s,” in Joy Parr and Mark Rosenfeld, eds., Gender and History

Introduction

17

in Canada (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1996). In his examination of the allocation of family property, Kenneth Sylvester concludes that the 1920s represented the beginning of the emergence of modern familial relations. See Kenneth Michael Sylvester, The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870–1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Jean E. Friedman has argued that one of the primary signs of modernity is a preference for association with strangers rather than with kin. See Jean E. Friedman, The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830–1900 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), xii. For the persistent elision between family and state, see Struthers, “‘A Nice Home-Like Atmosphere.’” On the demographic change in the twentieth century, see Robert V. Wells, “Demographic Change and the Life Cycle of American Families,” in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotberg, eds., The Family in History: Interdisciplinary Essays (New York: Harper, 1971), 91. 6 Ludmilla Jordanova, “The Representation of the Family in the Eighteenth Century: A Challenge for Cultural History,” in Joan H. Pittock and Andrew Wear, eds., Interpretation and Cultural History (London: Macmillan, 1991), 112. 7 Roger Schofield, “Family Structure, Demographic Behaviour, and Economic Growth,” in John Walter and Roger Schofield, eds., Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 285–92. For adherents to this periodization of the rise of the modern family, see Peter Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love in Earlier Generations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Alan McFarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Production, 1300–1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); Keith Wrightson and David Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (New York and London: Academic Press, 1979); Barbara Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Lloyd Bonfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601–1740: The Adoption of Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). For France, see most notably the work of Philippe Ariès. For an assessment of his work, see Patrick H. Hutton, “Late-Life Historical Reflections of Philippe Ariès on the Family in Contemporary Culture,” Journal of Family History 26 (July 2001): 395–410; Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and their Masters in OldRegime France (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984). For the United States, see Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle

18

8

9 10

11

Nancy Christie Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and Family in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Michael Grossberg, “Citizens and Families: A Jeffersonian Vision of Domestic Relations and Generational Change,” in James Gilreath, ed., Thomas Jefferson and the Education of a Citizen (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1999), 13–16. Laslett, Family Life and Illicit Love, 199–200; Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650–1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres? (London and New York: Longmans, 1998), 141; David Fitzpatrick, “Irish Farming Families before the First World War,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 25 (1983): 339–74. Schofield, “Family Structure,” 291. Mary Beth Norton, “The Myth of the Golden Age,” in Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton, eds., Women of America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 40–2. Joanna Bourke, Husbandry to Housewifery: Women, Economic Change and Housework in Ireland, 1890–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 266–9. For similar conclusions in the Canadian context, see Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993). For the more traditional equation of women’s paid work and status in the family, see Louise Tilly and Joan Scott, “Women’s Work and the Family in Nineteenth Century Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 1 (1975): 26–64; Bridget Hill, Women, Work and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth Century England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Bernard Capp, “Separate Domains? Women and Authority in Early Modern England,” in Griffiths et al., The Experience of Authority, 263. For a critique of this perspective, see “Introduction,” in Pat Hudson and W.R. Lee, eds., Women’s Work and the Family Economy in Historical Perspective (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 15; Gay L. Gullickson, “Love and Power in the Proto-Industrial Family,” in Maxine Berg, ed., Markets and Manufacture in 18th Century England (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 221–2; Mary Cullen, “Breadwinners and Providers: Women in the Household Economy of Labouring Families,” in Maria Luddy and Cliona Murphy, eds., Women Surviving: Studies in Irish Women’s History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Dublin: Poolbag Publishing, 1990), 85–116. The classic statement of the historical connection between the gendered division of paid work and the construction of a private sphere of domesticity has been made in Lenore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

Introduction

19

12 For a critical assessment of the historiographical trajectory of separate spheres, see Nancy Christie, “Introduction: Family, Community, and the Rise of Liberal Society,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 3–36; Janet Guildford and Suzanne Morton, eds., Separate Spheres: Women’s Worlds in the 19th-Century Maritimes (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1995). 13 On the life-cycle approach, see David Wright, “Family Strategies and the Institutional Confinement of ‘Idiot’ Children in Victorian England,” Journal of Family History 23 (April 1998): 202. Wright’s interpretive revisionism follows a new trajectory proposed by welfare historians of England. For a description of this historiography, see Nancy Christie, “A ‘Painful Dependence,’” in this volume. 14 Barry Reay, “Kinship and the Neighbourhood in Nineteenth-Century Rural England: The Myth of the Autonomous Nuclear Family,” Journal of Family History 21 (Jan. 1996): 96; Philip J. Greven Jr, Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1970), 15; Margaret Hunt, The Middling Sort (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 76. 15 Pat Thane, “Old People and Their Families in the English Past,” in Martin Daunton, ed., Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past (London: University College of London Press, 1996), 114, 133; D. Cooper and M. Donald, “Households and Hidden Kin in Early Nineteenth Century England: Four Case Studies in Suburban Exeter,” Continuity and Change, 1995, 257–78; Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 88, 135. 16 Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 97–105, 136–43. 17 Keith Wrightson, “The Politics of the Parish in Early Modern England,” in Griffiths et al., The Experience of Authority, 13. See also Naomi Tadmor, “Family and Friend in Pamela: A Case Study in the History of the Family in Eighteenth Century England,” Social History 14 (Oct. 1989): 295–6. 18 Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986); Joan Scott, Lynn Hunt, and Catherine Hall, “The Curtain Rises,” in Michelle Perrot, ed., A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War (Harvard: Belknap Press, 1990), 7–47; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes; Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies. In the Canadian context, this line of interpretation has been advanced most recently in Cecilia Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women: The Gendered Languages of Religion and Politics in Upper Canada, 1791–1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

20

Nancy Christie

19 Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 157. 20 Sara C. Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660–1750: Life and Work in the London Household (London: Longman, 2000), 34–67. For a discussion of the persistence of patriarchal relations in Canada, see Christie, “Introduction,” in Christie, Households of Faith. 21 Peter W. Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), xi, 23. See also Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Barbara Z. Thaden, The Maternal Voice in Victorian Fiction: Rewriting the Patriarchal Family (New York and London: Garland Press, 1997); James A. Hammerton, Cruelty and Companionship: Conflict in Nineteenth Century Married Life (London: Routledge, 1992). On the need to balance maternalist rhetoric against legal realities, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), chapter 1. 22 Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1833 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1990), 215, 221–3, 228. 23 Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 83, 143–8; Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Bradbury, Working Families; Thomas Sokoll, Household and Family among the Poor: The Case of Two Essex Communities in the Late Eighteenth Century and the Early Nineteenth Century (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1993). On extensive male kin networks, see Ginger S. Frost, Promises Broken: Courtship, Class and Gender in Victorian England (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 25, 77. Historians of the asylum have also questioned the equation between industrialization and the invention of institutions of social control. See, for example, J.K. Walton, “Casting Out and Bringing Back in Victorian England: Pauper Lunatics, 1840–70,” in W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepard, eds., The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and Society (London and New York: Tavistock Publishing, 1985), 135; Ann Digby, Madness, Morality and Medicine: A Study of the York Retreat, 1796–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Introduction

21

24 Pamela Sharpe, Adapting to Capitalism: Working Women in the English Economy, 1700–1850 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 151. 25 David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of NineteenthCentury Working-Class Autobiography (London: Europa Publishing, 1981), 46–7, 53, 66, 82, 92. See also Mary Jo Maynes, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers’ Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). 26 Steven Ruggles, Prolonged Connections: The Rise of the Extended Family in Nineteenth Century England and America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). For Canada, see Peter Gossage, Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 123–9. Although Gossage demonstrates that 70 per cent of families conformed to the simple household type, permutations increased near the end of the nineteenth century towards a complex family model. More complex families occurred among the bourgeoisie. For a similar phenomenon in rural Quebec in an earlier period, see J.I. Little, Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy, and Culture in a Quebec Township, 1848–1881 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), 106. 27 Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair, “Middle-Class Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Glasgow,” Journal of Family History 24 (Oct. 1999): 468–77. 28 Wally Seccombe, Weathering the Storm: Working-Class Families from the Industrial Revolution to the Fertility Decline (London and New York: Verso, 1993), 61–3, 205. For a similar conclusion, see Lenore Davidoff, “The Separation of Home and Work? Landladies and Lodgers in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century England,” in Leonore Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Essays on Gender and Class (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 174. 29 Peter Laslett, “Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the ‘Nuclear-Hardship’ Hypothesis,” Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 153–75. For the weakness and late development of state welfare structures in Canada, see James Struthers, The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920–1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994); Christie, Engendering the State. A study of the consequences of the absence of a poor relief system is much needed in the Canadian context. 30 This argument would suggest that E.P. Thompson’s notion of “household supervision” can be extended well into the nineteenth century in the Canadian context. For a discussion of this concept, see David Levine, “Production, Reproduction and the Proletarian Family in England,

22

31

32

33

34

35

Nancy Christie 1500–1851,” in David Levine, ed., Proletarianization and Family History (New York and London: Academic Press, 1984). Donald Harman Akenson, The Irish Diaspora (Toronto: P.D. Meany & Co., 1993), 179. Akenson has also stressed the strength of systems of obligation among immigrant families, as have a host of immigration historians who have studied family letters. See also Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nineteenth-Century America (Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1973), 286; Patrick O’Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia, 1825–1929 (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1984), 133, 503; David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994), 623; Stephen Fender, Sea-Changes: British Emigration and American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Walter D. Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Herbich, and Ulricke Somner, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992). David Gagan, Hopeful Travellers: Families, Land, and Social Change in Mid-Victorian Peel County, Canada West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981). Gérard Bouchard, “Transmission of Family Property and the Cycle of Quebec Rural Society from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century,” in Bettina Bradbury, ed., Canadian Family History: Selected Readings (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1992), 125–6. Bouchard’s view stands as a corrective to the earlier interpretation, derived from Philippe Ariès, of Louise Dechêne, who saw colonial society as comprised of “closed family units.” See Dechêne, Habitants and Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Montreal (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). Such a question does not even include the presence and persistence in many regions of Canada of Aboriginal family forms, which, in a number of respects, modified European family patterns. For a suggestive discussion, see Jennifer Brown, Strangers in Blood: Fur Trade Company Families in Indian Country (Vancouver and London: University of British Columbia Press, 1980). Wendy Cameron, Sheila Haines, and Mary McDougall Maude, eds., English Immigrant Voices: Labourers’ Letters from Upper Canada in the 1830s (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). William Day, “An Inquiry into the Poor-Laws and Surplus Labour and Their Mutual Reaction,” Quarterly Review 48 (Oct.-Dec. 1832): 330; J. Ewing Ritchie, To Canada with Emigrants: A Record of Actual Experiences (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1885), in which it was stated that Barnardo apprentices should ideally “be treated in every respect as children of the household.”

Introduction

23

36 Sylvester, The Limits of Rural Capitalism, 9, 153, 161. For a particularly informative study of proto-industrialization on Métis families in Western Canada, see Gerhard J. Ens, Homeland to Hinterland: The Changing Worlds of the Red River Metis in the Nineteenth Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). For the periodization of capitalist rural social relations in Upper Canada, see Donald Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1985), chapter 5; Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). 37 Lisa Dillon, “Parent-Child Co-Residence among the Elderly in 1871 Canada and 1880 United States: A Comparative Study,” in Chambers and Montigny, Family Matters, 449; T.W. Acheson, “New Brunswick Agriculture at the End of the Colonial Era: A Reassessment,” in Kris Inwood, ed., Farm, Factory and Fortune: New Studies in the Economic History of the Maritime Provinces (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1993), 37–60. 38 Toby L. Ditz, Property and Kinship: Inheritance in Early Connecticut, 1750–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); James Henretta, “Families and Forms: Mentalite in Pre-Industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 35 (Jan. 1978): 26; Sylvester, The Limits of Rural Capitalism, 153, 161. 39 Bradbury, Working Families. 40 On the equation between economic and cultural value systems and the inexorable growth of market evaluations after the seventeenth century, see Leonore Davidoff, “‘Adam spoke first and named the orders of the world’: Masculine and Feminine Domains in History and Sociology,” in Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent, eds., Gender and History in Western Europe (London: Arnold, 1998), 91. For a critique of the perspective that cultural values are immediately reflective of economic changes, see Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber, eds., The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6–17. 41 Bouchard, “Transmission of Family Property”; Ditz, Property and Kinship, 157. 42 On this point, see Tamara K. Hareven, “Family Time and Historical Time,” Daedalus, 56 (spring 1977); W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd, eds., The Anatomy of Madness, vol. 1, People and Ideas (London and New York: Tavistock Publishing, 1985), 1–2; Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 5, 8; Pamela Sharpe, “Introduction,” in Pamela Sharpe, ed., Women’s Work: The English Experience, 1640–1914 (London: Arnold, 1998), 6.

24

Nancy Christie

43 For example, Colin Jones argues that the social construction of charity began within the family. See Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (London: Routledge, 1989), 7–9. Historians of gender have been particularly acute in theorizing the family as the primary repository of social values. See, for example, Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1995), xiv, xx, 228; John Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in Shoemaker and Vincent, Gender and History, 74–7; Jane Kamensky, “Talk like a Man: Speech, Power and Masculinity in Early New England,” in Laura McCall and Donald Yacovone, eds., A Shared Experience: Men, Women and the History of Gender (New York and London: New York University Press, 1998), 23; Elizabeth A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex and Marriage (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 2–3. 44 Christie, Engendering the State; Jane Lewis, “Women, Social Work and Social Welfare in Twentieth-Century Britain: From (Unpaid) Influence to (Paid) Oblivion,” in Daunton, ed., Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare, 209. See also Martin Daunton, “Introduction,” ibid., 3. 45 See Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979), 48, 52; Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink, and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960 (New York and London: Longman, 1999), 6–13.

Introduction

bro ke n fami l i e s

25

26

Leonard Kuffert

Reconstructing Canadian Culture

27

Introduction nancy ch ri s tie

This volume opens with a quartet of essays that directly interrogate what Bettina Bradbury has termed “the obsession of early family historians with questions of family structure and of demographers with ‘completed families.’”1 These chapters pursue the impact that the death of the male household head had upon the organization of family relations. Did widows achieve a higher degree of independence once they were removed from the legal strictures of couverture, or were women and other female relatives consigned to even greater levels of dependency through a precipitate reduction in their wealth? Was their status ineluctably changed by their marital position alone, or were other factors at work which reoriented the social position of family dependents? In her essay exploring the comparative experience of widows and widowers in New France, Josette Brun presents a clearly revisionist perspective, one that adds complexity to the now-conventional view of Richard Wall, who has stressed that the majority of women lived alone in widowhood, and of Olwen Hufton, who has interpreted the experience of widowhood as one of rupture, in which women’s networks changed from those dominated by men to those of female clustering, at least for women who chose not to remarry.2 Where Hufton has stressed that these women were made marginal by the interrelationship of poverty and marital status, Brun captures the experience of both men and women who lost their spouses, especially those in artisanal and mercantile families, because she has relied primarily upon notarial records as her evidentiary base. Again,

28

Nancy Christie

in contrast to Hufton, who implies that women may have exercised a greater degree of individual choice within the parameters of economic constraint, Brun shows the overwhelming degree to which widows and widowers, both of whom sought out the assistance of kin, exhibited the culture of familialism. In the case of widows, male kin such as nephews and brothers-in-law assumed economic roles once occupied by the male household head, even when the widow had been willed her husband’s property.3 Widowers either quickly remarried or took in female kin or unrelated female servants to perform tasks of housekeeping and child rearing. Thus, although at the level of individual self-perception, these men and women may have felt a sense of discontinuity and “otherness” from their previous family arrangements, in the realm of broader social relationships, continuity was underscored through the preservation of gender roles, even though these now occurred within “reconstituted” family forms. And further, Brun demonstrates that there was a greater flexibility in gender roles for widows, who could assume legal and economic headship of the family, and congruently, widowers experienced much greater pressure to conform to cultural gender norms, for there existed clear taboos against men assuming female tasks within the domestic sphere. Like Brun, Nancy Christie demonstrates, through an analysis of family correspondence, the persistence of associations of extended kinship in nineteenth-century English Canada. She takes issue with the linear trajectory of much earlier family history by showing that the rise of the affectionate family did not displace customary systems of economic obligation and she postulates, we need to conceptualize the family not only as a centre of economic production and biological reproduction but as a system of credit relationships that functionally positioned the family as a mediator between private and public domains until the creation of more efficient and formal systems of credit in the late nineteenth century. But as Christie’s article demonstrates, these webs of obligation continued to be very male-dominated, and because women had less ability to repay their obligations through monetary means, they were often placed in circumstances that forced them to write begging letters for assistance. Dependent women, whether they were impoverished sisters, unmarried daughters, or widows, may have sought out extended male kin, but this very act implied a set of power relationships whereby male kin could reassert their social authority as patriarchs.4 While Christie explores the informal cultural mechanisms by which gender, status, and wealth hierarchies were preserved in both the family and society, Bettina Bradbury examines the more formal legal

Broken Families

29

structures that again circumscribed the life choices of widows in nineteenth-century Montreal. The conclusions of both Christie and Bradbury suggest a different reading of the past from that offered by Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, who have maintained, “Helping with housekeeping and children or sick nursing was the preferred existence for a single woman or widow and might bring some of the authority and privileges of being mistress of a household.”5 Bradbury follows the experiences of three widows, two of whom remarried and one who, because of her economic independence, which she had assiduously established before her marriage, was able to exercise a greater degree of freedom, seeking out the familial sociability of an all-female household. In many respects, the burden of Bradbury’s argument shows that the availability of choice open to this widow, Laura Mower, was fairly exceptional insofar as the majority of widows enjoyed much less freedom; for not only did cultural prescriptions determine the timing of mourning and remarriage, but male kin scrutinized all transactions of a widow’s existence, including her fitness to become the legal guardian of her children, which few women were allowed to undertake without the intervention of the dead husband’s family.6 Not only was female choice distinctly limited by cultural and legal constraints, but most importantly, most women were not left sufficient property to secure an independent status or the freedom of choice. These women, represented in Bradbury’s article by the figures of Marguerite Guilbault and Marie-Noflette Charland, were compelled by social forces to remarry, even though they may have perceived that they were making a personal choice. Although there is a substantial historiographical literature which indicates that, between the seventeenth and the twentieth centuries, widows tended to remarry with decreasing frequency, Bradbury’s article suggests that, while there might be a relatively small statistical decline in remarriages among women, it was still the experience of the vast majority of widows.7 When their numbers are added to the even greater numbers of widowers who remarried, it is not surprising that stepfamilies remained a normative feature of the Canadian social landscape well into the twentieth century, a factor that may have amplified the relationship of nuclear to complex family forms. Peter Gossage’s treatment of the legal and cultural ramifications of widowers and widows remarrying and combining two simple families to form one complex stepfamily addresses the central question as to when these family forms were more normative and when they came to be regarded as aberrant. As Gossage illustrates in his analysis of the legal definitions of family in Quebec, the notion of

30

Nancy Christie

marginality was fairly gender-specific insofar as it attached more to the children of widows than to those of remarrying widowers, because the law was designed to protect the interests of the original male head of the family. By 1866, when the province’s Civil Code was revised, the rights of widows, on the one hand, were diminished because dower provisions were expunged, necessitating an increase in marriage settlements. On the other, these settlements were not instituted simply to protect the individual rights of widows, but were utilized in turn by men as a means to ensure protection of their children in the event of their death. Two general conclusions flow from Gossage’s analysis: first, by providing some protection for what were in fact informally “adopted” stepchildren, the law did not define the family in exclusively biological terms,8 and secondly, by allowing guardianship for children among a range of male kin, it paved the way for the creation of kin networks even beyond the complex household form of the stepfamily. And as Gossage’s conclusions suggest, the nuclear family remained highly permeable until the 1920s, at which time the image of the stepmother – and, by association, the stepfamily – was culturally replete with negative connotations. Here, Gossage’s timeline of cultural change in an urban context accords with Kenneth Sylvester’s analysis of rural family life. Both Gossage and Sylvester identify the 1920s as a crucial decade in which the family became more affirmedly defined in terms of biological nuclear kin. In turn, the diminution of affinal kin relations was connected to the breakdown of systems of reciprocal obligation within the family, which, as Nancy Christie has argued in another context, had occurred by the 1920s. Where, previously, family bonds were increased through a generally universal acceptance of one’s duty to support and care for family members, after World War i, as individualistic tenets begin to take hold in the culture of the family and the state felt compelled, through its system of military allowances, to reinforce the duty of men to support extended kin, the normative culture of obligation was now seen as oppressive and invasive. It was the conflict between individualism and familialism that compelled widows to demand state intervention in the form of mother’s allowances, which would release them from a reliance upon the unwanted protection of kin and, at the same time, preclude the need to remarry in an era when, as Gossage makes clear, the valuation placed upon the stepmother was so negative. By the 1920s, therefore, perhaps as a result of the permeation of the ideology of maternalism, widows – and more particularly, working-class widows – conceived of motherhood as a personal and individualistic attribute not to be shared with affinal kin.9

Broken Families

31

no tes 1 Bettina Bradbury, “Widowhood and Canadian Family History,” in Margaret Conrad, ed., Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1995), 20n1. 2 Richard Wall, “Woman Alone in English Society,” Annales de demographie historique, 1981, 303–16; Olwen Hufton, “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 9 (winter 1984): 355–76. 3 There is a growing historiography that has qualified the prevailing overemphasis on the independence of widows. See, for example, R.A. Houston, “Women in the Economy and Society of Scotland, 1500–1800,” in R.A. Houston and I.D. Whyte, eds., Scottish Society 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 184; Michael Anderson, “Households, Families and Individuals: Some Preliminary Results from the National Sample from the 1851 Census of Great Britain,” Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 432–5; Teri L. Premo, Winter Friends: Women Growing Old in the New Republic, 1785–1835 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 40–5, 75. On the importance of male kin for widows, see Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in NineteenthCentury New York (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 7–8, 11, 56, 62; Julie Hardwicke, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park: University of Pennsylvania State Press, 1998), 115, 124–7, 138. On the paucity of studies that equate the experience of widows and widowers within one social category and the similar tendency to compare widows with either orphans or spinsters, see Marjo Buitelaar, “Widows’ Worlds: Representations and Realities,” in Jan Bremnar and Lourens van den Bosch, eds., Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), 1–18. Jacques Légaré and Jean-Francois Naud, who rely upon census data alone, have argued that the nuclear structure was maintained after the death of the spouse. See their article, “The Dynamics of Household Structure in the Event of the Father’s Death: Quebec City in the Eighteenth Century,” The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 6 (2001): 519–29. 4 On this point, see Bridget Hill, Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989), 251; J. Henderson and Robert Wall, eds., Poor Women and Children in the European Past (London and New York: Routledge, 1994). On the erosion of the morality of customary assistance for widows in the nineteenth century, which paralleled changes to the English poor law in 1834,

32

Nancy Christie

see Pamela Sharpe, “Survival Strategies and Stories: Poor Widows and Widowers in Early Industrial England,” in Sandra Cavallo and Lynden Warner, eds., Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1999), 226–35. 5 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, “‘The Hidden Investment’: Women and the Enterprise,” in Pamela Sharpe, ed., Women’s Work: The English Experience, 1650–1914 (London and New York: Arnold, 1998), 286. 6 On the importance of utilizing wills as a means to document women’s place within the social hierarchy, see Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 9. Erickson, like many other historians of women’s property rights, shows a decrease in dower rights, which they believe was a corollary of the rise of the affectionate family. In short, women had increasingly to depend upon the goodwill of husbands, and this change may have accounted for an increase in spinsterhood by the late nineteenth century. See also Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860 (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1984), 17–18, 37, 51; Constance Backhouse, Petticoats and Prejudice: Women and Law in Nineteenth-Century Canada (Toronto: Women’s Press, 1991), 201–3; Marjorie Cohen, Women’s Work, Markets and Economic Development in NineteenthCentury Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 52; Gloria L. Main, “Widows in Rural Massachusetts: On the Eve of the Revolution,” in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989), 73–9; Lisa Wilson, Life after Death: Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 29–30. A number of historians have emphasized the lack of individual rights for women; see Gordon Darroch and Lee Soltow, Property and Inequality in Victorian Canada: Structural Patterns and Cultural Communities in the 1871 Census (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 221; Bettina Bradbury, Peter Gossage, Evelyn Kolish, and Alan Stewart, “Property and Marriage: The Law and Practice in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal,” Histoire sociale/Social History 26 (May 1993): 9–38. For an analysis of nineteenth-century married women’s property laws that emphasized the integrity of family property rather than increased legal capacity for women, see Philip Girard and Rebecca Veinott, “Married Women’s Property Law in Nova Scotia, 1850–1910,” in Janet Vey Guildford and Suzanne Morton, eds., Separate Spheres: Women’s Worlds in the 19th Century Maritimes (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1994), 80–3; Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina

Broken Families

33

Press, 1986). Salmon argues that the affectionate family reinforced patriarchal control over women and that the laws during the nineteenth century created greater “enforced dependence” of women (xv, 9, 167). Moreover, she makes the interesting suggestion that in radical Protestant communities, there were even fewer formal legal protections for widows (167). Bradbury makes a similar point in her article in this collection that Protestants in Quebec were less willing to make widows legal guardians. Salmon also points out that dower was more useful in agricultural communities (168). 7 Within this literature, there is considerable debate as to whether one’s age, number of children, or level of wealth was the determining factor leading to remarriage. For the most part, it has been shown that younger women with children were the most likely to remarry. On this debate, see, most notably, Barbara J. Todd, “The Remarrying Widow: A Stereotype Reconsidered,” in Mary Prior, ed., Women in English Society, 1500–1800 (London and New York: Methuen, 1985), 68, 73–4; Erickson, Women and Property, 196; Jeremy Boulton, “London Widowhood Revisited: The Decline of Female Remarriage in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Continuity and Change 5 (1990): 323–56; John Knodel and Katherine A. Lynch, “The Decline of Remarriage: Evidence from German Village Populations in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of Family History 10 (1985): 34–59; Daniel Scott Smith, “Inheritance and the Social History of Early American Women,” in Hoffman and Albert, Women in the Age of the American Revolution, 60–2. 8 On the connection between early modern cultural practices and nonblood definitions of the family, see, most notably, Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 4–5. More recently, historians have begun to show that, despite the impact of Darwinian thought, legal forms actually expanded the view of the non-biological family throughout the nineteenth century, especially with the inroads of the child-welfare movement, which often privileged foster families over the biological unit. See, for example, Ruth Perry, “Women in Families: The Great Disinheritance,” in Vivien Jones, ed., Women and Literature in Britain, 1700–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 111–12; Charlotte Neff, “The Use of Apprenticeship and Adoption by the Toronto Protestant Orphans’ Home, 1853–1869,” Histoire sociale/Social History 30 (1999): 336–7; Peter W. Bardaglio, Reconstructing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 42, 79, 137; George K. Belmer, Friends of the Family: The English Home and Its Guardians, 1850–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), esp. the chapter “Artificial Families: The Politics of Adoption.”

34

Nancy Christie

9 Kenneth Michael Sylvester, The Limits of Rural Capitalism: Family, Culture, and Markets in Montcalm, Manitoba, 1870–1940 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 153, 161; Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000).

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

35

1 Gender, Family, and Mutual Assistance in New France Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in Eighteenth-Century Quebec jo s ette b run New France, like other Western pre-industrial societies, was characterized by high mortality rates in the adult population. Death occasioned frequent ruptures of the marital community, thus causing serious fissures in the structure and organization of the family, which was founded upon the union of the couple, the husband’s authority within the marriage, and the gendered division of labour.1 In such circumstances, widows and widowers found themselves outside the framework of the “normal” family and had to face an uncertain social and economic situation created by the loss of their spouse. A number of questions arise from an examination of these contexts of rupture,2 especially surrounding the relationship maintained by the surviving parent with his or her family. What type of mutual assistance was established between widowed persons and their children as a function of the sex and age of each during widowhood or widowerhood? What family strategies or sources of assistance were most often resorted to? What role does “gender”3 – that is, the way in which male and female roles were conceptualized – play in this process? This type of historical discussion, anchored in demographic evidence and notarial documents,4 is necessary in order to shed new light on family dynamics5 and social relations between the sexes in French colonial society in North America. Like a number of recent studies that have questioned an older and still influential interpretation, which presents the colonial period as a golden age of women’s status and condition,6 this essay aims to offer a more nuanced assessment of the experience of women in New France. It accords equal attention to the condition of

36

Josette Brun

men, which despite a male-centred historiography, still constitutes a fallow terrain of historical inquiry. Men, as well as women, were at the same time the targets of and actors in the determination of gender identities that prevailed in colonial society.7 It is through this lens that this study approaches the survival strategies of widows and widowers. The first half of the eighteenth century was a period of relative peace in New France.8 Even though death rates in the colony compared favourably with those prevailing in the home country,9 death frequently struck the adult population in the town of Quebec. Consequently, in this important colonial capital, which had been established at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the St Lawrence valley, widows and widowers formed a numerous social group.10 Between 1710 and 1744, 192 women and 169 men11 experienced the end of their first marriage through the death of their spouse, and these individuals swelled the ranks of those who were already widows or widowers.12 They thus constituted a highly visible group within a town comprising only a few thousand people.13 Of these, 137 widows and 147 widowers were permanent residents of Quebec, most having spent the greater part of their married life in the town.14 These people were predominantly of artisanal families – especially in the building trades – and merchant families, a circumstance that was not surprising in a seaport where most people depended upon trades and commercial activities (see table 1.1). At the upper and lower ends of the scale, families of officers and unskilled labourers were far less numerous, the latter clearly under-represented.15 The death of a husband or wife marked a real rupture in family organization in New France, as male authority within the marriage and the gendered division of labour were firmly entrenched among couples of all occupational groups.16 Husbands, as legally designated heads of the conjugal household, managed both its property and its economic affairs and rarely delegated these powers to their wives, who were deemed minors under the law.17 However, the participation of women sometimes took on a greater importance, particularly in merchant families and often in daily experience.18 Domestic tasks remained, in all social settings, an exclusively female domain. Consequently, upon the loss of their spouse, both men and women faced particular socio-economic challenges. In losing her husband, a woman found herself outside the “normal” framework of womanhood – marriage and subordination to male authority – and she received full legal capacity and even the status of head of the family. On the other hand, the loss of a wife did not affect a man’s social status. Moreover, the death of one partner created a disequilibrium in the family economy that affected both sexes but placed them in very different situations: the loss of a husband deprived

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

37

Table 1.1 Number of persons who became widows or widowers at Quebec in the eighteenth century, according to the sex and occupational category of the surviving spouse Widows

Widowers

Occupational category

No.

Percentage

No.

Percentage

artisan Building trade Food Clothing/leather Luxury Other merchant unskilled officer Civil Military other notable unknown Total

54 24 15 11 4 0 35 18 14 7 7 4 12 137

39.4 17.5 10.9 8.0 2.9 0 25.6 13.1 10.2 5.1 5.1 2.9 8.8 100

77 48 15 11 – 3 28 5 16 10 6 3 18 147

52.4 32.7 10.2 7.5 – 2.0 19.0 3.4 10.9 6.8 4.1 2.0 12.2 100

the family of its principal source of income, while the death of a wife meant that it lost its purveyor of domestic services, as well as an indispensable helpmate.19 In addition to encountering different problems, widows and widowers could not expect to resolve these in the same way – that is, to simply take upon themselves the duties attributed to the other sex. Women, whether married or not, were expected to undertake certain “male” activities without aspiring to the same status enjoyed by men in colonial society. When widowed, they acquired new rights over the management of family property and work which, in principle, allowed them to support both themselves and their children without becoming a burden upon society.20 Although widowers remained the economic mainstays of their family, they found themselves in an unprecedented situation because they had to devote themselves to their occupation, and it would work to their disadvantage if they assumed “female” tasks, since these were accorded an inferior status by society. The consequences of this dilemma weighed particularly heavily upon widowers who were fathers of young children: “There is a veritable taboo that surrounds the domain of household tasks: no man would pretend to replace a woman for the daily preparation of meals, for doing the laundry, for attending to the chicken coop or the garden. There exists a gamut of nicknames that ridicule men who lose their masculinity by

38

Josette Brun

doing tasks that are essentially female. [There is no] reciprocal taboo that weighs upon a specifically “male” realm of activity. If the wife can do it, the community will accept it.”21 Men as well as women would have been able to rely upon the assistance of their families in the event of need. Mutual assistance and economic support even among members of the extended family,22 were effectively imposed by the state: “just as the ancestors are obligated to provide sustenance for their descendants when they are needy ... in the same way the descendants who possess means have the duty to furnish sustenance for their ancestors, when they are in need.”23 Equally, the church clearly established the responsibility incumbent upon children to care for their parents. In a letter sent from Paris to the parish clergy of New France, Mgr de Saint-Vallier, the bishop of Quebec, reminded them of the importance of instructing their flock in this duty: “You must state clearly to children that they owe obedience, honour, respect, submission, service and assistance to their mothers and fathers. Make known to them the punishment that God, Father of all men and especially of all Christians, will visit upon those who dishonour their fathers and mothers upon this earth, and that He will cause them to suffer throughout their lives for their unwillingness to assist them with their help.”24 As colonial society became more stable during the course of the eighteenth century, and as “social practices began to correspond more exactly with the policy of sensitization pursued by civil and religious authorities which exhorted children to come to the aid of their parents,”25 widows and widowers came to rely more and more upon the assistance of their families. Indeed, the colonial government did not hesitate to intervene in the “rare instances” where children failed to do their duty and left their parents indigent, a situation that occurred primarily when they were geographically separated from them.26 However, reality was usually more complex because in some cases, widows and widowers did not have children, and for a single parent, one’s progeny could be a source of worry as well as of support. The problems encountered by men and women varied according to age and sex of children, factors that also determined the types of support upon which men and women could in theory rely.27 The vast majority of widows and widowers – four out of five – had at least one child living at the time of their spouse’s death;28 while the others did not have to worry about the fate of their progeny, they also did not have access to the help that children could give at this critical juncture. On average, widows and widowers had between three and four children, with ten offspring as the upper limit. Widows and widowers with young children were far more numerous

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

39

Table 1.2 Nature of family responsibilities of widows and widowers at Quebec as a function of sex and age of children Percentage (number)* Nature of Family Responsibility Children requiring supervision (0–12 years) Children of opposite sex to be instructed (13–20 years) Children of same sex requiring instruction (13–20 years) Daughters of marriageable age (20 and older) Number of widows and widowers

Widows

Widowers

51.8 (71)

66.7 (98)

13.1 (18)

21.1 (31)

23.4 (32)

17.0 (25)

21.9 (30)

8.2 (12)

137

147

*Includes the percentage and number of widows and widowers who had children in each age cohort. Childless widows and widowers are included in these calculations.

than those with adult sons and daughters, who were more capable of supporting them. The majority had children under twelve, requiring at least a modicum of care and attention,29 but widowers (67 per cent) were faced with this responsibility more frequently than widows (52 per cent), and it was one that hitherto had not fallen within the scope of their competence (see table 1.2). Nearly half the widowers (48 per cent) had to provide an attentive presence for children who had not yet attained the age of reason (age seven); most of these (40 per cent) had urgently to avail themselves of the assistance of a wet nurse,30 a fact that illustrates the sad fact of maternal mortality. About one in four widows was faced with the task of supervising children at each age level. Raising children of the opposite sex presented a challenge for a minority of widows and widowers, but twice as frequently for men as for women. Between the ages of twelve and twenty, children were regarded as young adults undergoing apprenticeship and preparation for their life’s duties under the supervision of the parent of their sex.31 One in five widowers (21 per cent) had at least one girl who had to be taught the role of mother and housekeeper, but the rigidity of male roles did not permit him to undertake this task, for which he himself had no training. Thirteen per cent of widows benefited from a certain level of experience, new rights, and a more open attitude of the community that allowed them, at least in principle, to watch over the training of their sons. Twice as many widows as widowers could call upon

40

Josette Brun

Table 1.3 Presence of adult sons and daughters in families of widows and widowers at Quebec Percentage (number) Adult children present Adult children (20 and older) Adult son Adult son or son-in-law Adult daughter Adult daughter or daughter-in-law Number of widows and widowers

Widows

Widowers

38.7 (53)

21.1 (31)

27.0 35.0 32.8 34.3 137

(37) (48) (45) (47)

12.9 19.0 17.7 19.7 147

(19) (28) (26) (29)

adult children – those aged twenty or over – to assist them,32 especially to carry out tasks that would normally have devolved upon their dead spouse (see table 1.3). One in four widows (27 per cent) was eventually supported by a son, and one in three (35 per cent) by a son or sonin-law, while fewer than one widow in five could call upon an adult daughter (18 per cent) or daughter-in-law (20 per cent). These widows, far more than their widowed male counterparts (22 per cent versus 8 per cent), who were economically better situated to establish their children in life, now had the added burden of finding eligible partners and providing dowries for their daughters once they reached marriageable age.33 How did widows adapt to their new status as head of the family and to the economic and occupational responsibilities that went with it? How did widowers resolve the impasse they faced in taking care of household tasks, the care of young children, and the training of future mothers and homemakers? The preferred method, especially for men of all ages (see table 1.4) was remarriage in order to simply replace the deceased spouse, a course taken by 68 per cent of all widowers. However, women evinced a far less frequent tendency towards remarriage (42 per cent), particularly after age forty, as age then became a handicap to finding a spouse.34 Significantly, eight out of ten widows in their twenties remarried, a rate comparable to widowers under fifty. Women tended to take a new husband fairly frequently during their thirties (59 per cent), but the proportion declined during their forties (42 per cent), and widows almost never remarried after age fifty.35 On the other hand, nearly one in four widowers fifty or older was able to contract a second marriage. If women’s behaviour was fairly consistent across occupational groups,36 this variable tended to have a greater effect on male strategies. Remarriage was far less frequent among mer-

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

41

Table 1.4 Proportion of remarriages as a function of the sex and age of surviving spouse at widowhood or widowerhood at Quebec Women Age at widowhood or widowerhood

Men

No./total*

%

No./total*

%

Under 30 30–39 40–49 50 and older Not known

28/35 16/27 13/31 0/44 0

80.0 59.3 41.9 0 0

17/19 49/55 24/30 10/42 0/1

89.5 89.1 80.0 23.8 0

Total

57/137

41.6

100/147

68.0

*Includes the number of remarriages out of the total of widows and widowers in each age cohort.

chants (50 per cent) than among artisans (75 per cent) and was highest among widowers employed in the building trades (79 per cent), a category that in the town of Quebec included over two-thirds of tradesmen. Because men engaged in commercial activities were usually more economically secure, they were often able to replace their wife by hiring a domestic servant. Widows and widowers who were parents did not remarry more frequently than others, unless they happened to have young children.37 Thus the majority of women who had children under age twelve (59 per cent) preferred to abdicate their status as family head to a new husband, compared to only 23 per cent of those who did not have children to raise. Eighty per cent of widowers with young children, as opposed to only 45 per cent without, contracted a second marriage.38 However, the determining factor appears to have been the presence in the family of children aged twenty or older, no matter what their sex or marriage status, or the existence of younger siblings. In this situation, their parents, especially in the case of women, tended to remarry far less frequently (7 and 63 per cent respectively), but this pattern also held true for men (29 and 78 per cent respectively). These young men and women were in a position to demand their portion of the family property, and this may well have had the effect of giving suitors pause. In addition, these older children could offset the loss of a spouse either through their work contribution or by marriage, in which case daughters-in-law or sons-in-law would be added to the network of family assistance. However, among women, age remained the key factor governing remarriage. Those who remained widows or widowers for a longer period before

42

Josette Brun

either remarrying or dying39 were forced to adopt rather ingenious expedients in order to ensure their own survival or, in some cases, that of their children.40 Their strategies of assistance were a function of gender, were based upon the sex of their children and the presence of other kin and neighbours, and followed a notion of male and female roles. Because widows were far less likely than widowers to remarry after age thirty, large numbers of them engaged in occupations in order to replace the male head of the household. This was a necessity that was recognized both by the people of the colony and by the government, which frequently intervened to ease women’s access to various occupations. Thus Intendant Raudot commissioned one widow to be the doorkeeper of prisons in Quebec, “as a replacement for her husband,” on condition that her son, “who would remain with her in said prisons,” would stand security for her.41 Bégon, his successor, decided that in reference to the company which held the rights to porpoise fishing near Rivière-Ouelle, “the widows of Noel Pelletier and Jean Dechene will be received in the stead of their husbands by having them each furnish a man able to work in this fishery like the other associates.”42 In a similar vein, Intendant Hocquart averred that Canadian women possessed a certain “business acumen.” (disposition pour les affaires).43 Many other widows in Quebec left evidence of very diverse occupational activities.44 Even though they were barred from holding public or military office and, for obvious reasons, could not be masons or carpenters, nothing prevented them from engaging in trade, owning an inn or tavern, or supervising the activities of a workshop or artisan’s stall, even a blacksmith’s shop or tannery.45 However, one should not attribute too much social importance to this phenomenon.46 Widows were often ill-prepared to step into their husband’s vacated economic function,47 and because they had to fulfill other gender-specific tasks, they were often unable, by simply relying upon their own labour, to replace the male head of the family. In fact, their economic activities can best be regarded as an ad hoc response, over time, to changing needs and circumstances. Frequently, they turned to another male in their kinship network to compensate for the loss of their husband. In such cases, male kin would either fully or partially take over the family’s trade or business, support the widow economically, and in some cases, especially if they were elderly, make full provision for their care. Sons, sons-in-law, and nephews formed the front line of this male support network, and they also derived benefits from this type of collaboration.48 Many widows were supported by their sons at the occupational level. However, although the latter thus actively collaborated in main-

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

43

taining the family trade or business after the death of their father, they constituted only a part of the male workforce available to the widow. Madeleine Roberge, widow of the merchant Charles Perthuis, was able to benefit from the support of her eldest son, who followed in his father’s footsteps. When the younger Charles married two years after his father’s death, he brought 4,000 livres to the family, money that “he had earned and amassed by his cares, pains and work. This is to be considered beyond the services he has already rendered to the aforementioned Widow Perthuis in her business after the death of the late Mr. Perthuis.”49 This widow, aged forty-one, could rely upon more than her son for male support. Two months after the death of her husband, Claude Hurel, a tanner and leather worker, engaged himself to act as overseer of a tannery and “all the works and business that the aforementioned Mrs. Perthuis shall consider appropriate,” and “to watch over the business like a good husband and father.”50 When the contract with Hurel expired, she hired another tanner,51 an agreement signed shortly before her son Charles was married. The latter continued to support his mother for many years, notably by undertaking certain business dealings on her behalf,52 a practice that was fairly common in New France.53 Madeleine Roberge would also have been able to count on the assistance of her daughters54 or domestic servants55 to care for her two younger boys,56 thus enabling her to attend to her business dealings, especially with her brothers, one a sea captain and the other a merchant.57 Ironically, in twenty-five years of married life, Widow Perthuis had only gone once to see a notary, and that to sign a pew rental agreement with her husband! Madeleine Delauney was in her fifties and had a number of grown children when her husband died. However, she stated fifteen years later that she could only rely upon her son Joseph Enouille, who stood by her during her widowhood58 and had supported her since he was twenty. This young man “was the only one of the children who had supported her and had usefully sustained her through his work and his steadiness at her side in all tasks to support the household and the tobacco manufacture that was her business.”59 In order to secure Joseph’s commitment to “continue his services to her for as long as he is able,” she agreed to assign him half the conjugal community’s property “which always subsists and continues” as a deed of gift, although she reserved the personal use of this property until she died.60 Joseph Vergeat was apprenticed to a maker of edge tools six years before the death of his father, Jean Vergeat, a soldier in the Canadian militia.61 Joseph always contributed his earnings to the support of his family, which included five adult daughters. His mother, the widow Jeanne Boisselle, found herself unable to repay “the sum of 4,200 livres

44

Josette Brun

that her son gave to her before and after the death of his father, and she offers to charge this amount to all her property when she dies, on condition that he takes care of her until then.”62 Three years later, when she made a deed of gift under the same conditions of half the house in which they lived, the widow likewise sought to protect herself from the legal complications that might arise if her son took a wife and at the same time to assure herself of another source of assistance. The contract stipulated, in effect, “in case he marries and has children that nothing will change or diminish the said obligations, and in case that he is assured of property either by his marriage contract or other sources, he will commit his aforementioned wife to the same obligations.”63 However, Jeanne Boisselle could not foresee that her son would predecease her, without having married, only three months later.64 She then was able to benefit from another widespread form of family assistance by relying upon her eldest daughter, Charlotte, and her son-in-law.65 This was an expedient that many widows resorted to when their sons failed to answer the call, and they assured themselves of the assistance of sons-in-law either by inheritance or by outright gift. Thus the “son by marriage” (fils par alliance) replaced the husband’s earning power.66 Jacqueline Marandeau, widow of carpenter Guillaume Nicolas, was able to rely upon the assistance of her young daughter following the death of her husband,67 and she conferred upon her daughter and her husband, in exchange for maintenance, a deed of gift of a building lot, a house, and furniture upon them that had belonged to the community: “In light of her advanced years and the continued poor health that has long afflicted her, and wishing to recognize the kindness and friendship that Mr Etienne Parent her son-in-law and his wife Marie Joseph Nicolas have shown towards her, and that she hopes they will continue for the remainder of her days.”68 The couple undertook to lodge with her, to feed her, and to “provide all the necessaries for her required by her station” and to provide care for her if she is ill, this obligation to continue until the hour of her death.69 Even those widows who conferred unconditional deeds of gift upon or committed themselves to housing and feeding their daughters and new sons-in-law without asking for maintenance or work obligations from them undoubtedly expected a helping hand if they were in need.70 This was the wish expressed by Madeleine Lemire, the widow of an unskilled worker, who asked for nothing in return for the deed of gift of a building lot and a house she bestowed upon her daughter and sonin-law. The action of this widow, which aimed at one level to reward her daughter for “the good and useful services and kindnesses that she always displayed” towards her father and mother, left her “hopeful

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

45

that she and her aforementioned husband will continue to do so in the future.”71 However, daughters frequently stepped forward even to offer monetary assistance without waiting to get married. Many elderly widows who had never remarried pointed out, either in their wills or other notarial acts, “the kind services” rendered by their daughters. One woman in her sixties, Catherine Nolan dit Lamarque, widow of the merchant Mathieu Martin Delino, commended her daughter Marie-Anne for having remained with her since her father’s death, which had occurred fifteen years earlier, and stated that she “was very satisfied and content with this assistance, effort, and care that she had received from her.”72 This spinster, who was aged thirty-five when her father died, had allowed her mother to sell jewellery, furniture, clothing, and lace that had belonged to her, and to put the money “towards her subsistence and upkeep.”73 Daughters also assisted their mothers by taking upon themselves the assembly of their trousseau “through their own effort, care, and industry” and their own personal savings.74 The spinsters Thérèse and Madeleine Robitaille collaborated with their mother, Marguerite Blute, in running a tavern that the widow had managed with her husband.75 Shortly after the latter’s death, the widow, then in her sixties, “in consideration of the fact that the advanced age that she has reached does not allow her to work or earn her living,” made a deed of gift to her daughters of “the little property that she had inherited from her late husband, [which] is not sufficient to feed or sustain her in the necessaries of life.”76 On the same day, her son Charles77 made over to his sisters his portion of the inheritance from his father and what he might expect to inherit from his mother “on the condition that they [his sisters] will take good care of their mother, that they will feed her, maintain her, and launder for her for the rest of her days.”78 When widows had neither sons nor sons-in-law upon whom to rely, they sometimes looked to other kinsmen, especially to nephews, who were often well placed to help their aunts because they would receive a portion of the inheritance. This was the course adopted by Jeanne Elisabeth Cartier, who was aged fifty-two when her husband, the butcher Charles Larche, died. This economically secure widow79 had, for some time, taken care of her husband’s business, a period during which she would have relied upon her in-laws, who lived close by;80 upon her only daughter, who lived with her; upon a nephew, who was old enough to help out with the daily chores;81 and finally, upon two sons-in-law – a navigator and a merchant – who successively entered the family circle. The second son-in-law, who before his marriage was already helping mother and daughter – by this point both widows – subsequently took charge of administering the community of property

46

Josette Brun

that still existed between the two women.82 As a last resort, after her daughter’s death, the widow, now in her eighties, finding herself “unable to realize the little property remaining, and this so little to suffice for her food and upkeep,” conferred upon her nephew as a deed of gift her rights to her old community of property, thus recognizing “the kind care and services” he had already rendered to her, and made him promise “to continue these for the remainder of her days.”83 Marie-Françoise Huppe, widow of blacksmith Pierre Payment, was only thirty years old when her husband died. Although she never remarried and lost her only child, she nonetheless benefited for many years from the assistance of her brother André,84 who lived nearby. Two years after her husband’s death, she gave her brother half a building lot in Quebec,85 and he undertook a number of financial dealings on her behalf.86 When she was quite elderly (age sixty-six) “and unable to survive with so little property and to realize it, but knowing the affection her nephew Augustin Brousseau has for her, as he has for many years fed and cared for her without monetary reward,” the widow bestowed all her property upon him, on condition that he provide her with lodgings, food, fuel, and maintenance until her death.87 Married nieces could also serve as substitutes for daughters in bringing their husbands’ labour power to the assistance of their aunts. In this case, a common practice was to use property given to them by the widow to procure her subsistence. As with daughters, it was not necessary for them to be married in order to assist their aunts in a number of ways. When the wholesale merchant Jean Lestage died, his widow, Marie-Anne Vermette, was taken in by her niece and her husband, as her own adult son and daughter were absent from Quebec.88 Indeed, “she lived with them for many years and even died in the room that was their common abode in a house belonging to Widow Maufait.”89 Widow Vermette, then in her fifties and crippled,90 willed them furniture and household utensils “to reward them for the kindly services that they rendered her since she has lived with them and which they continue to render to her and also to reward them for the kind services she has especially received from the aforementioned Dame Magdelaine Bureau, her niece, before her marriage.”91 Anne Mossion, a childless widow, had depended upon her niece during an illness that, in 1733 had laid her low before carrying off her husband, Paul Laferriere, a military officer. Her will made special reference to “the special love she has for me,” and willed the niece 200 livres in recognition of “the pains and cares she took with me during my illness and at other times.”92 Marie-Anne Begas, herself a widow, was living with Anne Mossion when the latter died in her fifties after nine years of widowhood. The two women did not live in comfortable

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

47

circumstances, for “the indigence in which she found herself” during her widowhood had not allowed Anne Mossion to respect one of the last wishes of her husband, which was to distribute 600 livres to the poor, “which she has not been entirely able to fulfill.”93 Widowers, by contrast, always had full financial responsibility for the family and were less economically vulnerable than their female counterparts. However, household chores, the oversight of young children, and the training of female children represented conundrums for them, as the status of widower did not open new and wider definitions of male roles that would have allowed them to adapt more easily to their new situation of single man or single parent. For most widowers, a new wife was a lifesaver. This is what happened in the case of Nicolas Rousset, a carpenter, who declared in his will “that it was only the ... efforts and care of his ... second wife that enabled him to subsist until now,”94 and he especially enjoined recognition of this by his children. The difficulty for fathers to balance work and child care was clearly expressed by Joseph Racine, a joiner who, after the death of Marguerite Pilotte, his wife, “was left with the care of seven young children and found himself considerably embarrassed in trying to provide them with the necessary instruction, and finding himself alone and frequently obliged to leave his house to work at his trade or where his masters wanted to employ him, his earnings were not nearly adequate to feed and maintain himself, let alone his family.”95 This thirty-eightyear old widower, who did not remarry for ten years, was an exception to the general pattern, because his poverty was relieved by the priests of the Seminary of Quebec, to whom he had “exposed his hardship and wants,” and who “wanting to be sympathetic, charitably took into their care four of the aforementioned children, whom they instructed, fed, and maintained.”96 However, widowers were usually assisted in their difficulties in raising young children by their older daughters, kinswomen (either their own or in-laws), and occasionally, domestic servants or friends. This was a reciprocal arrangement, as these women, who were often spinsters, widowed, or deserted, found in it a means of mutual assistance. Thus, when his wife died in childbirth, the merchant Pierre Normandin was able to call upon his eldest daughter Angélique, aged nineteen, and also on a female servant 97 to care for five children who ranged in age from a few days to eight years. Shortly after the death of his eldest daughter, this widower hired a young girl aged nine “to be a servant and to obey him and the daughters who manage his household,”98 notably Marie-Catherine, then aged seventeen. Other men had to rely upon close relatives to compensate for the loss of the mother and homemaker. Merchant Louis Gosselin, who waited twenty-one years before remarrying, placed his children and his estate in the hands

48

Josette Brun

of his widowed mother when he was absent on business,99 because his only daughter was married and attending to her own family responsibilities.100 An unskilled labourer and father of six young children, Claude Vivier turned to his mother-in-law, who was obliged to “keep and take care of his family as she had already been doing,”101 on condition that her son-in-law pay her rent for the next two years and provide her with sufficient food. In this case, the mother-in-law benefited from the arrangement because her own husband was absent. Finally, Michel Cotton put his daughters, aged between five and ten, in the care of his sister and neighbour “because, being a widower with five children, two boys and three girls, whom he can barely keep alive and maintain, and having no source of income other than his trade, and because he presently has little work, this is barely sufficient for his own food and upkeep. He has proposed this arrangement to his aforementioned sister who is aware of his situation, and who is anxious to attend to his needs and undertakes to raise, feed, maintain, and instruct his three young daughters in her own trade of seamstress.”102 These young girls were required to live with their spinster aunt until age twenty and “during this time they will each be obliged to stay with her and to work at her trade, carrying out all her instructions in a seemly and orderly way ... She wishes to be a good mother to them and has no other aim than to rescue her aforementioned nieces from an extreme poverty and to furnish them with a Christian education and a station appropriate to their birth and sex.”103 Such adversity could also create bonds of mutual assistance between unrelated men and women who had lost their spouses and who found themselves in similar situations. Thus widowers occasionally benefited from the work of widows, generally as servants or domestics.104 Jacques Larcher, a wholesale merchant, found himself at age forty with five children to raise, and he remained a widower until his death thirty years later. When he drew up his will, eight years after his wife’s death and with at least one very young daughter, he gave part of his property to the widows, one being a servant and the other a friend who lived in the same house with him, making special mention of their good deeds.105 The merchant made arrangements so that “little Cornette,” the daughter of one of the widows, was placed for six months with the nuns of the Hôpital-Général of Quebec or with the Ursulines, proof of the regard he had for her mother’s “kind services,” which may have been directed to caring for his own children. Elderly widowers who wanted to wind down their trades or businesses or who found themselves unable to provide for themselves were also forced, like widows too poor or otherwise unable to face their new responsibilities, to find ways of compensating for their inability to work. In some cases, this was a rather easy transition, as with the mer-

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

49

chant and innkeeper Louis Guiniere, who wished “to attend to his own salvation, establish his children and share the little property that it has pleased God to give him among them.” At age sixty-seven, he gave to his three sons “all that may belong to me as my personal property, and in my capacity as manager and administrator of the property of their deceased mother, which belongs to my children.”106 In return, he claimed an allowance of 2,000 livres per year and the occupancy of a furnished room in the house in which they lived.107 However, other widowers found themselves in far more straitened circumstances and were reduced to abject dependence. The children of François Foucault, the king’s storekeeper, made common cause in the face of the adversity that struck their fifty-eight-year-old father, who was “crippled and unable to earn his living in any way whatsoever.” They made an arrangement by which Marguerite, his daughter, and Alexis Lacourse, his son-in-law, with whom he had “taken refuge,” would provide him with lodging, food, and laundry in exchange for an annual payment of 120 livres, “and they would not be responsible for any extraordinary medical or clothing expenses, nor would they have to pay any upkeep for him beyond what everyone is equally obliged to contribute.”108 Five years earlier, the census of 1744 had listed Foucault as a member of the Superior Council and as having two daughters, aged sixteen and twenty, and a female servant aged twenty-one to run his household. Pierre Baille, a widower who outlived his children and who was “because of advanced age and infirmity unable to look after his affairs and even to provide for his own needs,”109 turned to his grandsons,110 Gabriel and Pierre Renaud, young men in their twenties. He gave them a half-interest in his house and lot, where they had lived together, apparently since the death of his wife three years earlier: “In consideration of the slender nature of his property, with which he is unable to provide himself with life’s necessities, and in consideration of the fact that the aforementioned recipients have taken care of him, have fed and lodged him for two years or more, and that they have undertaken to promise that they will feed, lodge, heat, provide laundry, and attend to all his needs, in sickness and in health, and taking care of him in this way until his death, they also undertake, because they owe him respect and consideration, to have him decently buried (after his death) and will have thirty masses said for him.”111 The granddaughter of this former shoemaker also contributed to the support of her grandfather, as he made her brothers promise that upon his death, she would receive the sum of 50 livres and his furniture and clothing “in recognition of the services she is presently rendered to him, those she has rendered, and those which in future she may render, as she presently lives in the aforementioned house.”112 This fifteen-year-old girl, Marie-Josèphe, apparently did the housekeeping for the three men.

50

Josette Brun

Sometimes the death of a spouse led to role reversal, in which widows took complete charge of men unable to provide for themselves, especially those too old or too poor to do so. Catherine Gautier, widow of the merchant Jean-Baptiste Lecoudray, did this for her sixty-threeyear-old brother, who owned a house near Quebec. He placed himself in her hands by investing her with all his property, because “of advanced age which no longer allows him to work to earn his living, and because the paucity of revenue from his property is not enough to feed and provide for his necessary upkeep.”113 The widow promised to “lodge, provide fuel, and maintain the aforementioned donor and give him all that is necessary to his condition whether in health or sickness until the day and hour of his death.”114 In turn, fifteen years later she herself was “obliged by the infirmities of advancing age” to resign herself into the complete care of her son-in-law and daughter.115 Of all the children of the elderly Mathurin Palin Debonville (aged eighty-one), a former merchant or seafarer,116 only his daughter Angélique, a widow who lived near him,117 “wanted to take care of him, which she has done for three years with very little contribution from him.”118 He deeded a gift of 620 livres to his daughter to cover his food and upkeep in sickness or health, and “and so she will give him, as she has done before, all the care and attention she owes him.” However, she was not allowed to dispose of this sum “except with the permission of her aforementioned father, who will remain in full charge of it.”119 Ten years later, a more common expedient was reached to care for the elderly widower, now aged ninety-three, by which his son and daughter-in-law agreed to support him.120 Finally, Francoise Douville, a young widow in her twenties, contributed financially and managed the shop of her uncle, a merchant with whom she lived, for nearly a quarter-century after the death of her aunt. Charles Boucherville, aged forty when he brought his niece into his household in 1743, acknowledged thirty years later that he had personally profited from the 400 livres that belonged to her as a minor following her husband’s death, but also of “more still from her savings and work, for she managed and administered his business affairs after the death of his wife.”121 Prevented “by the miseries occasioned by the late war” from repaying her, he deeded all his movable property, including his silverware, to her, in exchange for which she would “continue without payment to run his shop as she has done for more than twenty-five years.”122

c onc lusion During the first half of the eighteenth century, very few widows and widowers in the town of Quebec found themselves alone, most sharing

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

51

their mourning with one or more orphaned children. At times, the presence of these children served as a support network for the surviving spouse, but frequently they posed a problem, as caring and raising them had been a task that had devolved upon the now-departed spouse. Widowers generally found themselves saddled with young children who required a wet nurse or at least a minimum of care and attention, and frequently they had young daughters who needed to be instructed in their duties as future mothers and housekeepers. For them, the situation constituted an impasse, because these were tasks explicitly assigned to women. Widows were somewhat better situated to look after the toddlers that nearly half of them had, even though they had to take on the economic and occupational responsibilities attendant upon their new status as head of the family. By contrast with widowers, they were often able to turn to a daughter who was old enough to assist them with household tasks, although daughters of marriageable age posed an added burden because widows had to ensure that they were properly established in life. In facing these challenges, men generally replaced their dead spouse with a new wife, who would take both the household in hand and the young orphans under her wing. Young widows in their twenties, favoured by age and less experienced at an occupational level than older women who were assisted by adult children, also tended to remarry quickly. Widows in their thirties and forties appear to have had greater access to work, although some met this challenge with greater difficulty than others, affected by variables of occupational, family, and personal situation. Because this was a phenomenon whose existence has been observed for other societies and other chronological periods, nothing in it would allow us to state that the colonial context of New France especially “favoured” women. As well, the formation of support networks seems to have followed a fairly narrow notion of male and female social roles. Thus it was the sons of widows who most frequently stepped into their father’s shoes, without necessarily displacing the new female head of the family, who took an active role in the transition. When widows were more isolated and more vulnerable, sons-in-law and nephews came to their aid over time. Daughters and nieces also constituted a recognized support structure, assisting their mothers and aunts during their spinsterhood and gaining additional male support for them through marriage. Fathers who were left single relied as far as possible on their daughters or hired female servants, spinsters or widows, to attend to household chores or care for younger children. In the absence of these, they turned to other single kinswomen – sisters, mothers, and mothers-in-law – who found in exchange for these domestic services

52

Josette Brun

a source of financial support for themselves. At a more advanced age, the destinies of men and women tended to converge, with widowers abdicating – if necessary to a woman – their power to support themselves, a responsibility that had hitherto devolved upon them as men, husbands, and fathers. At times, there was a clear role reversal, revealing the extent to which the gender of women is at all stages of life – as is that of men at the end of their lives – a set of shifting boundaries.

no tes This essay was translated by Michael Gauvreau.

notarial registers in the archives nationales du québec cited in the notes Quebec Barc-qc Barj-qc Boin-qc Boug-qc Decjb-qc Dubje-qc Dulch-qc Dupn-qc Hich-qc Lacf-qc Lanpaf-qc Louc-qc Loujc-qc Panjc-qc Pinjn-qc Ragf-qc Saija-qc Sans-qc

Barolet, C. (1728–61) Barbel, J. (1703–40) Boisseau, N. (1730–44) Boucault de Godefus, G. (1736–56) Decharnay, J.B. (1755–59) Dubreuil, J.E. (1708–34) Dulaurent, C.H. (1734–59) Duprac, N. (1723–48) Hiche, H. (1725–36) Lacetiere, F. (1702–28) Lanouillier dit Desgranges, P.A.F. (1749–60) Louet, C. (1739–67) Louet, J.C. (1718–37) Panet, J.C. (1744–75) Pinguet de Vaucour, J.N. (1726–48) Rageot de Beaurivage, F. (1709–53) Saillant de Collegien, J.A. (1750–76) Sanguinet, S. (1748–71)

Trois-Rivières Ducn-tr Duclos, N. (1751–69) Petp-tr Petit, P. (1706–35) Pill-tr Pillard, L. (1736–67)

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

53

1 This study is based on the fifth chapter of my doctoral dissertation, “Le veuvage en Nouvelle-France: Genre, dynamique familiale et strategies de survie dans deux villes coloniales du xviiie siecle: Québec et Louisbourg” (Université de Montréal, 2000). 2 For a more general discussion of this theme, see Josette Brun, “Le veuvage dans les sociétés occidentales préindustrielles: Réflexions autour du concept de genre,” Cahiers d’histoire (Université de Montréal) 18 (automne 1998): 19–38; Bettina Bradbury, “Widowhood and Canadian Family History,” in Margaret Conrad, ed., Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Acadia University: Planter Studies Centre, 1995). 3 See Joan Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 1–53. 4 The family record files taken from the “Registre de population du Québec ancien” of the Université de Montréal’s Programme de démographie historique present a portrait of the family situation of widows and widowers: number of living children, sex and age of the surviving parent and orphans, and length of widowhood or widowerhood (ended by death or remarriage). Notarial documents offer insight into how networks of family interdependency were formed, especially since they contain evidence of sources of support available from outside the nuclear family. I have been able to identify those legal documents pertaining to widows and widowers thanks to the parchemin finding aid, which contains an analytical inventory of the notarial archives of the colony. See Hélène Lafortune and Normand Robert, La banque PARCHEMIN: Un accès illimité et instantané au patrimoine notarial du Québec ancien (1635–1775) (cd-rom) (Montréal: Archiv-Histo, 1998). The marriage contracts of those persons orphaned of either a father or a mother (128 acts) and all the wills, deeds of gift, division of property, and other declarations and agreements involving widows and widowers (155 acts in total, of which 36 deal with widowers) form the basis of the present analysis. The codes used henceforth in the notes identify each notary and are fully referenced above under their full name as well as the chronological period covered. I have also examined transcripts of the censuses of 1716 and 1744 in Quebec in order to understand the life course of widows and widowers. 5 Our understanding of the colonial family draws upon demography and studies of property transmission and social reproduction. See Geneviève Ribordy, “La famille en Nouvelle-France: Bilan historiographique,” Cahiers d’histoire 12 (été 1992): 24–50. The history of affectional and sentimental life within the family has remained hitherto marginal to historians. See, however, Lorraine Gadoury, La famille dans son intimité:

54

Josette Brun

Échanges épistolaires au sein de l’élite canadienne du XVIIIe siècle (Montréal: hmh, 1998). 6 The pioneering article by Jan Noel, “New France: Les femmes favorisées,” first published in Atlantis in 1981, has been republished in many collections of essays between the 1980s and the end of the 1990s, most notably in Veronica Strong-Boag and Anita Clair Fellman, eds., Rethinking Canada: The Promise of Women’s History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1991), 28–50. This interpretation is found in other guises in the articles of Catherine Rubinger, “The Influence of Women in Eighteenth Century New France,” in Roland Bonnel and Catherine Rubinger, eds., Femmes savantes et femmes d’esprit: Women Intellectuals of the French Eighteenth Century (New York and Paris: Peter Lang, 1994), 419–444; and Terence Crowley, “Women, Religion, and Freedom in New France,” in Jan Noel, ed., Race and Gender in the Northern Colonies (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2000), 101–10. The main arguments that sustain this hypothesis are, however, contested. The lack of women varied according to chronological period and region; wars took men away from their families in societies other than New France; the fur trade only rarely drew its labour force from married men; the law, as in other societies, restricted the rights of wives; and the important role of religious congregations did not modify the status of lay women. For the debate, see Micheline Dumont, “Les femmes de la Nouvelle-France étaient-elles favorisées?” Atlantis 8 (1982): 118–24; response by Jan Noel, ibid., 125–30; Allan Greer, “Les femmes de la Nouvelle-France,” in Brève histoire des peuples de la Nouvelle France (Montréal: Boréal, 1998), 79–96; and Ribordy, “La famille en Nouvelle-France.” 7 Studies dealing explicitly with gender are not legion in the historical study of New France. However, this situation has not prevented a number of researchers, who have dealt more generally with women’s history, from incorporating it into their analysis. Among the more stimulating works that have influenced my approach, see the fine analysis of France Parent and Geneviève Postolec, “Quand Themis rencontre Clio: Les femmes et le droit en Nouvelle-France,” Cahiers de droit, 36 (mars 1995): 293–318; Geneviève Postolec, “Mariages et patrimoine à Neuville” (doctoral dissertation, Université Laval, 1995); France Parent, Entre le juridique et le social. Le pouvoir des femmes à Québec au XVIIe siècle, Coll. “Les Cahiers de recherche du gremf,” 42 (Québec: Groupe de recherche multidisciplinaire féministe, Université Laval, 1991); Sylvie Savoie, “Les couples en difficulté au xviie et xviiie siècles: Les demandes en séparations en Nouvelle-France” (ma research paper, Université de Sherbrooke, Faculté des arts, 1986). This analysis has also been published as an article: “Women’s Marital Difficulties: Requests of Separation in New France,” History of the Family 3 (1998): 473–85. See also

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

8

9 10

11

12

13 14

15

16

55

Marie-Aimée Cliche, “Filles-mères, familles et société sous le Régime français,” Histoire sociale/Social History 21 (mai 1988): 39–70; Maurice Basque, “Genre et gestion du pouvoir communautaire à Annapolis Royal au 18e siècle,” Dalhousie Law Journal 17 (autumn 1994): 498–508; Peter Moogk, “Thieving Buggers and Stupid Sluts: Insults and Popular Culture in New France,” William and Mary Quarterly 36 (Oct. 1979): 524–47. New France was spared large-scale military conflict between the wars of the Spanish Succession and the Austrian Succession, which respectively marked the beginning and middle of the eighteenth century. Danielle Gauvreau, Québec: Une ville et sa population au temps de la Nouvelle-France (Sillery: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1991). In fact, their number was three times greater in the town of Quebec in the mid-eighteenth century than it had been at the beginning of the century – 86 in 1716 and 223 in 1744. See Serge Lambert, “Les pauvres et la société de 1681 à 1744” (doctoral dissertation, Université Laval, 1990), 225, table 24. In Quebec, as elsewhere in New France, the largest proportion of marriages was ended by the death of the husband, 57 per cent as opposed to 43 per cent, primarily because the age gap between spouses at marriage was heavily tilted towards men. See Gauvreau, Québec, 115. Consequently, the death of a spouse particularly affected women, especially as they remained widows more frequently and for a longer time than did widowers, a reflection of the lesser chance – or greater lack of will – to remarry. From 1716 the capital of New France numbered three times more widows than widowers. See Lambert, “Les pauvres et la société,” 225, table 24. The present analysis considers only those couples in their first marriage so as to study the most widespread experience of marriage through a homogeneous and representative cohort. The capital contained 2,285 people in 1716; in 1744 the population numbered approximately 5,000. All of them had lived in Quebec for at least five years before the death of their spouse. This methodological choice has enabled me to examine what these families had in common: urban life in the capital of New France before experiencing the death of a spouse. Gauvreau, Québec, 88. For lack of a better description, the categorization of families follows the husband’s occupation, a determining factor in the family economy for both widows and widowers. My analysis has revealed more similarities than differences in the behaviour of widows and widowers of different occupational levels, except for differences in wealth. I have not placed a great deal of emphasis upon this question, but will draw attention to any significant tendency produced by this variable.

56

Josette Brun

17 Unlike single women of at least twenty-five years of age, married women suffered from legal incapacity. They rarely represented the conjugal society before the notary, but regularly accompanied their husbands in dealing with questions relating to their own property or, less frequently, to the common property of the family. See Brun, “Le veuvage en Nouvelle-France,” chapter 3. These results call into question the argument advanced by Jan Noel that women in New France were “favoured” and adds a key qualification to the question of the relative flexibility of women’s social roles at this time. See Noel, “New France: Les femmes favorisées,” 28–50. 18 The experience of women at administrative and professional levels is evident from examination of certain notarial acts (power of attorney given to wives) and, more indirectly from other documents and activities that a number of women engaged in during their period of widowhood. See on this point, Brun, “Le veuvage en Nouvelle-France.” The statement by one member of the Superior Council of Quebec that “most of the members of council have their business affairs taken care of by their wives or their children [la majeure partie des membres du conseil font faire leur commerce par leurs femmes ou leurs enfants]” effectively illustrates a certain reality. See Archives nationales du Canada (anc), mg 1, Archives des colonies, c11a, Correspondance generale, Canada, 1575–1774 (henceforth cited as série c11a), vol. 2–2, c-2375, 602–4, after 1710, observations made by Martin de Lino, member of the Superior Council, on the difficulties encountered in the execution of certain articles of the ordinances of 1667, 1669, and 1681. 19 It goes without saying that the loss of a spouse would also have had an impact at the emotional level, a subject that I do not treat in the present study. See, however, Nathalie Pilon, “Le destin de veuves et de veufs de la région de Montréal au milieu du xviiie siecle: Pour mieux comprendre la monoparentalité dans le Québec préindustriel” (ma research paper, history, Université de Montréal, 2000), 44–7. 20 Parent and Postolec, “Quand Themis rencontre Clio.” 21 Martine Segalen, “Mentalité populaire et remariage en Europe occidentale,” in Jacques Dupaquier, ed., Mariage et remariage dans les populations du passé (London: Academic Press, 1981), 69: “il existe un véritable tabou dans le domaine des travaux domestiques: aucun homme ne remplacerait une femme pour la cuisine quotidienne, pour la lessive, pour le soin au poulailler, au potager. Un ensemble de surnoms existent qui tournent en dérision celui dont la masculinité se perd dans des travaux essentiellement féminins. [Il n’y a pas] de tabou réciproque qui pèserait sur un domaine d’activité spécifiquement masculin. Si la femme peut le faire, la communauté l’accepte.” 22 The wider kin network – nephews, nieces, uncles, aunts, and cousins –

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

23

24

25

26 27

28

29

57

were equally part of these networks of assistance. See Lambert, “Les pauvres et la société,” 120. Claude de Ferrière, Dictionnaire de droit et de pratique, contenant l’explication des termes de droit, d’ordonnances, de coutumes et de pratique, avec les juridictions du royaume, nouv. éd, revue, corrigée et augmentée, 2 vols (Paris: Babuty et Fils Librairie, 1762), 1: 835: “de même que les ascendans sont tenus de donner des alimens à leurs descendans, quand ils en ont besoin ... de meme aussi les descendans qui ont de quoi, sont obligés de fournir les alimens à leurs ascendans, lorsqu’ils sont dans la nécessité.” Mgr de Saint-Vallier, “Lettre écrite de Paris pour donner aux curés de la Nouvelle-France des avis pour la conduite des paroissiens,” in C.O. Gagnon and H. Têtu, eds., Mandements, lettres pastorales et circulaires des évêques de Québec, 3 vole s(Québec: A. Coté et Cie, 1887), 419–21: “Représentez aux enfants qu’ils doivent à leurs pères et mères l’obéissance, l’honneur, le respect, la soumission, le service et l’assistance. Faire leur connaître le châtiment que Dieu, qui est le Père de tous les hommes, et plus en particulier de tous les Chrétiens, prendra de ceux qui déshonorent leurs pères et mères sur la terre, et qui les feront souffrir pendant leur vie pour ne vouloir pas contribuer à les aider par leurs secours.” Lambert, “Les pauvres et la société,” 229: “les pratiques sociales en viennent à mieux correspondre à la politique de sensibilisation des autorités civiles et religieuses exhortant les enfants à porter assistance aux parents.” Ibid. The data that follow appear in the tables or are drawn from my bank of demographic data, which has been reconstituted with the excel software program. I have not treated as living those children whose year of death could not be determined. However, this total does not perfectly take account of the real presence of children, as some could have been absent – in religious communities, as apprentices, as domestic servants, or living with other families – or have moved away, a situation especially apparent among adult children. As well, some may have survived but cannot be confirmed from data contained in parish registers. Qualitative analysis enables us to fill a number of gaps by alerting us to a number of key dynamics affecting family life. According to canon law, girls were reckoned to have reached the age of puberty at twelve and were thus able to marry. Boys were deemed to be young men a little later, at about fourteen or fifteen – censuses habitually placed them in a separate category – but like girls, they could be apprenticed at age twelve. See Peter Moogk, “Les petits sauvages: The Children of Eighteenth-Century New France,” in Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and

58

30 31 32

33 34

35 36

37

38

39

40

41

Josette Brun Family in Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983), 19, 26–31. Children under age two were considered infants. Moogk, “Les petits sauvages.” The age of twenty marked the coming of age, as boys could demand their emancipation (five years before attaining full adulthood), and in Quebec, the average age of marriage for women was in the very early twenties. See Gauvreau, Québec, 99–101. This involved single girls aged twenty or more. Age forty marked the end of female fertility. Since the main objective of a Catholic marriage was procreation, an older woman’s second marriage was less justifiable in the eyes of the church. These results illustrate the international phenomenon of greater social problems faced by older women. See Ida Blom, “the History of Widowhood: A Bibliographic Overview,” Journal of Family History 16 (1991): 191–210. The average age of widows in Quebec was comparable to that of men and generally fell in the early forties (42 years versus 43.7 years respectively). While it was possible for women to remarry after this age, it was rare. The proportions among widows of artisans (40.7 per cent), merchants (42.8 per cent), and unskilled workers (38.9 per cent) show little variation. Interestingly, widows of merchants were not sought in marriage or drawn to it in greater numbers than other groups. See Gauvreau, Québec, 133. My data shows no significant difference in the propensity to remarry between widowers and widowers who had children and those who did not. Similarly, for the region of Montreal, Pilon notes that the propensity to remarry was inversely proportional to the age of children. See “Le destin de veuves et de veufs,” 67–71. Persons who had lost their spouses generally remarried after two or three years. This was more rapid among men (2.4 years for widowers, versus 3.2 years for widows), who were twice as likely to remarry before the end of the first year of mourning. This was a choice made by one-third of men (33 per cent) but only 14 per cent of women. Widowers who did not remarry generally died after ten (10.6) years, whereas women lived through a much longer period of widowhood (17.2 years). This analysis deals with those who were childless as well as those who were parents, since their situations tended to be similar over time, as children either moved away or died, or they were either unable or refused to give assistance to their parents. Chronica 3: Inventaire des ordonnances des intendants de la NouvelleFrance (1665–1760) (cd-rom), 4 vols, vol. 1, Raudot, cahier 4, 26 jan. 1710.

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

59

42 Ibid., Michel Bégon, cahier 6, 16 mai 1715: “les veuves de Noël Pelletier et Jean Dechêne y seront reçues au lieu et place de leurs maris en fournissant chacune un homme capable de travailler à la dite pêche comme les autres associés.” 43 anq, série c11a, vol. 67, c-2392, 40–62, 1737, detailed survey of the entire colony by Intendant Hocquart. 44 Liliane Plamondon, “Une femme d’affaires en Nouvelle-France: MarieAnne Barbel, veuve Fornel,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française, 31 (sept. 1977): 165–86; Kathryn Young, “‘... sauf les perils et fortunes de la mer’: Merchant Women in New France and the French Transatlantic Trade, 1713–46,” Canadian Historical Review 77 (Sept. 1996): 388–407; Josette Brun, “Les femmes d’affaires en Nouvelle-France au 18e siècle: Le cas de l’Île Royale,” Acadiensis 27 (autumn 1997): 44–66. 45 Guilds were never introduced into the colony, and thus they could not, as in France, limit the access of widows to certain trades. See Peter Moogk, “In the Darkness of a Basement: Craftsmen’s Associations in Early French Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 57 (Dec. 1976): 399– 439. 46 Noel’s argument that women’s economic activities outside the home were particularly important in New France is interesting, but it is difficult to prove in the absence of further quantitative and comparative studies. See “New France: Les femmes favorisées.” 47 Many widows emphasized that they were ignorant of the business transactions engaged in by their husbands on behalf of the family. This was the obvious consequence of a well-entrenched gender division of power and work. See Brun, “Le veuvage en Nouvelle-France,” 209–11. 48 Widows and widowers were not more likely than married couples to prepare for their retirement by placing their property in their children’s hands, in exchange for a provision of support, when the latter signed a marriage contract. This conclusion is drawn from my analysis of 268 marriage contracts made by children of couples. Eighty-five of these occurred with women, and forty-three with men. In the case of those contracts made with both parents living, I have examined only those made by children of couples whose marriages ended by the death of the husband at Quebec. 49 Barj-qc, 18 déc. 1724: “contrat de mariage entre Charles Perthuis et Louise Brousse”: “quil a gaigné et amassé par ses peines soigns et travaux indepadament des services quil a rendus a lad. Veuve Perthuis dans son commerce depuis le deces dudit feu sieur Perthuis.” 50 Lacf-qc, 2 mai 1722, “marche pour la conduite des travaux sur une tannerie entre Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuys, et Claude Hurel, maître tanneur, corroyeur et braconier.” In addition to

60

51

52

53

54

55

56 57

58

59

Josette Brun being housed, fed, and kept warm at the widow’s, he was entitled to a salary of 500 livres a year and a jar of good brandy a month.” Lacf-qc, 23 avril 1724, “engagement de Jean-Elie Gautier, maître tanneur, corroyeur et braconnier, à Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuis.” See especially Lacf-qc, 21 mai 1722, “obligation de Jean Gatin, marchand, à Charles Perthuys, au nom de sa mère Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuys”; Barj-qc, 13 juin 1730: “quittance de François Parent, habitant, à Charles Perthuis, au nom de MarieMadeleine Roberge, sa mère”; Boin-qc, 30 mars 1732, “vente d’une goélette par Charles Perthuys, négociant, au nom de Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuis, sa mère, et son frère Denis Roberge, à Louis Boche dit Lajoye, marchand.” Other widows on occasion delegated their powers to kinsmen, but it would appear from my research that they usually took care of their own business dealings, although these were fairly infrequent. Two of her daughters died and one married in the two years following the death of their father. The three others appear not to have married and undoubtedly lived with their mother, unless they followed the example of their elder sister and entered a religious order. See Pept-tr, 11 sept. 1732, “convention entre les Ursulines des Trois-Rivières et Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuis, au nom et comme tutrice de MarieAnne Perthuis, sa fille.” In 1716, six years before the death of her husband, two domestic servants were listed as members of the household. In her will, nearly twenty years after the death of her husband, Madeleine Roberge alluded to the wages paid to the “fille qui la servira au jour de son decez.” See Pinjn-qc, 20 jan. 1741, “testament de Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuis.” When their father died, Joseph and Jean-Baptiste were aged eight and six respectively. They married soon after the death of their mother. Barjc-qc, 24 oct. 1729, “convention entre Denis Roberge, capitaine de navire de La Rochelle, et Jacques Roberge, de la ville de Québec, frères; et Marie-Madeleine Roberge, veuve de Charles Perthuis.” The widow had many children able to assist her. By 1744, François and Genevieve were old enough to help with the running of the tavern that she was managing a year after the death of her husband. Louis and Françoise, who lived close by, would have also been in a position to support their mother as well as attending to their young families. Dulch-qc, 15 mars 1759, “donation de biens mobiliers et immobiliers par Marie-Madeleine Delaunay, veuve de Louis Enouille dit Lanoix, cabaretier, à Joseph Enouil, son fils”: “le seul de tous ses enfants qui l’aye secondé et aussi utileman a soutenu par ses travaux et son assiduité au

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

61

pres d’ellle dans tous services pour le soutien de sa maison et de la fabrication de tabac en poudre dont principalement elle fait profession.” Ibid. See also Sans-qc, le 9 juillet 1767: “cession de droits successifs mobiliers et immobiliers par Jean-Baptiste Enouil dit Lanoix, forgeron, de la région de Montréal, du consentement de sa mère, Marie-Madeleine Del’aunay, veuve de Louis Enouil dit Lanoix, aubergiste, à Joseph enouil dit Lanoix, marchand de tabac, son frère.” I have not observed any marked tendency for families headed by a widow or widower to place their childen out as apprentices. It is possible that such agreements were never officially recorded before a notary, but it is more likely that children of an age to be apprenticed out were instead required to help support their own families. Dubje-qc, 29 juillet 1726, “obligation de Marie-Jeanne Boisset, veuve de Jean Vergeat dit Prenouveau, a Joseph Vergeat, son fils”: “la somme de 4200 livres que son fils lui a fourni avant et depuis le décès de son pere, lui offre de prendre ce montant sur tous ses biens a son décès, à condition qu’il prenne soin d’elle jusque-là.” He had to “nourir, blanchir, entretenir, loger [et] chauffer la dite donnatrisse la soigner tant saine que malade, et en ce dernier cas la faire penser et medicameter et la faire inhumer”: Hich-qc, 9 juillet 1729, “donation de la moitié d’une maison par Jeanne Boissel, veuve de Jean Vergeat dit Prénouveau, à Joseph Vergeat, son fils”: “au cas qu’il se marie et ait des enfants qu’il ny aura rien de changé ny de diminué aux dites charges, et en cas qu’il engagea le bien alluy donné soit par son contrat de mariage ou aturement qu’il fera obliger sadite femme aux memes charges.” I have also found many instances of mutual aid among widows, notably among mothers and daughters who faced the difficulties occasioned by their new status together. Young widows in their twenties, especially if they had been recently married, frequently returned to their family household, often headed by a widow, while awaiting remarriage. However, this type of collaboration was never formalized before a notary. Pinjn-qc, 3 september 1731, “donation de la moitié d’un emplacement par Jeanne Boissel, veuve de Jean Vergeat dit Prénouveau, à Louis Evé et Charlotte Vergeat, son épouse, son gendre; 20 déc. 1731, “cession et abandon d’un emplacement par Jeanne Boisselle à Louis Eve et Charlotte Vergeat, son épouse.” In this latter act, “a la priere de ses enfans qui lui auroient exposés leurs besoins et declarez le plaisir qu’elle leur feroit en leurs abandonnant des a present le bien qu’elle leurs auroit voulu conserver pour leur legitime et dont elle se seroit reserve lusufruit pendant sa vie,” she gave them 715 livres. See, in addition to the case cited below, Hich-qc, 3 oct. 1735, “donation d’un emplacement par Madeleine Lemire, veuve de Pierre Moreau, à

62

67

68

69

70

71

72

73 74

Josette Brun Jacques Tessier et Angélique Moreau, son épouse; Dubje-qc, 5 nov. 1731, “testament de Louise Froc, veuve de Julien Meusnier.” The census of 1744 revealed that a young daughter aged seventeen lived alone with her mother three years after the death of her father and four years before her marriage. Barc-qc, 2 oct. 1758, “donation d’une emplacment par Marie-Jacqueline Marandeau, veuve de Guillaume Nicolas, ô Etienne Parent, son gendre, et Marie-Josephe Parent, son épouse”: “attendu son age avance et les indispositions continuelles dont elle se trouve affligée depuis lontemps et voulant reconnaistre la bienveillance et lamitié qui luy temoignent depuis plusieurs années le S Etienne Parent son gendre et Marie Joseph Nicolas sa femme, et quelle espere qu’ils luy continueront le reste de ses jours.” Ibid.: “l’entretenir de toutte choses necessaires a l’entretien selon son etat.” See also Louc-qc, 15 oct. 1741, “contrat de mariage entre Michel Rouillard et Marie-Anne Languedoc”; Pinjn-qc, 17 nov. 1735, “contrat de mariage entre François Cousigny et Marie-Louise Ducharme”; Loujcqc, 2 juin 1726, “testament de Marguerite Niel, veuve de Jean Coutard.” Louc-qc, 25 juin 1729, “contrat de mariage entre Pierre Langlois et Marie-Catherine Boucher”; Pinjc-qc, 1 jan. 1744, “contrat de mariage entre Yves Ezequel et Francois Enouille, dit Lanoix.” In the marriage contract between Simon Soupiran and Marie-Anne Gauthier, the widow Madeleine Guyon promised to “loger et nourir dans sa maison a sa table et a ses depends les dits futurs espoux un an et demy,” without prejudice to their rights to inherit their parents’ property and “sans quils soient obligez a payer de pention ni a aucun traveaux.” See Lacf-qc, 16 mai 1727. Hich-qc, 3 oct. 1735, “donation d’un emplacement par Madeleine Lemire, veuve de Pierre Moreau, à Jacques Tessier et Angélique Moreau, son épouse”: “des bons et utils services et amitiés quelle a toujours portés ... lesperance quelle et sondit mary luy continurons a lavenir.” Dulch-qc, 25 juillet 1746, “donation d’une rente par Catherine Nolan, veuve de Mathieu Martin de Lino, à Marie-Anne de Lino, sa fille”: “est tres satisfaite et contente des secours, peines et soins qu’elle a reçus d’elle.” Dulch-qc, 25 juillet 1746, “obligation de Catherine Nolan, veuve de Mathieu Martin de Lino, à Marie-Anne de Lino, sa fille.” Barj-qc, 21 sept. 1728, “contrat de mariage entre Pierre-Simon Chanazart et Marie-Jeanne Reiche”; Dulch-qc, 18 mai 1747, “contrat de mariage entre Jean-Claude Louet et Marie-Anne Lacoudraye.” The former brought 500 livres to the communal marriage property; the latter, 990 livres. Marie-Anne Languedoc’s marriage contract, cited above, specified that the fiancee would bring to the marriage “six chaises de pins venant de ses ouvrages.” See Louc-qc, 15 oct. 1741.

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

63

75 Marguerite Blute was described as a “tavern keeper” in the census of 1716. 76 Ragf-qc, 2 avril 1715, “donation de biens meubles par Marguerite Blute, veuve de Jean Robitaille, à Marie-Madeleine Robitaille et Marie-Thérèse Robitaille, ses filles”: “considerant le grand age dans laquelle elle est avancé quil ne lui permet plus de travailler et de gagner sa vie ... peu de bien quelle a herite de son dit feu mary [qui] n’est pas suffisant de la faire subsister ny de lentretenir de ce qui luy est necessaire.” 77 Charles Robitaille worked at Neuville, in the Quebec region, as a maker of edge tools. 78 Ragf-qc, 2 avril 1715, “renonciation à la succession de ses parents par Charles Robitaille, en faveur de ses soeurs Marie-Madeleine Robitaille et Marie-Thérèse Robitaille”: “a conditions quils auront bien soins de leur mere quils la nouriront entretiendront et la blanchiront le reste de ses jours.” 79 Ten years after the death of her father, the daughter was able to attract a proposal from a suitor offering 3,000 livres as a marriage settlement. 80 In 1744, two years after her husband’s death, she lived near her father-inlaw, Jean-Baptiste Larche, his new wife, and a domestic servant. 81 The census of 1744 records that Angélique, her daughter, was aged eighteen and her nephew, Alexandre Renaud, aged thirteen and orphaned of both parents. A niece aged four also lived with her aunt. 82 François-Philippe Poncy loaned them 76 livres to purchase provisions in 1762, two years before marrying the widow’s only daughter. See Louc-qc, 22 oct. 1764. 83 Panjc-qc, 22 oct. 1771, “donation de droits successifs mobiliers et immobiliers par Jeanne-Elisabeth Carrier, veuve de Charles L’archevesque, à Louis Normandin, son neveu”: “hors d’etat de faire valoir le peu de biens qui luy revient iceluy ne pouvant point suffire a ses nourrture et entretien.” 84 In 1744, eighteen years after the death of her husband, she was living alone with one servant. André, a tanner, and his wife were her neighbours. 85 Dupn-qc, 10 mai 1728, “transport de la moitié d’un emplacement par Marie-Francoise Huppée, veuve de Pierre Payment, maître forgeron, à Andrew Huppé dit Lagroix, son frère; Dubje-qc, 1 jan. 1729, “bail à loyer d’une maison par André Huppé, au nom et comme charge de pouvoir de Françoise Hupé, veuve de Pierre Payment, sa soeur, à JeanBaptiste Marandas.” 86 Dubje-qc, 1 jan. 1729, “bail à loyer d’une maison par Andre Huppe, au nom et comme chargé de pouvoir de Françoise Hupé, veuve de Pierre Payment, sa soeur, à Jean-Baptiste Marandas.” 87 Saija-qc, 9 août 1762, “donation de biens mobiliers et immobiliers par

64

88

89

90

91

92

93

Josette Brun Marie-Françoise Huppé dit Lagroix, veuve de Pierre Payment, forgeron, de la ville de Québec et demeurant à Charlesbourg, à Augustin Brousseau, navigateur, de la Rivière Ouelle, son neveu”: “hors d’etât de vivre avec le peu de bien quelle a faute de pouvoir le faire valoir connoissant d’ailleurs l’affection d’Augustin Brousseau son neveu qui depuis plusieurs années la nourrit et la soigne sans aucun lucre.” Other nephews came forward to assist their aunts. See Ducn-tr, 17 avril 1758, “donation de biens meubles et immeubles par Elisabeth Duchesne, veuve de JeanBaptiste Lecot, sergent, de Batiscan, à Joseph-Alexandre Reneaux et Marie-Louise Bergevin, son épouse, son neveu et sa nièce; Barc-qc, 18 oct. 1735, “convention portant définition de compte entre Louis Lambert, pour la veuve de feu Jean-Baptiste Demeulle et Denis Goyette, négociant de La Rochelle stipulant pour les frères Pascaut, banquiers de La Rochelle”; Barc-qc, 15 mai 1736, “testament de Marie Durand, veuve de Jean Coignet.” Jean-François and Marie-Anne, who died at Quebec long after their mother, were of legal age when she became a widow, but they never married. It seems that they may have entered religious communities. The widow’s will mentions the absence of her two children without entering into further detail. See Pinjc-qc, 4 mars 1732, “testament de Marie-Anne Vermet, veuve de Jean Lestage.” Pinjn-qc, 7 mars 1732, “inventaire des biens de la communaute des defunts Marie-Anne Vermet et Jean de Lestage”: “avec lesquels elle a demeuré pendant plusieurs années et meme est decedée dans la chambre qui fesoit leur demeure commune dans une maison appartenant à la veuve Maufait.” She declared herself “ne pouvoir escrire ni signer et ce depuis un grand nombre d’annees.” See Pinjn-qc, 7 mars 1732, “inventaire des biens de la communauté des défunts Marie-Anne Vermet et Jean de Lestage.” Pinjn-qc, 4 mars 1732, “testament de Marie-Anne Vermet, veuve de Jean Lestage”: “pour les récompenser des bons services qu’il luy ont rendus depuis qu’elle demeure avec eux et qu’ils continuent de luy rendre actuellement et encore pour recompense des bons services qu’elle a receu en particulier de la dite demoiselle Magdelaine Bureau sa niepce avant son mariage.” The other property had to be shared between her two absent children. Pinjn-qc, 22 déc. 1732, “testament de Anne Mossion, veuve de Paul Ferrier, officier dans les troupes”: “les peines et soins qu’elle aprise aupres d’elle pendant sa maladie et en d’autres tems.” Pinjn-qc, 13 déc. 1741, “inventaire des biens de la communauté des défunts Anne Mossion, veuve de Paul Ferrière.” Another widow, Jeanne Pluchon, who died seven months after her husband, benefited from the attentions of her niece during her brief widowhood, as well as those pro

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

94

95

96

97 98

99

100 101

65

vided by several long-time employees and domestic servants. See Ragfqc, 3 mai, 1729, “déclaration de Jeanne Pluchon, veuve de Florent de la Cettière, notaire.” Dulch-qc, 23 nov. 1757, “testament de Nicolas Rousset, charpentier de navire”: “Quil n’y a eu que les ... peines et soins de sa ... seconde femme qui l’ont aidé et fait subsister jusqu’a present.” Pinjn-qc, 12 juillet 1733, “déclaration par Joseph Racine dit Beauchesne, veuf de Marguerite Pilotte, tuteur de ses enfants mineurs”: “serait demeuré chargé de sept enfants en bas age et tres embarrassé pour leurs donner l’education qui leurs etoit necessaire se trouvant seul et souvent obligé de laisser sa maison pour travailler de son metier ou les bourgeois le vouloient employer, ses revenus n’etat pas a baucoup suffisants pour le nourier et entretenir avec sa famille.” “Voulant bien compatir auroient charitablement pris a leurs charges quatre desdits enfants qu’ils auroient faits instruire, nourir et entretenir.” Joseph Racine gave to the seminary his claim to the sum of 1,100 livres from the property of the community “for the subsistence and maintenance” of the children, affirming that he “could do no more”; see ibid. See also Pinjn-qc, 1 août 1733, “cession d’un emplacement par Joseph Racine dit Bauchesne, veuf de Marguerite Pilotte, à ses enfants mineurs, Clément Racine, leur tuteur, acceptant pour eux et du consentement de Jean-Baptiste Brassard, subrogé-tuteur.” Bettina Bradbury has also alluded to this type of strategy in her article “The Fragmented Family: Family Strategies in the Face of Death, Illness, and Poverty, Montreal, 1860–1885,” in Parr, Childhood and Family in Canadian History, 109–28. Geneviève Fagot, aged twenty, was recorded in the 1716 census as in the couple’s service, three years before the death of Pierre Normandin’s wife. “Pour le servir en qualité de servante et luy obeir et aux filles quy gouvernent son menage.” Marie-Catherine was only eight years old when her mother died. The household undoubtedly had another servant, because the two other daughters were still young. Loujc-qc, 2 juin 1736, “quittance de Louise Guillot, veuve de Pierre Haymard, chargée du soin des enfants et des biens de Louis Gosselin (marchand), son fils absent, à Jacques Fleury, négociant.” The data on this family only records the existence of one other child, a young boy, but others appear to have been still living. Dubje-qc, 1 mai 1718, “bail à loyer d’un logement en une maison par Marie Pivin et Jean de Louvoy, son époux, à Claude Vivier”; 7 juillet 1718, “quittance de Claude Vivier, veuf de Marie-Anne Glinel, à Marie Pivin, veuve de Jacques Glinel, sa belle-mère, qui lui a remis les vêtements à l’usage de ses enfants mineurs”; 22 avril 1719, “transport d’une maison par Marie Pivin et Jean de Louvoy, son époux, présentement

66

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

Josette Brun absent, à Claude Vivier, son gendre:” “avoir et prendre soing de sa famillie ainsy comme elle a cy devant fait.” In the latter document, she left her son-in-law her house for one year at a rent of 120 livres. Pinjn-qc, 7 mars 1744, “convention entre Michel Cotton, orfèvre, et Marie-Marguerite Cotton (majeure), maîtresse couturière, sa soeur:” “etant resté veuf avec cinq enfants, deux garcons et trois filles qu’il a peine a faire vivre et entretenir n’ayant aucune faculté que ce que luy procure la profession qui peut a peine luy suffire pour sa seule nouriture et son entretient travaillant peu, il auroit propose a sa ditte soeur qui connoist sa sittuation et qui veut bien se prester a ses besoins pour pouvoir eslever, nourir, entretenir et instruire de sa proffession de couturiere les trois filles toutes en bas ages.” Ibid.: “pendant lequel tems elles seront tenues de rester avec elle l’une apres l’autre et de travailler de sa profession en tout ce qu’elle leur commandera d’honeste et licitte ... leur voulant servir lieu d’une bonne mere n’ayant d’autre vue que de retirer sesdittes nieces d’une extreme misere et de leur procurer une education chretienne et un etat honneste a leur naissance et a leur sexe.” See, for example, the will of Louis Guinière, in which he gave a legacy “to the Widow Gregoire, who up until now has been the servant of the aforementioned Testator, and has now remarried [a la veuve du nomme Gregoire, qui a este cy devant domestique du dit Sieur testateur elle a present remariee].” See Barc-qc, 22 juillet 1754, “testament de Louis Guinière.” Barc-jc, 8 nov. 1751, “testament de Jacques Larcher, marchand.” This concerned what appears to have been a mother and a daughter, Widow Brodière and Marie-Anne Brodière, widow of Cornette. Marie-Anne Brodière, daughter of Joseph and Marie-Angélique Dubreuil, married Pierre Cornette on 30 Oct. 1741. He was listed in the 1744 census, but left no subsequent record. Panjc-qc, 17 juin 1748, “cession de biens meubles et immeubles, par Louis Giguière, veuf de Marguerite Durand, à Gaspard Giguière (majeur), curé de la paroisse de Saint-Augustin, Louis Durand dit Guiguiere (majeur) et Louis Guiguière (majeur)”: “travailler a l’affaire de son salut, pourvoir a l’etablissement de ses enfants et partager entr’eux le peu de bien qu’il a plut a Dieu luy donner ... tout ce qui peut luy appartenir tant de son chef que comme ayant été le gereur et administrateur des biens appartenant a ses enfants par le deced de leur mère.” In his will he gave to one of his sons 500 livres “in consideration of the kindnesses he especially showed to the testator, his father.” See Barc-jc, 22 juillet 1754, “testament de Louis Guinière.” Pill-tr, 29 jan. 1749, “pension viagère par Antoine, François et Joseph

Widows, Widowers, and Orphans in New France

109

110 111

112

113

114

115

116 117

67

Foucault dit Courchene, Joseph-St.-Germain et Madeleine Foucault, son épouse, Alexis Lacourse et Marguerite Foucault, son épouse, et Joseph Robida et Marianne Foucault, son épouse, à Jean-Baptiste Foucault, leur père et beau-père”: “sans etre tenu des frais extraordinaires de maladie quelconque et d’abit non plus que d’entretien lesquels tous se sont obligés dy contribuer.” “Incapable par son grand age et ses infirmitez de veiller a ses affaires et de pourvoir lui meme a ses besoins.” He was aged eighty-four according to the document drawn up by Boucault de Godefus (Boug-qc, 31 jan. 1739) but in fact, he was at that point sixty-five years old because he was sixty-two when his wife died. Their mother had died shortly after the death of Pierre Baille’s wife. Boug-qc, 31 jan. 1739, “donation entre Pierre Baille, veuf de Marie Secaboulle, et Gabriel et Pierre Renaud, ses petits-fils”: “Attendu la modicité de ce peu de bien, avec lequel il seroit hors d’etat de se donner les secours de la vie, et en consideration de ce que les dits donnataires ont eu soin de lui, l’ont nourri et chauffé depuis deux ans et plus, et à condition par eux ainsi qu’ils le promettent et s’y obligent de le nourrir, loger, chauffer, blanchir et l’entretenir de tous ses besoins, tant en santé que maladie, et en avoir soin de cette facon, jusqu’au jour de son deces, davoir pour lui tout le respect et la consideration qu’ils lui doivent, de le faire inhumer convenablement [à son décès], et lui faire dire le nombre de trente messes.” Ibid.: “en considération des services actuels quelle lui rend, de ceux quelle lui a rendus, et quelle pourra lui rendre, demeurante actuellement dans la dite maison.” Pinjn-qc, 2 sept. 1732, “donation de biens meubles et immeubles de la paroisse Saint-Laurent par Jean Gaultier à Catherine Gaultier, veuve de Jean-Baptiste Lagoudrais”: “le grand age dans lequel il seroit avancé qui ne luy permest plus de travailler pour gagner sa vie d’ailleurs que le peu de biens qu’il a n’est point suffisant par ses revenus pour le nourir et entretenir de tout ce qui luy est nécessaire.” Ibid.: “loger, chaufer, nourir et entretenir ledit donateur et luy fournir de tout ce qui luy sera necessaire selon sa condiition tant en sante qu’en maladie jusques au jour et heure de son décès.” Lanpaf-qc, 19 mars 1756, “convention entre Catherine Gaultier, veuve de Jean-Baptiste Lacoudray, et Jean-Claude Louet et Marie-Anne Lacoudray, son épouse, son gendre et sa fille.” She acknowledged that she had gone to live with the couple eight years earlier. He had several adult children: three unmarried sons and one son and four daughters who were married. At the census of 1744, he seemed to be living alone or with his daughter, the widow of an unskilled labourer, who herself had three children to support.

68

Josette Brun

118 Panjc-qc, 14 mars 1747, “donation par Mathurin Palin Dabonville à Angélique Palin, veuve de Jean Demitte, sa fille”: “qui veuile se charger de luy, ce qu’elle a fait depuis trois ans sans qu’il luy aye fourni que tres peu de chose.” One year later, he gave a payment of 20 livres per year to his son; see Ragf-qc, 3 juin 1748, “obligation de Antoine Palin dit Dabonville à Mathurin Palin.” 119 Ibid.: “avoir pour lui ainsy qu’elle a fait cy devant tous les egards et attentions qu’elle luy doit ... que de l’agrement de son dit père qui en demeurera le maître.” 120 Decjb-qc, 14 jan. 1756, “bail de nourriture par Antoine Palin Dabonville et Barbe Brulot, son épouse, à Mathurin dit Dabonville, son père.” 121 Panjc-qc, 28 mai 1773, “obligation et vente de meubles par Charles Boucher, sieur de Boucherville, à Françoise Jeremie Douville, veuve Belan”: “surplus en ses epargnes, travaux, ayant geré et administré des affaires de commerce depuis le deces de son epouse.” 122 Ibid.: “continuer sans aucune recompense a faire valoir son magasin comme elle l’a toujours fait depuis plus de vingt cinq ans.”

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

69

2 A “Painful Dependence” Female Begging Letters and the Familial Economy of Obligation nancy ch ri s tie On 15 July 1800 Jane Powell, a self-defined impoverished spinster then living in England, wrote her sixth begging letter since her father’s death to her brother, William Dummer Powell, a judge in Upper Canada (now Ontario). Fully recognizing that, despite his wealth, Powell had chosen to ignore his fraternal duties, Jane proceeded to construct a charity narrative explaining why she and her sister Margaret were deserving of familial assistance. Not only were they the innocent victims of their father’s impecuniousness, but as spinsters living on £60 per annum, they had not an independency. Knowing that poverty alone might not elicit the desired response, Jane then based her claims upon the fulcrum of family reputation and outlined to her status-conscious brother that they were not living in “decency.” As she explained, her sister Margaret had refused to live with her uncle in the United States and chose, as a single woman, not “to live secluded from society,” hidden within her wider domestic circle. Because Margaret preferred to lodge among strangers and work in a factory rather than claim her right as a dependent female to patriarchal protection, the fact of their poverty had become public currency and further exposed them to the depredations of their father’s creditors. By subtly playing upon the interwoven fears concerning the sexual licence of single “unprotected” women and the male head of family’s status as a man of wealth, which depended upon his ability to confer credit, Jane Powell’s exhortations to her brother demonstrated the way in which the “economy of obligation”1 lay at the core of nineteenth-century family relationships. Furthermore, it was the unequal nature of this gift exchange that served to

70

Nancy Christie

sustain hierarchies of gender and wealth within the ambit of patriarchal authority, which extended well beyond the nuclear family. Because women, as the correspondence of these two spinsters makes abundantly clear, lacked economic capital, they were compelled to employ the “rhetoric of need” and the language of deference and affection so central to the eighteenth-century sensibility. Female family members, however, had a large measure of control over the “cultural capital” of family reputation, which was a key determinant of this system of mutual familial assistance. While Margaret Powell continued to work and travel among nonkin, and their equally impoverished cousin Mary Browne sought a “permanent position” as a Quaker preacher, Jane Powell was equally downwardly mobile, since she was eventually forced to seek refuge by marrying a low-status curate.2 What the lives of these three women represent is the various aspects of what Olwen Hufton has termed the “economy of expedients”: begging, structured relief, and work.3 Historians have to a large extent examined the life strategies of poor women in terms of their work patterns or their periodic resort to institutions of public charity. However, very little work has been undertaken to examine familial begging letters because of two overriding historiographical assumptions: first, that the dominant family form in western Europe and North America was nuclear rather than one defined by extended kin networks; and second, that with the growing institutionalization of organized poor relief, the family ceased to be a locus of material comfort and care.4 An examination of family begging letters forces us to reconsider these historiographical shibboleths. Family begging letters have been generally ignored, even by historians of letter-writing, largely because this particular genre was absent from the letter-writing manuals that have become the focus of historical interest.5 Only recently has this form of letter-writing been addressed by historians of charity, such as Donna Andrew and Thomas Sokoll, both of whom have remarked on the intimate aspect of letters of charitable request.6 Renewed interest in such correspondence has been awakened by the new revisionist historiography regarding poor-relief practices in the nineteenth century. Historians such as Richard Smith, Colin Jones, Margaret Pelling, and most notably Pat Thane have argued that, far from displacing the family as a caring institution, the new poor law in England actually revitalized familial assistance. These historians have criticized Peter Laslett’s demographic equation between the household and the nuclear family, and in refocusing historical attention to extended kin networks, they have also revalorized qualitative evidence such as family diaries and correspondence as key sources for tracing these patterns of intergenerational support.

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

71

However much these historians of the mixed economy of the welfare state wish to demonstrate the degree to which familial obligations in terms of material aid was an enduring cultural norm, they often cite the paucity of family papers in both England and France as a formidable obstacle to a thorough re-examination of charity and welfare.7 Happily, such methodological roadblocks do not exist in Canada, for not only are archival collections of family correspondence plentiful, but the begging letter was one of the most common form of letterwriting in the nineteenth century. It appears in the correspondence of the gentry, but it also forms the staple of family communication among the middling sort and working classes. While it is not inconceivable that male breadwinners experiencing poverty resorted to this form of appeal, they represent only a fraction of the correspondence, and their appeals were usually rebuffed since the writers were deemed, because of their gender, to be categorically undeserving of family assistance. The vast bulk of these letters were penned by impecunious widows and impoverished spinsters or dependent female orphans, the penumbra of patriarchy, who either because of an inability or lack of desire to seek work or out of their desire to preserve their previous social status, can be defined as the “shame-faced poor,”8 whose lives remain largely hidden outside the structures of work and systems of poor relief. What this largely female correspondence reminds historians is that well into the late ninteenth century the family was defined by those kin upon whom one could respectably make a claim for material aid, and that the central engine behind the preservation of these extensive kin networks, many of which traversed large geographical areas and great disparities of wealth and social station, was the enduring reality of female dependency.9 Further, the conventional dichotomies that historians of the family such as Lawrence Stone, Edward Shorter, Philippe Ariès, and Peter Laslett have seen between the nuclear and the extended family and between the family of sentiment and the productive economic family unit, are not upheld by this new historical evidence. What I wish to argue is that we must reconceptualize the family in terms of credit, reputation, and obligation, whereby terms of affection overlapped with concerns of material security and in which due attention is given to the gendered complexion of these hierarchical dependencies and interdependencies. In contrast to the metanarrative posited by Lawrence Stone, the rise of the supposed “affectionate family” displaced neither patriarchy nor the core of economic determinants of family relationships; rather, the language of affection or “sensibility” was in female correspondence the language of deference and subordination and served as a strategic device to elicit material aid and paternal protection.10 In this scenario, gendered dependencies

72

Nancy Christie

within families acted as the catalyst by which older social forms of obligation and duty were retained, and they animated the broader hierarchal social relationships that survived within the newer horizontal contractual characteristics of the “modern” liberal market society. Gender was thus the pathway for the prolongation of the “long” eighteenth century in Canada. In circumstances of familial prosperity, the nuclear family form was the “normal” one, but in the largely debtor society that characterized Canada prior to 1900, where every social class experienced periods of bankruptcy and impoverishment, the extended family functioned as the central purveyor of credit and charity, whereby the lineaments of patriarchal control were reinforced by the gift relationship. As a contribution to the history of charity, this chapter argues that the notions of who constituted the deserving and undeserving poor and the codes of behaviour which undergirded the charitable relationship were formed first and foremost within the family structure, and it is this language of familial norms, expressed in these ubiquitous female begging letters, which defined the practice of institutional charity. Seen from this perspective, societal norms are not imposed or imprinted indiscriminately upon a private family often conceived by historians as the “other,” as itself marginal to broader social developments; rather, the family – and its female members – was a central domain for those forms of cultural activity that established the categories of social hierarchy in the nineteenth century: namely, class, gender, and political subjectivity. Martin Daunton has recently commented on the propensity within all social classes in the nineteenth century to invoke even the most tenuous connections of kinship.11 One of the central purposes of letterwriting in this era was to develop a correspondence of affectionate appeal in order to demarcate the boundaries of one’s family circle. Early in life such letters would extend to one’s cousins and aunts, but as one aged and drew closer to a potential period of economic dependency, the radius of one’s correspondence grew and focused upon the wealthy relatives, no matter how remote this connection might be. Thus in 1849 Dolly Ward wrote to her “kind and affectionate cousin Hannah”: “there has many years passed since we have seen each other. I have burried my husband in the year 1836 and remain his widow yet at the present time and am old and worn out my frame is verry mutch palsied so that I am unable to do any Work at all and I am left alone in this vain World but with very scanty means to support me & should be very thankful if you would lend me a helping hand of charity to help so that i need not suffer in my poor and lonely condition.” And in order to jog her cousin’s memory she hastened to add, “I am the wife of William Ward the son of your Uncle Andrew Ward.”12

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

73

This practice of drawing upon “fictive” family members was not simply to secure a sense of family continuity and stability;13 rather, the heightened language of affection, feeling, and emotional connection that formed the currency of sociability served very specific material ends. On first view, the letter from Aaron Brewer might lead one to conclude, as has Lawrence Stone, that families were essentially tied together by the bonds of emotion. “[F]or what Acquaintance I have had with you,” wrote Brewer, a modest farmer settled outside Kingston, Upper Canada in 1818, “if respect you as a Nigh Relation in hopes to see you again if we are spared ... I Respect your Mother and Brothers and Sisters all tho I never Saw accept you and your mother their names Seams Near to me give my Love to them all and if we never Should meet heere on erth may we Be prepared to meat in the Kingdom of heaven.”14 Letters such as this from Aaron Brewer to his “respected cousin” were very common, and unless one reads them as a continuing narrative of familial charitable acts, one misses the nuanced meanings enmeshed within the language of sentimentality. Thus while the ideal family state was “concord and affectionate cordiality,” as William Dummer Powell informed his brother-in-law George Murray, presumably in the interests of tutoring the less-than-dutiful Murray clan in the codes of familial honour, the ideal of “social friendship” between wider kin always implied the concomitant and much esteemed characteristic of “duty.” Duty and affection formed the two most powerful watchwords of family and societal norms in this period, and it was commonplace to sign one’s letters, as did Anne Powell, as a “dutiful and affectionate” sister in order to reinforce these societal norms.15 Although we have come to think of these twin virtues as applicable solely to women, men were likewise expected to display and practise deference, duty, and affection, for these attributes lay at the very essence of the way that wider kin networks functions in the nineteenth century. Not only did emotive letter-writing help to enhance the ideal of familial harmony founded upon a cult of sensibility and disinterested sociability which was believed to form the basis of social cohesion outside the realm of the political, but more pragmatically, the language of sentiment, with its emphasis upon personal communication, made letter-writing the perfect instrument by which to elicit an immediate sympathetic response, which was so crucial to the practice of charitable exchange in this period.16 Indeed, a careful reading of nineteenth-century family charity letters confirms Craig Muldrew’s observation of the eighteenthcentury world of credit in England that no distinction can be made between the subjective realm of feelings and the utilitarian world of economy.17 Thus the impoverished widow Anne Jane Powell could

74

Nancy Christie

speak overtly of the “joyfully received” letters of affection in terms of Sam Jarvis’s ability to grant her charitable gifts when in need.18 The language of sentimentality at once obscures the contemporary perception of the family as a system of obligatory financial reciprocity, even as it served as the primary vehicle by which to confirm claims upon kinship and elicit material assistance and promote self-interest. Although historians of the family have been reluctant to consider the family first and foremost as an institution of economic exchange, with rules and codes of behaviour not dissimilar to those that informed all other social relations,19 family members in the nineteenth century were extremely forthright in viewing the family in this way. Indeed, in their view, letter-writing was a primary means by which to enforce familial social control, for it was a form of communication that allowed the authorities of age, gender, and wealth to be flexed across vast geographical distances. For example, in 1816 Sophia Crooks wrote from England to inform her cousin Mary Turner, an apprentice dressmaker in the town of Quebec, of the meaning of “calculative reciprocity” which lay at the core of kinship, stating how her young brother, who was being apprenticed with the Turners, was “Deauty Bound to Bless them for there kindness shown to Him.” And as she confirmed in another letter, younger family members were obliged to materially care for the older generation: “James is a very good boy and will I trust live to recompense my Brother and sister for their kindness to him.”20 One could also discharge one’s debt to relatives through an exchange of what I call “cultural capital.” John Nairn, writing from his remote seigneury at Murray Bay, outlined to his young daughter Jacky, who had been sent to live with relatives in town, the imperatives of dutiful obedience to her “Superiors”: “Gratitude and assiduous Duty you owe to your Aunts and other relatives, for admitting you into their family also for their attention they are pleased to bestow on your Education and giving you advice.”21 In order to repay her aunts for offering sage advice on codes of conduct, Jacky was instructed to act obediently and behave in a fashion suitable to her gender and social class. In a similar fashion, William Dummer Powell angrily wrote to his wife that having given his sons John and Grant a handsome education, “they have no claim on me” for further financial assistance. Indeed, as he made abundantly clear, they owed him a debt, which involved finding employment and becoming independent heads of families in their own right. Similarly, cultural debts could be relieved through financial repayment. In this same letter to his wife, Powell also explained his duty to his wife. In exchange for years of bestowing her care and affection upon him, he felt duty bound to pay off his many debts in order that he might leave her a sum of £2,000 per annum.22

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

75

Often families were ambiguous about just how one must repay one’s familial debts, and often duties involved both cultural and material forms of repayment. Thus in the case of John and Grant Powell, it was incumbent upon them to compensate their parents by either reinforcing or conferring a new social status upon their families by achieving a respectable station in life as independent gentlemen, but as Anne Powell explained to her brother, it was more often expected that the bonds of affection be repaid in decidedly material terms. When one of her worldly brothers refused to relieve her brother George Murray of the necessity of extracting a loan from strangers, she commented that he had a right to a family assistance for “paternal affection and unreturnable obligation gave you a claim.”23 Although expressed in terms of the principles that guided the charitable act, in some instances wealth alone incurred an obligation, for as Donna Andrew has pointed out, well into the late eighteenth century, Christian charity continued to be viewed as a rent upon property.24 However, by the nineteenth century and within the social classes outside the wealthiest levels of the gentry, the ideal of reciprocal exchange held sway. In short, the charitable giver must be rewarded. In several begging letters, the writers underscored to their wealthier relatives that their reward would only be received in heaven, thus relieving themselves of the responsibility of returning the favour in the form of work or some other family service. Thus Anne, an impecunious relative of George Alford, a wealthy seigneur and businessman resident in Quebec, circumvented earthly repayment by maintaining that the gift relationship existed, not between her and George, but between George and God, for as she observed, “we do charity to our own” in order to “prepare to meet thy God.”25 In a similar vein, Alex Miller, a distant relative, asked George Alford for a “little present” of money, thus stressing that this was a gift rather than a transaction of reciprocal exchange, and to further underscore that he was relieved of familial duty, he noted that through the act of giving, George would have “merritt in the world” and “a great reward in the world above in coming to the relief of an affected family.”26 Just as cleverly, Maria Ferguson, one of George’s aunts, appealed both to his sense of social status and to family tradition by reminding him of his obligation to provide relief so that her family could avoid going”to the home,” on the basis that his grandfather had been benevolent and that it was this very generosity that was the key to his prosperity.27 While Maria Ferguson consistently expressed her belief that George’s wealth alone gave her a right to family support, especially as she was a dependent female, thus exempting her from the obligation of repaying such assistance either in terms of proper behaviour or by

76

Nancy Christie

giving refuge to other dependent family members (which she refused to do), more often both the givers and the receivers of family assistance did not view such giving as an act of charity because it was believed to be conditioned either by previous service or by the potential of future need. Hence George Pozer claimed he was due a life rent of £100 per annum because he had provided years of schooling to his wayward niece, Caroline Ferguson. Interestingly, the mother of Caroline Ferguson had refused to give her refuge in her home because Caroline could confer no credit on her mother and, indeed, had brought discredit on the family by bearing an illegitimate child and on another occasion having experienced a broken engagement. Without any actual means by which to repay her debt to her mother for raising her, Caroline remained stranded and had to make vain appeals to male relatives, for whom she was compelled to work as a servant in exchange for their “protection.”28 It is clear from nineteenth-century family begging letters that no family member had an intrinsic right to material assistance without some form of reciprocal act. The terms of family obligation were outlined by James Jeffrey in a letter to George Alford in 1863, just after Alford’s grandfather had left him his entire fortune, to the great surprise and consternation of assorted family members, who took Alford to court. James Jeffrey was at pains to show that he was not imposing on the “rights” of the wealthy, for as he explained, the children of the “late poor Mrs Jefferys” had a claim upon Alford, whose duty it was to provide for them in exchange for the crucial evidence their mother had given in court when his family was challenging grandfather George Pozer’s contentious will, which resulted in George Alford being made “a Gentleman and all the rest beggars.”29 Where James Jeffrey made his claim on the basis of the chain of indebtedness, it is equally significant that Anna, one of the daughters of this same Mrs Jeffrey, made her plea for a load of wood strictly in terms of “charity,” for as a young,30 orphaned female, she had neither real nor “cultural” capital by which to repay her debts, since her request was made before the completion of the contestation of the Pozer will and prior to her mother’s testimony, upon which Anna could have claimed George Alford’s duty. In the ideal scenario of family obligation, it was believed that all families who were themselves not completely destitute should come to the aid of those in need. As has been demonstrated, this ideal was put into practice in the bourgeois and gentry families of Upper and Lower Canada until the late nineteenth century, and indeed, such charitable acts founded upon reciprocal support were rigorously policed through the informal means of familial correspondence. Until recently, historians have argued that this “economy of obligation” did not operate

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

77

among the lower middling sorts and the working classes because they did not have sufficient wealth to participate in such a network of mutual gift-giving. It was assumed, therefore, that if one was from a relatively humble station and fell on hard times, one inevitably turned to public poor relief for the bare necessities of life. It is the very fact that public relief provided only a bare sustenance which has induced historians of welfare provision to reconsider the whole question of the interrelationship between family support, charity, and the system of poor relief in the nineteenth century. If, as Pat Thane, Richard Smith, Thomas Sokoll, and others have argued, the niggardliness of poor relief, together with the paucity of organized charity, impelled poorer families in England to remain strongly committed to the cultural norm of significant familial support,31 this argument must apply with double strength to early ninteenth-century Canada, where no poor-law system existed and philanthropic work remained episodic, as it was geared largely to remedying the problem of intermittent poverty experienced by recently arrived immigrants. While a fair proportion of family papers that have been collected in Canada are those of the upper middle class and socially prominent, there is nonetheless a significant quantity of family correspondence penned by modest farmers, small shopkeepers, and skilled craftsmen from which to construct a portrait of the extent to which the ideal of familial duty obtained below the upper bourgeoisie. In Upper and Lower Canada there was no structured governmental relief similar to that which existed in England at this time. Although there were mechanisms of localized relief, the system of public relief had greater affinities with the Scottish system, where relief was unevenly supported by local governments and where assistance for the poor, ill, and aged was provided largely through an equally weak and localized system of charitable concerns. Because it was generally assumed that even the poorest settlers could obtain land cheaply, poor relief in the New World settlements was overwhelmingly residual in character. Despite the absence of official poor laws, there was a legal obligation which presumed that relatives supported their families unless they were themselves completely destitute. In remarking upon the case of an abandoned male child, Judge James Gowan of Barrie, Canada West, stated: “But you must bear in mind that if this boy has any relations able and willing to support & bring him up then there is no power in the Town Wardens to apprentice him.”32 Historians such as David Thomson have taken such official regulations to infer that such practices of filial obligation were imposed upon victimized pauper families. In the absence of evidence from these pauper families themselves, he has erroneously concluded that English families did not feel obligated to help kin in need.33

78

Nancy Christie

In Canada during the nineteenth century there remain abundant examples demonstrating that relatives from all classes, including those of modest means, felt obliged to provide aid. One such family was the Gibson-Watson connection in Scotland, who described themselves as a family burdened with debt who had eked out a “bare existence” prior to emigrating to Canada. While David Gibson emigrated, his brother John remained behind in Scotland, for “he would feel uneasy knowing there are 5 sisters and a mother without a son to protect them.” In a manner similar to that which prevailed in wealthier families, David Gibson, a shopkeeper and apprentice surveyor who had grown up in a family of tenant farmers and masons in Scotland, critized those who did not properly observe the codes of filial obligation. Thus he severely castigated his other brother, James, for eloping with a woman of questionable virtue and making only 15 shillings per week, which meant that he would be unable to make his parents comfortable in their old age. Worse still, his lack of propriety was a stain on the entire family’s reputation, which would remain his parent’s “bad fortune.”34 In a fashion that exactly replicated the cultural ideals among the wealthier bourgeoisie, Gibson saw an overlapping world of both cultural and economic credit, which revolved around themes of family affection and moral reputation. The networks of kin obligations were also expected to extend across the ocean, although as the correspondence between William Rider and his son Richard, a labourer in the naval yards in Kingston, reveals, it was much easier to circumvent cultural norms from vast distances. The father wrote several begging letters to his son between 1819 and 1835, in which he outlined the parents’ straitened circumstances by describing his great age, ill health, and consequent incapacity to work and how his wife was forced to earn a living at less than a shilling a week, meaning that they lived on under £20 per year. Richard may have refused to fulfill his filial duties because he himself lived a fretful existence as an unmarried day labourer, but even when he was married and living on a productive farm, his father again pestered him, this time shaming him into helping by declaring that after the death of his wife, he had been forced to beg from his two daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, one of whom provided nursing care and cleaned house, and the other took in ironing to support their aged parent. In the end William Ryder wrote sarcastically that “we all hope your Family are dutiful and good as that is great comfort to a Father’s mind.”35 We do not know if the son ever sent the needed funds, but what this letter does illustrate is that there indeed existed, among all social strata, a presumption not only that parents should help their children, as Laslett has argued, but that the lines of kin assistance ran both downwards

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

79

and upwards between the generations, even if these ideals were not always fulfilled in practice. If sources for tracing familial support remain elusive for English historians, as Pat Thane has observed in her book Old Age in English History36, this was not so in new societies of settlement, such as in Upper and Lower Canada in the nineteenth century. Letters of recent immigrants from the middling and working classes are rife with lengthy commentaries concerning who helped whom, to what extent, and for how long. Not only did the working-class sergeant in the First Camerons, Samuel Forrest, regularly support his parents back home, but other male relatives in this family of Scottish weavers took in orphaned relatives and helped to train them to be bakers.37 Indeed, it appears from various family letters from this social class that it was normative to care for family members even when one’s income was precarious, for Samuel Forrest’s mother-in-law took in his children after the death of his wife, despite the fact that as an unemployed servant, she herself had no work “but what she obtained from neighbours.”38 As these cases reveal, complex households made up of various kin were not uncommon in Upper and Lower Canada; indeed, they were the norm in times of economic distress, illness, or death. The naturalness of assisting relatives even when it depleted one’s own resources was recounted in a letter to David Keenan in Nepean in 1866 by George Robertson, who described how, after his brother’s wife died, his mother took her children in. “It will be very hard on my mother in her old age,” commented Robertson, “to have the care of her husband and the children being yung will require much attention.”39 And even in those families who did not share households, there is ample evidence that the working classes and middling sorts held a lived sense of duty to assist family members in need. Of course, as the case of William Rider and his unresponsive son, Richard, make all too evident, such familial norms were not always lived up to. It was perhaps because relatives who had not gone away feared, as did William Rider, that once community bonds had been broken and kin networks severed by long distances, and upward social mobility had broken apart the cultural ties that had made for familial harmony, there was a much greater need to impress upon emigrants their existing obligations to kith and kin. One of the central purposes of nineteenth-century letter-writing was to exhort recipients in the tenets of Christian benevolence. A letter from William Davies, a weaver, to his sons and daughters in Scotland is representative of this form. In it he described at length how he spearheaded a community movement in Brockville to collect monies for the poor weavers in their home community in Scotland, many of whom were relatives.40

80

Nancy Christie

These letters thus served to extend the range of family policing of behaviour among its youth, but they also functioned as another form of begging letter, for by instilling the lessons of “calculative reciprocity,” the authors of such letters hoped either for immediate aid for their relatives who had fallen on hard times or for duties fulfilled in the far future as they themselves experienced the burdens of old age and ill health. It is obvious, for example, from the epistle sent by a distant relative in Scotland to John Grubb, a radical farmer living in Upper Canada, that he, like their own family, was expected to contribute £10 to his aunt, who was “poor and ill-provided for in her old age.” As the letter-writer stated, her own mother had sent a similar amount “to keep the wolf from the door,” and she went on to describe how various “neace[s]” who had all kept themselves “respectable” living as governesses abroad had taken it upon themselves to assist. The implication of this letter is that the obligation of kin support should ideally fall upon male members of the family, especially those such as Grubb who were thought to be more successful than the rest of the family, and that the fulfillment of such family obligations was a sure sign of one’s respectability. Indeed, the inability or unwillingness to care for lesswealthy members of one’s family was a cause for family shame and formed a clear boundary between working-class respectability and actual poverty. That the inability of male heads of household to properly protect and assist their female kin was a clear sign of poverty was made clear by Thomas Sibary, a clerk in the post office and a member of the evangelical sect the Ranters. His widowed Aunt Spencer was living with her son in a house next to Sally’s public house, but as Sibary significantly observed, they must be very poor indeed, for her son could not support her, as she had a mangle by which “she gets a little money.” The point here is not that work in and of itself was a source of family shame, for as Sibary noted in the same letter, another poor relative, Fanny Wheatcroft, had worked as a servant for her brother George.41 Rather, the point at issue is that Aunt Spencer worked for wages, while the work of Fanny Wheatcroft, because it was unpaid, could be defined as a service and thereby fell within the prescribed code of respectably fulfilling one’s familial duties. The experience of Fanny Wheatcroft was not unusual; indeed, it was very common that poor female relatives, both young and old, were compelled to become servants in the families of wealthier relatives. In working- and lower-middle-class families, just as in those of their social superiors, the notion of the “economy of obligation” was premised less upon an ideal of charitable benevolence than upon the ideal of mutual assistance, or what can be more cynically termed “mutual advantage.” Although working-class families may have been

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

81

just as interested as families of the bourgeoisie in assisting female relatives to protect their virtue by hiding them within the confines of the domestic sphere, virtue alone did not fulfill one’s debt. Nor was the social status that a charitable act conferred on wealthier family members sufficient repayment, as the case of the Scott family makes evident. Because their father was poor and could not support his family, he called upon a wealthier relative, one Captain Scott, to provide succour for his children. In a similar manner to the poor-law guardians in England, Captain Scott did not expect the children to support the family as long as they were in school or being apprenticed, and so he settled £12 a year on the father while he lived. After the father died, the two sisters went to service and the boys were apprenticed to the printing trade, but in exchange for providing the orphaned children with their livelihood, Captain Scott enlisted the services of his female nieces as servants in his household as a reward for his paternal benevolence.42 Similarly, Charlotte Gaviller agreed to board her son and his family when he decided to relinguish his failing farm, but as she made clear in her letter to Mary Gowan, a sister of Judge Gowan, since she cared also for her own father and her sister’s family, even a member of her immediate family, her son, was indebted to her. Thus he was obliged to send his two youngest daughters to her as servants.43 Not only do these and many other cases of familial assistance reveal the great disparities of wealth that were common within extended families – and thus provide a decided challenge for historians who seek to create objective criteria for determining class in this period – but they affirm the evidence recently uncovered by historians of servitude in England and France that the vast majority of servants were female kin. This was a phenomenon not just of prosperous families, as Bridget Hill has postulated;44 as nineteenth-century familial begging letters demonstrate, kin servitude ranged across all social classes, for the simple reason that the concept of wealth, beneficence, and mutual obligation functioned as a set of social and power relations within all families, even where the disparities of wealth and social status were minute. Thus class identity and the concept of wealth or poverty were flexible and relative, and were defined within families by the discreet hierarchies that were constructed through the gift exchange. At the core of family relationships at all gradations of wealth, no matter how harmonious the ties of emotion, lay the template of economic exchange. The family unit was one of production and consumption, but it was also a system of credit and debit. It would thus have surprised no one in the nineteenth century that Helen Milne, the wife of a yeoman farmer, bequeathed $50 to her daughter-in-law in exchange for “services done her.”45 Historians of charity and old age have argued that

82

Nancy Christie

mutual familial assistance was the norm at all social levels.46 While it is unremarkable to observe economic insecurity among the working classes and small farmers, where it has been shown that savings were difficult to accumulate, the prospect of financial ruin is less immediately comprehensible within the ranks of bourgeois and gentry families, unless one understands the degree to which personal finances were determined almost exclusively by the mechanisms of private credit. As Craig Muldrew has argued, this culture of credit was maintained through trust in the creditworthiness of others, and this in turn was a function of one’s family reputation. From this perspective, then, society can be viewed as a “unity of interpersonal obligations”; however, prior to the arrival of a system of bank loans and insurance companies in the late nineteenth century, it was also one characterized by profound economic insecurity, for approximately one-quarter of all household heads died with large debts. It was this pervasive indebtedness among all social classes that promoted the growing propensity for household inventories, for ever larger numbers of widows had to determine their familial wealth in order to repay their deceased husband’s debts.47 Mary Pozer was one such widow; her household inventory reads as a stunning record of vast consumption and wealth until one realizes that her wealth was ephemeral, for she sold all her household effects before moving in with her mother. The fear of imminent destitution, therefore, pervaded all social groups and was a much recorded and discussed subject in familial correspondence. That one would die racked with debts was an obsession even among the wealthy. The judge and member of the Legislative Council William Dummer Powell brooded constantly about strategies whereby he could “leave my family without Embarrassment,” especially when he witnessed the ever-present reality that while the dispensing of credit might affirm one’s genteel status in the short term, it could eventually spell financial ruin, as had happened to his brotherin-law George Murray. Murray’s brother Charles found himself unable to repay his debt.48 Likewise, John Wilson, a labourer and farmer who was immensely popular in his neighbourhood because he had money to lend, commented in 1821 about the great scarcity of money and the fact that “debts [were] almost impossible to collect.”49 So commonplace was indebtedness in Upper Canada that William Bell, a Scottish clergyman born into a family of artisans, commented on the cavalier attitude that people had to paying their debts, especially among those in “respectable circumstances.”50 Indeed, one’s everyday existence was characterized by the ebb and flow of debt and credit, so much so that even those wealthy enough to afford a servant – the middling sorts and above – regularly borrowed

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

83

from their household employees, and just as frequently servants borrowed on credit from their masters. Consider also the case of Alexander Crighton, a baker in Richmond, Upper Canada, who begged Alexander Scott to lend him the great sum of £100 so that he could in turn repay his debt to a John Greg;51 or the example of John King, a farmer in New Brunswick, who closely followed one relative’s fortunes in the hope that he might be remembered in this person’s will and be able not only pay off his debts but perhaps leave his own children “a substance.”52 The case of the father of Sam Jarvis, superintendent of Indian Lands in Upper Canada, was not uncommon within the unstable economy of personal credit. Thinking that a Quaker farmer was of dependable character, the elder Jarvis loaned him $500, which was never repaid, thus leaving the old man sufficiently destitute “to suffer the parish” – meaning to accept public relief. So ignominious was his plight that his daughter, rather than he, wrote a letter to Sam Jarvis begging relief. It is “absolutly necessary,” she wrote, “that he has a further supply of money and unless you can make it convenient at this time to send him twenty-five dollars I fear he must suffer ... it is trying situation for a man ... reduced to a state of Beggery, from the rogery of those indebted to him.” But as Hannah Jarvis hastened to add, “I do not absolutely beg,” for she had absolved her own debt by agreeing to sell Sam some of her land. The swiftness of complete financial ruin was also recounted by Mathieu Brady, who wrote to George Pozer, a wealthy seigneur, begging him to repay the £375 he had loaned his now-dead son Jacob. “I am a ruined man unless you come to my assistance and save the Father of a family from the effects of his regard for and confidence in your departed son.”53 As these two cases illustrate, nineteenth-century notions of security and creditworthiness were intimately connected to one’s public reputation, hence Anne Powell’s reminder to her brother that “poverty and want are of minor consideration in comparison with Character.”54 Family feelings and affection, in turn, depended almost wholly upon “keeping up respectable appearances.”55 Certainly, the Fortune family made little distinction between the realm of the emotions and the utilitarian attitudes of the marketplace, for when their guileless father, a military officer, landed in debtor’s prison in France just after the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars, his sons and daughters broke off all written communication. At the age of seventy, William Fortune became a debtor also for familial feeling. “I hope you’ll never feel the pinching circumstances I have felt,” he wrote in 1815, “don’t throw away your money for such”; “prosperity is a dangerous fabric,” for as he saw it, “prosperity and adversitie” formed two sides of the same coin. Not

84

Nancy Christie

only did Fortune face financial ruin, but more problematically, he had lost his credit – namely, his reputation. He himself recognized that he had lost the “dutiful respect” of his children because his indebtedness had been made public, and thus he had to prove that he was “a gentleman” of “sober steady and manly character” as part of his strategy to wrest a loan of £100 from his son.56 In normal circumstances, his argument that his children owed him their affection because he had been a good father would have carried weight, but a disgraced reputation eradicated such ties of credit and obligation in both the material and the emotional senses. Likewise, John Powell, the son of William Dummer Powell, had forfeited both his income and the obligation of his family to support him when his extravagant and wasteful lifestyle became all too evident after his furniture fell into the hands of the local sheriff. Anne Powell keenly felt that his folly had impugned both the reputation of John’s wife and children and also that of his whole extended family. She remarked that he had “forfeited his reputation as a man of honour or dignity; I doubt if there is a man in this community who would lend him fifty pound on security.”57 Knowing full well that one’s character and, indeed, one’s very status as “a respectable member of society” rested upon one’s ability to keep one’s debts hidden from public scrutiny, J.R. Ardagh expressed his deep gratitude to his brother-in-law James Gowan for assisting him to repay his extensive debts.58 Because the currency of reputation lay at the heart of the social economy of credit, a family’s financial reputation was a matter of decided public concern. Thus disclosures of a person’s income, the contents of wills, and marriage contracts – in other words, the minutiae of familial finance – formed the stuff of family letter-writing, even among the remotest of kin, because it was all too well appreciated that financial reputation did not necessarily imply substance, and that the defaulting of one family member would have a cataclysmic domino effect which could rapidly spread to even the farthest reaches of the extended family. As the brother of John Grubb, a small Scottish farmer in Upper Canada, ruefully observed, Miss Miller in Scotland had died so much in debt that she had nothing to leave her relatives: “So much for the great Miss Miller and our grand Legacy.”59 As the examples of the Jarvis, Powell, Fortune, and Grubb families make clear, the road to penury could be swift no matter how high your social station, but the burden of impoverishment had a decidedly gendered complexion, as it was the marginal members within this web of economic credit and obligation who were left the most dependent, namely, widows, spinsters, and orphaned children. While the great need to protect family honour and reputation often required heads of

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

85

families to provide succour to such women out of a fear that their reluctance to provide assistance might be publicly perceived as an inability to do so or that female independence outside the domestic circle might suggest a lack of female virtue, this cultural imperative was not always obeyed. Indeed, the fact that Madame Lilliott, the daughter of a baker in Quebec whose own daughter had married into the wealthy Pozer family, had to specifically exclaim in 1841 “how fortunate” it was that George Pozer had ensured “that his Family might be comfortable”60 indicates how unstable patriarchal responsibility remained in this period.61 Indeed, her own daughter Mary, to whom she addressed this letter, was later left destitute by her husband, who, because of his drunkenness, had squandered his wealth. And as the begging letters of women demonstrate gender and dependent status did not automatically entitle women to family assistance. How did widows and bereft single women perceive their role as familial dependents? Many historians, including Susan Amussen, Stacie Burke, Amy Froide, Pamela Sharpe, and Karin Wulf, have noted that between approximately 1500 and 1900 the expected role for single women was that they remain under patriarchal control.62 Although widows had greater potential to acquire an independent household status than spinsters, as Pamela Sharpe, Lynn Lees, and Anna Clark have demonstrated, after the seventeenth century they were not as well supported by public relief and so were forced to turn more regularly to relations for their livelihood.63 Both Julie Hardwick and Anthony Fletcher have questioned over-simplistic conclusions regarding patriarchal oppression, in an effort to recover women’s agency in the past, and to this end, Fletcher has warned that historians should not overstress women’s uncomfortableness with their lack of independence.64 While it is admirable to affirm female agency in the past, evidence from women offers a different portrait from that suggested by Fletcher, and it tends to confirm the conclusions of demographers that the poor, ill, and aged preferred to live on their own when circumstances allowed. Despite the fact that she doled out a great deal of household charity to her various grandchildren, nieces, and nephews, Anne Powell was glad of her “independency” free from “personal aid,” which she admitted would make her a drawback on others.65 Her daughter Mary Jarvis was similarly disposed and was saddened to discover that Betsy Jarvis had felt compelled to marry Dr Philips, whom she did not love, in order to relieve her brother of the burden of supporting her. If she had found herself in a similar position, stated Mrs Jarvis baldly, she would prefer working for her living.66 The ideal of economic independence crops up constantly when women ruminated on the choice between working or marrying and

86

Nancy Christie

relying upon handouts from their relations. Thus Magdalene McNicol, who had acquired the seigneury at Murray Bay, wished her unmarried sister Christine to be equally “independent,” even though she herself only wished to contribute £100 rather than £600 to the cause.67 The brothers and sisters of Marian Ardagh fretted anxiously once it became known that her alcoholic husband was about to die in debt, for if a military pension could be found for her, “she might not be dependent on Mrs. H [her mother-in-law] which would prevent her living where she herself thought best.”68 It was only with extreme reluctance that women such as Maria Ann Ferguson, the widowed daughter-in-law of George Pozer senior, accepted “his protection.”69 Likewise, Hannah Lisotte, a daughter of the same George Pozer, who had married a philandering and indolent man, experienced years of poverty among her wealthy but niggardly relatives and therefore sought to borrow a “stitching machine,” for as she explained, “I will try it anything is preferable to begging. I truly detest to make a poor Mouth particularly as never was brought up to beg ... If had not sold my furniture I wuld try again attending on Gentlemen ... Oh what injustice the Lone Widow has to meet with.”70 Despite the personal pursuit of economic independence, impovershed widows, spinsters and female orphans often had to resort, albeit intermittently between strategies of work and public assistance, to familial relief. It is to the rhetoric of need which emerges throughout these letters that I now turn. However, it should first be noted that there were informal yet specific codes of behaviour around which the system of begging revolved. First of all, it appears from Madame Lilliott’s chastising tone when she observes how “it is quite distressing to seen an aged person like him [George Pozer senior] with so few social comforts and passing so much of his time alone” that old age did confer a right to family assistance.71 However, there was a discreet pecking order when it came to family relief. Thus Anne Powell placed the rights of male family members ahead of the female, for she noted in her tirade against the lack of sympathy in the O’Hara branch of the family that “as a Sister and as the Widow of one who forgot self-interest in attempts to serve them, I had a claim upon their consideration but when your mightier claims upon fraternal aid have been unheeded, what right have I to express surprise or regret.”72 Likewise, Maria Ferguson believed she had a natural entitlement to charity from her brother while he lived, but once he died, she accepted that she had “no relationship to expect” of her widowed sister-in-law: “I am under no Compliment for any favors owed me since poor George died.”73 Although these direct family ties had been extinguished, she nevertheless believed such obstacles to funding were outweighed by her sister-

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

87

in-law’s clear ability to support her and by past social relations, for as she argued, “if you were poor, I would not ask you for it, but you are very generous to others you must be just to me from what is past.”74 Significantly, the fact that Maria Ferguson had to point out the exceptional circumstances of her claims to another woman only reinforced the theme that family begging operated along specifically gendered lines, whereby women were debtors and male relatives the creditors. Anne Powell thus followed well-established convention when she demanded that her brother George Murray assume the primary responsibility for their Quaker niece Mary Browne, whose father had died with much debt, grounding her arguments on both hierarchies of gender and wealth.75 Generally speaking, then, it was thought improper to beg from relatives who were themselves poor, and more importantly, it was thought unjust to demand assistance from one’s female line. As Caroline, the daughter of the above-mentioned Maria Ferguson, made clear, she had turned “to her mother’s side of the family” only after all her male relatives had died.76 The cultural precepts that governed the process of writing family begging letters cannot be found in any letter-writing manuals, but they were developed through conventions that reaffirmed gender hierarchies. The rhetoric of need was thus believed to be an essentially female one, and although men did pen begging letters, either they were written between sons and fathers, as in the case of Sam Jarvis junior, who wrote maundering letters to his father for several years enlisting his aid, or they went entirely unheeded.77 Male begging letters only circulated among immediate kin, namely, brothers and sisters, and thus reinforced horizontal connections within the family, whereas female begging circulated in a larger radius, and while not always addressed to male relatives, because of male control over their wives’ property, they reaffirmed hierarchies of patriarchal governance. The begging letters written by impoverished women can be examined as narratives of need whose language was formed by those habits of deference and subordination that flourished in the wider society and constructed the boundaries of deserving and undeserving poor which animated the principles inherent in public poor relief. These letters are of great interest to historians, for they outline the expectations of both the dispensers of relief and their recipients, and they are important to our general understanding of the way in which traditions of local and familial convention interesected with institutionalized structures of entitlement and how categories of deservedness were constructed and developed. What is apparent from these begging letters is that there was a close affinity between the explanations of deservedness outlined by women and the justifications for public poor relief and charity

88

Nancy Christie

during this period. What we need to ask is whether women themselves helped to fashion categories of need first and foremost within the context of family, or whether their begging letters merely mirrored broader social conventions. What we do know is that there were powerful conventions surrounding the definition of respectable poverty, which were policed within families, and that these codes of deservedness were well understood by poor relatives. It is clear from a reading of these begging letters that gender and dependency alone did not constitute a deserving claim. Divorced women or wives with unemployed husbands were very rarely invited into the fold of familial support because of the presumption that their primary source of private support must derive from the male head of the household. For example, Marie Dorman explained to her cousin James Gowan, who was an active participant in the Senate debate on reforming divorce laws in Canada, the reasons why, after she had left her husband, she had become a companion to a widow of a London physician. Marie had so soiled the family reputation by breaking the bonds of respectable social behaviour in leaving her husband that her relatives not only refused to shelter her but even declined to care for her children, who consequently had to be placed with their father’s family. “As my marriage proved so unwise,” she confided to Gowan, “I was left so poor, it sems only to have turned their [her family’s] hearts against me.” But Marie preserved her dignity, concluding that she was “only too glad to get occupation for myself, without being a burden to anyone.”78 Women were well aware of prescribed codes of deservedness, for Mrs Burns was at pains to inform George Pozer, at the seigneury of Saint-Étienne how she had “unfortly been in great trouble for the last Twelvemonths” once her unemployed husband had gone up country to seek work. It appears that she did not expect him to help, because she strategically sent her written request with her daughter in the hope that a face-to-face meeting between Pozer and her starving child would provoke a spontaneous act of benevolence.79 Catherine Hall, the sister of Mary Pozer, likewise recognized that, as a married woman, she was not deserving of help. Thus, after a long description of the size of her family and her husband’s work ethic, she posed as a widow, stating that she needed money for a farm “if anything was to happin to Go what would i do with such a large family as I have no home of my own.” Significantly, Catherine concluded her appeal by saying: “you must not be angry if I ask you every little will help.”80 The bonds of familial obligation, therefore, had distinct limitations, even for dependent women, and as a result, poor women constructed elaborate narratives explaining why they were deserving. The emotive

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

89

letter of the widow Maria Ferguson to her father-in-law on 10 February 1844 was typical of these narratives of need. After reminding him that he had also once been poor, Maria, who lived on £30 per annum, wrote: now consider how a weak unprotected female must be, who if I did not belong to such a wealthy family I would not suffer what have I not bore from my unfortunate husband who would reproach me every day how you assist my brothers & sisters ... I have not the good luck of being one of them whom you bear & overlook all their faults & support them in influence & leave me to beg ... rest assured I am compelled to go on the list of the affflicted but before that for my own justification I shall get certificates of what has been my conduct & management in my housekeeping from the most respectable farmers up at St. Etienne ... I have tried to get a situation but no person can believe it possible you will let me want therefore I must suffer every kind of humiliation if you do not asssist, for relations, I have tried them all those that have it in their power have plenty of excuses & those who certainly would assist have it not in their power. Therefore I conclude I trust you will send me some relief soon for I am shurely afflicted anuff without starving to death & who will support my children.81

Not only is the hyperbolic tone of this letter fairly common to this genre of letter-writing, but Maria’s strategies for defining both her deservedness and her father-in-law’s obligation to help touch on recurrent themes: she stresses his obvious ability to help and the fact that he is the male patriarch and she an “unprotected” female, making his responsibilities clear, and she appeals to his sense of family reputation in an obvious attempt to shame him by threatening to go on parish relief, while at the same time, she demonstrates that she has tried to find work, that she is of good character, and that she has children in her care in order to make her claim. Most interestingly of all, Maria Ferguson draws direct parallels between petitioning for public relief and requesting family assistance in so far as she tells her potential benefactor that she expects that her household management and conduct to be investigated by the leading members of the local community. On another occasion, she attempted to goad George Alford, the paterfamilias of the seigneury at SaintÉtienne, into supporting her by making references to family reputation. Maria believed that her age, a ripe seventy-eight years, should first and foremost garner her some material assistance, but then she referred to the effects of her downward mobility by mentioning that she could no longer afford a servant. However, she also recognized that her destitution alone did not constitute a claim, for she then added that she

90

Nancy Christie

intended to take up farming. While she posed at seeking an independence, this was a sham, for as she constantly argued in a host of begging letters, her illness and old age entitled her to familial sustinence. Although Maria attempted again and again to renegotiate the terms of familial charitable obligations, she never succeeded, and she often chided the recipients of her humble, yet angry epistles with such accusations as “my methodist Friends thyre offer to me was better.”82 Although the frustration of her plight at finding herself an impoverished widow among wealthier relatives found expression in all her letters, the fact of her dependent state, combined with her gender, reinforced already established codes of subordination. Despite often rigorously logical arguments as to why she deserved justice within her family, Maria was tolerated only when she struck a pose as a supplicant. As she told her sister Hannah: “To conclude I will say that I desire for not fortune nor covet nor meddle with no ones riches for if I can only push my tow children through this world for myself I look for nothing in this world but trials.”83 While different applicants for assistance used various strategies by which to insist upon their entitlement to material help from relatives, no matter what the social class, ethnic background, age, degree of poverty, or illness of the author of a begging letter, each and everyone referred to his or her work history. Thus when in 1846 Alexander and Mary Crighton from Scotland wrote to their grandson Alexander in Upper Canada asking that he send money, they made their plea not simply on the basis of their old age, but described how they had both been too ill “to do business” for a year.84 Not only did one have to claim poverty to enlist the goodwill of extended family members, but one had to have been out of work for a long period of time and clearly incapacitated. Consider also the life story of Dolly Ward. It was not enough that she had been thirteen years a widow, but she had to affirm that her children were too poor to support her – as one would have been obliged to do to poor-relief authorities – and that she was “old and worn out my frame is verry mutch palsied so that I am unable to do any Work at all and I am left alone in this vain World but with very scanty means to support me & should be very thankful if you would lend me a helping hand of charity to help so that i need not suffer in my poor and lonely condition.”85 In exchange for family support, one had to demonstrate a proper attitude towards work, irrespective of one’s gender. Thus a schoolteacher from Ireland related to David Keenan that he had refused to help out his brother’s destitute family, for the orphaned children were, in his view, far too indolent to deserve his help.86 Jane Tinker clearly understood communal expectations for women to work, for she went on at length about how, after her

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

91

husband died, she had earned her living by teaching. However, when later she was forced to do needlework, she had ruined her eyes, so that she was “obliged to give my work up.” Moreover, it is clear from the case of the Widow Tinker and others, that despite the high-minded rhetoric about familial obligations, family assistance was considered, as was the poor law, to be residual in character. Thus women such as Widow Tinker were forced to resort to an “economy of expedients,” for at different times in her life she was helped intermittently by both her friends and her kin when she could not find work. While families did help one another in times of need, the bases upon which a dependent female could make a claim were as stringent as the conventions of deservedness established by public relief. Moreover, the level of assistance appears to have been just as niggardly as the subsistence levels established by public assistance, for as Anne Powell noted, while the married sisters of Mary Browne agreed to provide her with room and board, “she has no means of obtaining clothes.” This was a “painful dependence” indeed,87 for like other impoverished women of all classes, Mary Browne was compelled to cobble together a secure living from a wide range of relatives, far beyond the nuclear household. Thus the ubiquitous character of female dependency across all social classes meant that women were important catalysts in reinvigorating older notions of extended kinship, which were thereby preserved well into the late nineteenth century. Family, as Sarah Hill saw it, constituted those upon whom one could make a claim.88 But as this examination of begging letters shows, all familial assistance came with a price in terms of both unpaid work and virtuous behaviour. The nineteenth-century concept of entitlement in both the public and the private spheres was based upon work. It was thus completely natural, within the terms of mutual obligations among kin, that in exchange for her sister-in-law’s annual grant, Sarah Hill had to accede to accommodate her drunken brother-in-law, who had become a family embarrassment back in England, and furthermore, she had to agree to her sisterin-law’s choice of career paths for her own children. And since Sarah Hill’s support network relied exclusively upon the relatives of her dead and abusive husband, it reinforced pre-existing hierarchies and patriarchal authority. Notions of charity or benevolence did not inform this familial economy of obligation, for one received assistance only in return for services rendered; thus the rhetoric of affection and emotion merely overlay the principle of contract that formed the central dynamic of family relationships in the nineteenth century. While the family may have been a realm of intimacy and emotion, it was also a complex system of informal controls. Likewise, these new modern ideas of contract in the

92

Nancy Christie

marketplace were in turn defined by the enduring edifice of personal contacts, the culture of sentimentality, and the realm of familial relationships, which continued to dictate the forms and conventions of the broader social structure, including relations that have been seen to be exclusively contractual, namely, the world of credit and debt and the system of public relief and institutionalized welfare. Thus it can be argued that the rules of deference and subordination that informed broader social practices were learned first within the bonds of family life.89 While it can be said that the language of sentimentality was an attribute of both sexes, the rhetoric of need was a decidedly gendered affair. Indeed, as this essay has argued, the female begging letter was one of the principal conduits by which the hierarchical features of gender, age, and wealth were reinforced within the extended family economy of obligation. The last word on the codes of conduct and power that obtained within this system of family care should rest with Caroline Ferguson. Despite the fact that she had disgraced her extended family by bearing an illegitimate child, was married to an abusive and improvident husband, and from time to time relied upon charity from the Montreal St Andrew’s Society, Caroline was adept at persuasively manipulating the rhetoric of need. Over a forty-year period she created elaborate narratives which cajoled and threatened George Alford into providing financial assistance and in which she created identities for herself as loving mother, abused wife, injured daughter, wayward woman, and hard-working working-class widow, all of which played upon the themes of family reputation, in which the protection of female virtue formed a central trope, and the obligations of patriarchal governance. Although largely imprisoned by the tenets of mutuality dictated by the economy of obligation both because of her dependent economic state and because of her gender, Caroline Ferguson nevertheless sought to reinterpret the rhetoric of need in a language of contractual rights. As she informed her benefactor, George Alford, she believed that she was “entitled to his assistance and protection” and that he should place her “in a respectable position” like “a man assisting a friendless woman.” “However all depends upon you you can be the means of settling me comfortably for life or cast me again upon the world the former would reflect far more credit & honour I think than the latter.”90

no tes 1 Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: the Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). Muldrew has applied the concept to relations between families

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

2

3

4

5

6

93

and the wider community, whereas I have utilized it to explore ties within the family. I am indebted to Donna Andrew for drawing my attention to this seminal work. Toronto Reference Library (trl), Baldwin Room, L17, William Dummer Powell Papers, Jane Powell to William Dummer Powell, 15 July 1800; ibid., Margaret Powell to William, 17 Jan. 1807; ibid., Mary Browne to Cousin Eliza, 2 Sept. 1844; ibid., Mary to Eliza, 6 Aug. 1845. Olwen Hufton, The Prospect before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, vol. I, 1500–1800 (London: Fontana Press, 1995), 249. On the family strategies of work, see Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, “Women’s Work and the Family in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17 (1975): 36–64; Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993). For the broad interpretations of the development of the nuclear family, see Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); Alan McFarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986); Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, translated by Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962); Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965); Edward Shorter, The Making of the Modern Family (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Roger Chartier, Alain Boureau, and Cécile Dauphin, Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Manon Brunet, “Les traités d’arts epistolaires au xixe siècle québécois: Rhétorique et code social,” in Benoît Mélançon and Pierre Popovic, eds., Les Facultés des lettres: Recherches récentes sur l’épistolaires français et québécois (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1993), 45–72; Konstantin Dirks, “The Familiar Letter and Social Refinement in America, 1750–1800,” in David Barton and Nigel Hall, eds., Letterwriting as Social Practice (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 2000), 32–3. Although historians of letter-writing argue that the practice reinforced hierarchies of class, gender, and age and that correspondence established kin networks, they are silent on the question of relating the rise of women’s correspondence and begging letters. Donna T. Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige: Female Charity in an Age of Sentiment,” in John Brewer and Susan Staves, eds., Early Modern Conceptions of Property (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 275–300; Thomas Sokoll, “Old Age in Poverty: The Record of Essex Pauper Letters, 1780–1834,” in Tim Hitchcock, Peter King, and Pamela Sharpe,

94

Nancy Christie

eds., Chronicling Poverty: The Voices and Strategies of the English Poor, 1640–1840 (London: Macmillan, 1997), 131. 7 For the traditional view that the nuclear form was rigid in the past, see, most notably, Peter Laslett, “Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the ‘NuclearHardship Hypothesis’,” Continuity and Change 3, (1988): 53–71; Richard Wall, “Relationships between the Generations in British Families Past and Present,” in Catherine Marsh and Sara Arber, eds., Families and Households: Divisions and Change (London: Macmillan, 1992), 63–85. For the revisionist response to this paradigm, see, for example: Colin Jones, “Some Recent Trends in the History of Charity,” 52–3, and Richard Smith, “Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare: Reflections from Demographic and Family History,” in Martin Daunton, ed., Charity, SelfInterest, and Welfare in the English Past (London: University College Press, 1996); Thomas Sokoll, Household and Family among the Poor: The Case of Two Essex Communities in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (Bochum: Universitatsverlag, 1993), 22, 44; Pamela Sharpe, “Survival Strategies and Stories: Poor Widows and Widowers in Early Industrial England,” in Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner, eds, Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1999), 235–7; Margaret Pelling, “Old Age, Poverty and Disability in Early Modern Norwich: Work, Remarriage and Other Expedients,” in Margaret Pelling and Richard M. Smith, eds., Life, Death, and the Elderly: Historical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 75; Richard Smith, “The Structured Dependence of the Elderly as a Recent Development: Some Skeptical Historical Thoughts,” Aging and Society 4 (1984); Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experience, Present Issues (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 121, 149, 172, 294–5; Tim Hitchcock, “Introduction,” in Hitchcock, King, and Sharpe, Chronicling Poverty, 12; Wally Seccombe, Weathering the Storm: Working-Class Families from the Industrial Revolution to the Fertility Decline (London and New York: Verso, 1993), 122; Paul Johnson, “Private and Public Social Welfare in Britain, 1870–1939,” in Michael B. Katz and Christoph Sachsse, eds., The Mixed Economy of Social Welfare: Public/Private Relations in England, Germany and the United States, the 1870’s to the 1930’s(Baden-Baden: Nomos Venlagsgesellschaft, 1996), 142; Joan E. Cashin, “Households, Kinship and Absent Teenagers: The Demographic Transition in the Old South,” Journal of Family History 25 (2000): 149; James G. Snell, “Filial Responsibility Laws in Canada: An Historical Study,” Canadian Journal of Aging 9 (1990): 272–3; Michael Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 137. On the paucity of familial letters in England as evidence of extended kin networks, see Susannah

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

95

Ottaway, “The Old Woman’s Home in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Lynn Botelho and Pat Thane, eds., Women and Aging in British Society since 1500 (London: Longman, 2001), 121. 8 The concept of the “shame-faced poor” has only recently received close examination by historians of charity, who point out that this ignored group formed a large majority of the poor but remained hidden. On this point, see Sandra Cavello, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 111; Brian Pullen, “Charity and Poor Relief in Early Modern Italy,” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare. 9 The notion that the nuclear family was the “normative” family form in the past has been challenged in a spate of revisionist historiography. See Tamara Hareven, ed., Family and Kin in Urban Communities, 1700–1930 (New York: New Viewpoints, 1977); Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire; Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality, translated by Richard Southern (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Steven Ruggles, Prolonged Connections: the Rise of the Extended Family in Nineteenth-Century England and America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); Ginger S. Frost, Promises Broken: Courtship, Class and Gender in Victorian England (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 77; D. Cooper and M. Donald, “Households and Hidden Kin in Early Nineteeth-Century England: Four Case Studies in Suburban Exeter,” Continuity and Change, 1995, 257–78; B. Reay, “Kinship and Neighbourhood in NineteenthCentury Rural England: The Myth of the Autonomous Nuclear Family,” Journal of Family History 21 (1996): 87–104. For a critique of this new perspective, see Richard Wall, “Beyond the Household: Marriage, Household Formation and the Role of Kin and Neighbours,” International Review of Social History 44 (1999): 55–67. For the most part, this body of revisionist historiography has paid little attention to the role that female dependency played in defining the extended family. 10 On the need to conceptualize the family as a combination of affection and material concerns, see Leonore Davidoff, Megan Doolittle, Janet Fink, and Katherine Holden, The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy, 1830–1960 (London and New York: Longmans, 1999), 13; David Warren Sabean, “Young Bees in an Empty Hive: Relations between Brothers-in-Law in a South German Village around 1800,” in Hans Medick and David Warren Sabean, eds., Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 171–2. Sabean interprets the family as “a system of claims and rights,” not just property, in which emotional attachment is mediated

96

11 12 13 14 15

16

Nancy Christie through the relations of property. See also Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, who argues that no distinction can be made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between the subjective realm of feelings and the utilitarian world of economy. On this theme in Canada, see Frederick Elkin, The Family in Canada (Ottawa: Vanier Institute of the Family, 1964), 136. Historians of gender have criticized historians of property, who have argued that the rise of the affectionate family implied less patriarchal power. For this older view, see Lloyd Bondfield, Marriage Settlements, 1601–1740: The Adoption of Strict Settlement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 121. For a devastating critique of this perspective, see Susan Staves, Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660–1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990). For the dependency model of the family, see Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1991); Elizabeth FoxGenovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 195–9. Note in particular the observation of George Fitzhugh: “The state of dependence is the only condition in which reciprocal affection can exist.” It should be noted that all the above-mentioned revisionist historians of gender see the historical family as an interdependent unit and thus argue against the perspective of Stone, Macfarlane, and Laslett, who see the modern, individualistic family as originating in the seventeenth century. Martin Daunton, “Introduction,” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare, 3–4. McCord Museum (mm), Pozer Family Papers, p016–p01/001, Dolly Ward to Hannah Alford, 20 Sept. 1849. Daunton, “Introduction,” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare, 3. National Archives of Canada (na), mg 24, i 174, Brewer Family Papers, Aaron Brewer to respected cousin, 15 Nov. 1818. trl, Baldwin Room, William Dummer Powell Papers, W.D. Powell to G.W. Muray, 11 March, 1822. On the twin ideals of duty and affection, see mm, Pozer Papers, p016–b01/002, W. Alford to brother James, 182?. This family ideal crossed class and ethnic lines. See, for example, nac, mg 24, i 167, Crerar Family Papers, James Crerar to brother, 15 Nov. 1834. The Crerars were of the middle sort, being tenanted farmers in Scotland. On these aspects of the cult of sensibility, see John Mullen, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 27, 34, 91; Joanna Innes, “The ‘Mixed Economy’ of Welfare in Early Modern England: Assessments of the

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

17

18 19

20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

97

Options from Hale to Malthus (c.1683–1803),” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare, 164. Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 65. For analyses of credit in Ontario, see Doug McCalla, The Upper Canada Trade, 1834–1872: A Study of the Buchanans’ Business (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979); McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 144–5; David G. Burley, A Particular Condition in Life: Self-Employment and Social Mobility in Mid-Victorian Brantford (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994), 103–26. Burley argues that in the 1870s the emphasis on character, which occurred within a commercial economy, declined with the rise of industrial capitalism. This theory mirrors Muldrew’s chronology for the economy of obligation in England. trl, Baldwin Room, S.P. Jarvis Papers, vol. 1, Anne Jane Powell to Mr Jarvis, n.d. On this point, see Richard Smith, “Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare: Reflections from Demographic and Family History,” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare, 44; David Garrioch, Neighbourhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 56; Pat Thane, “Old People and Their Families in the English Past,” in Daunton, Charity, Self-Interest, and Welfare, 116. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–f/002, Sophia Crooks to Mary Turner, 28 March 1816; ibid., 10 March 1818. na, mg 23 g III 23, Nairn Family Papers, John Nairn to Jacky, 27 Aug. 1791. trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, W.D. Powell to Anne Powell, 6 Sept. 1818. Not only did John and Grant Powell continue their indolent ways, but William Dummer Powell never succeeded leaving his wife as much money as he had desired. Ibid., Anne Powell to George Murray, 29 July, 18140. Andrew, “Noblesse Oblige,” 293–4. For the way in which conceptions of charity and economy changed in this period in England, see Donna Andrew, Philanthropy and Police: London Charity in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). mm, Pozer Papers, p016–b01/023, Ann to dear Mr Halferd, n.d.; ibid., p016–p01/001, Dolly Ward to Hannah Alford, 20 Sept. 1849. Ibid., Pozer Papers, p016–b01/023, Alex Miller to George Alford, 19 Dec. 1870. Ibid., Pozer Papers, p016–b02–002, Maria Ferguson to George Alford, n.d. Ibid., Pozer Papers, p016–c07/023, Caroline to Uncle Colin McCallum, n.d. Ibid., Pozer Papers, p016–b01/023, James Jeffrey to George Alford, 8

98

30 31

32

33

34 35

36 37

38 39 40 41 42

Nancy Christie April 1863. It is unclear whether this was a brother of Mrs Jeffreys. Ibid., Pozer Papers, p016–b01/023, Anna Jeffery to Mr Alford, 27 March, 1861. Thane, Old Age in English History; Smith, “Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare,” 27–35; Sokoll, Household and Family among the Poor; Tim Hitchcock, “Introduction,” in Hitchcock, King, and Sharpe, Chronicling Poverty, 12. Historians of working-class families have argued that with industrialization, family assistance increased rather than decreased. See, for example, Anderson, Family Structure in Nineteenth-Century Lancashire, 137; Ruggles, Prolonged Connections, xvii, 14, 39; Ellen Ross, “Survival Networks: Women’s Neighbourhood Sharing in London before World War i,” History Workshop 15 (1983): 4–27; John R. Gillis, For Better, for Worse: British Marriages 1600 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). By contrast, Joan Cashin has argued that small yeoman farmers in the American South tended after the 1840s towards a more nuclear family form. See Cashin, “Households, Kinship and Absent Teenagers,” Journal of Family History 25 (2000): 141–57. na, mg 27, i e31, James Gowan Papers, James Gowan to Captain Moberly, 8 Nov. 1844. The emphasis is Gowan’s. On this point in the English context, see Pat Thane, Old Age in English History, 121. Thomson has written extensively on this theme, but note, in particular, D. Thomson, “The Welfare of the Elderly in the Past: A Community or Family Responsibility,” in Pelling and Smith, Life, Death and the Elderly. Archives of Ontario (ao), f 568, David Gibson fonds, David Gibson to cousin George Watson, 12 Feb. 1827. ao, f 372, Charles Bacon collection, William Rider, England, to Richard Rider, Kingston, 13 Sept. 1819; William Rider to Richard Rider, 1 May 1835. So assiduously did Richard avoid responding to his father’s request that the father comments that they thought him dead, which suggests that even before 1819 the father had been in the habit of requesting money from his son. Thane, Old Age in English History, 114. na, mg 24, i 158, John Forrest Papers, Samuel Forrest to mother and father, 14 June 1812; Robert Forrest to cousin, 1 Aug. 1831; John Forrest to father and mother, 15 Jan. 1833. Ibid., John Forrest to father and mother, 15 Jan. 1833. na, mg 24, i 163, David D. Keenan Papers, George B. Robertson to David Keenan, 5 July 1866. na, Forrest Papers, William Davies to sons and daughters, 25 Nov. 1821. na, mg 24, i 165, Thomas Sibary Papers, Thomas Sibary letter, n.d. na, mg 24, i 172, Alexander Scott Papers, David Scott to cousin, 18 May 1846.

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

99

43 na, Gowan Papers, Charlotte Gaviller to Mary Gowan, May 1867; see also unknown writer to Janie Cherry, 2 Aug 1897, offering her domestic skills to wealthier members of the Gowan family. 44 Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 34, 119. See especially chapter 6, “Kin as Servants.” See also Cissie Fairchilds, Domestic Enemies: Servants and Their Masters in Old Regime France (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 5. Seebohm Rowntree, in his analysis of family strategies among England’s poor, pointed to this phenomenon of relatives working as servants for wealthier relatives. For an analysis of Rowntree’s 1912 report, see Thane, Old Age in English History, 292–4, 301. Gordon Darroch has recently shown that there was a decisive increase in the numbers of youth who left their parental home in the last third of the ninteenth century, and it may be surmised that many of these were sent to live in the homes of extended kin. See Gordon Darroch, “Home and Away: Patterns of Residence, Schooling and Work among Children and Never Married Young Adults, 1871 and 1901,” Journal of Family History 26 (2001): 220–50. 45 ao, David Gibson fonds, copy of will of Helen Milne, 6 Sept. 1826. 46 See, for example, Ottaway, “The Old Woman’s Home in EighteenthCentury England,” 113–15; Thane, Old Age in English History, 97. 47 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 3–5, 117, 123, 153–4. 48 trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, W.D. Powell to G.W. Muray, 10 Sept. 1816; ibid., Powell to Murray, 18 Oct. 1824. 49 ao, f 287 John J. Wilson family fonds, John Wilson letters, 24 June 1821, 28 Oct. 1828, 1 Dec. 1824. 50 na, mg 29, b15, Robert Bell Papers, vol. 49, William Bell Reminiscences, March 1839. 51 na, Alexander Scott Papers, Alex Crighton to Alexander Scott, 2 Nov. 1841. 52 na, Brewer Family Papers, John King to dear child, 15 Jan. 1828. 53 mm, Pozer Papers, p016–a01/0004, Mathieu Brady to George Pozer, 12 Feb. 1826. 54 trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, n.d. [1839]. 55 mm, Pozer Papers, p016–d03/004, A. Booth, Peterborough, England, to Dear George, 1 Aug. 1834. This man had lost his family’s affection because of his economic failures, and he hoped to renew his family “connection” by marrying a wealthy woman. 56 na, mg 24, i 157–9, Fortune Family Papers, William Fortune to his son Joseph, n.d. [1815]; 20 April 1815; 20 Feb. 1816; 4 April 1817, 25 Aug. 1817. 57 trl, Baldwin Room, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, 3 June 1840, 28 May 1844.

100

Nancy Christie

58 na, Gowan Papers, J.R. Ardagh to James Gowan, 7 Feb. 1851. 59 ao, John Grubb Papers, Robert Grubb to John, n.d. For other examples of letter-writing as a form of familial bookkeeping, see na, mg 24, i 161 Alexander McGibbon Papers, Alexander McGibbon to Dear Sir, Mirimachi, 20 Aug. 1825, in which he provides minute descriptions of the employment status, finances, and testaments of various relatives in Scotland. If one was to write begging letters, it was absolutely crucial to know which relatives to squeeze. 60 mm, Pozer Papers, p016–d03/002, M. Lilliott to Mary Pozer, 5 Mar. 1841. 61 On the increasing control of bourgeois women over marriage contracts during the ninteenth century, see Bettina Bradbury, Peter Gossage, Evelyn Kolish, and Alan Stewart, “Property and Marriage: The Law and the Practice in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal,” Histoire sociale/Social History 51 (1993): 9–43. For the United States, see Lisa Wilson, Life after Death: Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1992), 112. For Britain and France, see Susan Staves, “Resentment or Resignation? Dividing the Spoils between Daughters and Younger Sons,” 194–220, and Barbara B. Diefendorf, “Women and Property in Ancien Régime France: Theory and Practice in Dauphine and Paris,” 170–93, in Brewer and Staves, Early Modern Conceptions of Property. 62 Susan Dwyer Amussen, “The Gendering of Popular Culture in Early Modern England,” in Tim Harris, ed., Popular Culture in England, c.1500–1850 (New York and London: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 54; Stacie D.A. Burke, “Marriage in 1901 Canada: An Ecological Perspective,” Journal of Family History 26 (2001): 215; Amy M Froide, “Marital Status as a Category of Difference: Singlewomen and Widows in Early Modern England,” in Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, eds., Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 237; Amy Froide, “Old Maids: The Lifecycle of Single Women in Early Modern England,” in Botelho and Thane, eds., Women and Aging, 89–110; Pamela Sharpe, “Literally Spinsters,” Economic History Review, 1991, 658–9; Karin A. Wulf, “‘My Dear Liberty’: Quaker Spinsterhood and Female Autonomy in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania,” in Larry D. Eldridge, ed., Women and Freedom in Early America (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), 86. Not only did cultural conventions dictated such female subordination within the family, but in many jurisdictions single women were legally forbidden from establishing their own households. On this point, see Anthony Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination in England, 1500–1800 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 228–30.

Female Begging Letters and Familial Obligation

101

63 Sharpe, “Survival Strategies and Stories,” 235–7; Lynn H. Lees, “Public Shaping of Private Gender Roles: Women’s Experiences of the English Poor Laws, 1834–1909,” in Katz and Sachße, The Mixed Economy of Social Welfare, 172–5, 182; Anna Clark, “The New Poor Law & the Breadwinner Wage: Contrasting Assumptions,” Journal of Social History 34 (2000): 265. Both Lees and Clark argued that the poor laws did not assume that dependency alone entitled women to relief; rather, first and foremost, they were expected to work unless they had children in their care. For the way in which similar assumptions informed welfare measures in twentieth-century Canada, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), chapter 4. 64 Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park: University of Pennsylvania State Press, 1998), x; Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination, 230. 65 trl, Baldwin Room, William Dummer Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, 22 Oct. 1842. 66 Ibid., Mary Jarvis to Mamma [Anne Powell], 5 May 1828. 67 na, Nairn Family Papers, Magdalene McNicol to James Ker, 14 July, 1815. 68 na, Gowan Papers, W.D. Ardagh to Dear Sir, 27 June, 1872, 17 July 1872. 69 mm, Pozer Papers, p016–b01/001, M.A. Ferguson to Mrs Pozer, n.d.; ibid., p016–d03/002, M.A. Ferguson to Mary Pozer, her widowed sister-in-law, 23 July 1848, in which she asks Mary to bring her eggs and butter in exchange for her furniture. Like others in the Pozer family, Maria Ferguson was left little by George Pozer senior, who began as a grocer in Albany in 1783, and was a Loyalist émigré to Quebec, where he acquired seigneurial lands and became a prosperous merchant. He left almost his whole fortune to his grandson George Alford, much to the consternation of assorted relatives, especially the women. Maria noted the news of the will “has shaken my tattered frame much.” 70 Ibid., p016–b01/021, Hannah Lisotte to George Alford, n.d. She did receive an annuity of £48 per year, but this would not necessarily have allowed her to live independently in her own household; in addition, she had to annually pen a begging letter to her nephew in order to receive this bequest from George Pozer senior. 71 Ibid., p016–d02/002, M. Lilliott to Mr Pozer, 25 April 1839. 72 trl, Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, 24 July 1839. She also states that she herself has paid out £70 in expenses for family members, thus suggesting that her brother should uphold his family responsibilities,

102

73 74 75 76

77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

90

Nancy Christie

which by convention should be at a higher cost because of his role as paterfamilias. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–d03/003, Maria Ferguson to Mrs George Pozer, 17 Oct. 1860, 8 Nov. 1860. Ibid., p016–d03/003, M.A. Ferguson to Mrs George Pozer, 8 Nov. 1860. trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, 29 Dec. 1840, 5 Oct. 1842. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–b01/020, Caroline Ferguson to George Alford, n.d. One Mrs Lock, whose husband had gone to sea, appeared to live intermittently with both her mother and her husband’s family. See na, Nairn Family Papers, Mrs Ker to Christine, 10 April 1816. Mrs Powell greatly frowned upon the fact that her granddaughter’s husband had left them dependent upon her own family instead of his own. See trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, n.d. [1840]. On Sam Jarvis’s appeals, see trl, Jarvis Papers, passim. See also mm, Pozer Papers, p016–d03/004, George Southeran to Dear Brother, 5 Sept. 1847; ibid., p016–b01/023 George Southeran to cousin George Alford, 16 May 1856. na, Gowan Papers, Marie Dorman to James Gowan, 16 Nov. 1905. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–a01/002, Mrs Burns to George Pozer, n.d. Ibid., p016–d03/002, Catherine Hall to Mary Pozer, 25 Sept. 1854. Ibid. p016–a01/003, Maria Ferguson to father, n.d. 1846. Ibid., p016–b01/010, Maria Ferguson to George Alford, n.d. Ibid., p016–b01/001, Maria Ferguson to Hannah Alford, n.d. na, Alexander Scott Papers, Alexander and Mary Crighton to Alexander Scott, 6 Oct. 1846. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–p01/001 Dolly Ward to Hannah Alford, 20 Sept. 1849. na, mg 24, i 163, David Keenan Papers, W. Campbell, Belfast, to David Keenan, 4 Aug. 1853. trl, Baldwin Room, Powell Papers, Anne Powell to G.W. Murray, 2 Feb. 1844. ao, f 634, Sarah Hill family fonds, Sarah Hill diary, 14 Dec. 1855, 13 Feb. 1856, 30 Nov. 1860. For a similar argument regarding the household as the primary site where meanings of gender and authority were constructed, see Hardwick, The Practice of Hierarchy. mm, Pozer Papers, p016–b01/019, Caroline Ferguson to George Alford, 3 April 1884; ibid., p016–b01/020, Caroline to George, 19 Feb., n.d.; ibid., Caroline to George, n.d.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

103

3 Itineraries of Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal b etti na b r a d b u ry

th e c o ntext Wife to widow. The possibility that wives would become widows was ever-present in nineteenth-century societies, lurking behind all sorts of other political, social, and economic issues. It was a matter of private anguish and concern and of public policy and debate. Couples and their parents invariably considered widowhood at the time of marriage, much as the possibility of divorce cannot be ignored today. Legislators could not avoid the question of widowhood whenever they rewrote laws regarding such apparently unrelated topics as conveyancing rules or property registration. When men with any property fell ill, one of their first concerns was to make sure they had written their wills, making provision not just for their children but for their widows. The problem of elderly widows preoccupied Émilie Tavernier when, as a widow herself in 1830, she founded the shelter for elderly women in Montreal that eventually became the basis of the large Catholic order she headed, the Sisters of Providence.1 Widows ranked highest among those of the poor who were understood to be deserving by the charities of that city, as of all others. Historians have not neglected widows. Indeed, there is a rich and rapidly expanding literature studying widows in all time periods and on most continents.2 Canadian historians, however, have not paid much attention to widowhood. The existing literature tends to portray widows as victims of either poverty or patriarchy or of both, or to celebrate their liberation from the subjugation of nineteenth-century

104

Bettina Bradbury

marriage laws.3 This approach simplifies the range of possible outcomes in the transition from wife to widow, making it too easy to imagine a husband’s death precipitating his widow from either the centre to the margins or vice versa. When wives became widows, their trajectory was shaped by a complex mixture of demographic, legal, social, cultural, economic, and individual factors. It varied with the laws and customs of the jurisdiction in which they married, the wealth of their husband, any provisions he had made, their own personal and financial assets, and the vagaries of fate. Some women certainly faced widowhood in extreme poverty. Some were no doubt not only liberated from the economic control of their husbands but also relieved at the end of an abusive marriage. A few became important money lenders, businesswomen and mothers superior. Many experienced both the loss of their husband and a fall in their standard of living and the challenge of managing matters, which in most marriages had been dealt with previously by their spouses. Widowhood was more than a marital status that posed economic challenges to the poor, middling, and wealthy alike. It was also a cultural category loaded with contemporary meanings that varied between cultural groups, classes, and time periods but that shaped the ways in which women recast themselves as they learned to live as widows rather than wives. While both men and women might be widowed, it was female widows who occupied a special place in the imagination of their times and in the challenges they faced.4 This essay examines several key moments in the transition that over half the women who married in Montreal during the 1820s made from wife to widow. It looks in detail at the itineraries, choices, and experiences of three women who became widows early in their marriages. I have chosen to concentrate on the individual itineraries of three women for three main reasons. First, widowhood cannot be understood without first investigating marriage. The conditions of marriage critically frame the nature of widowhood for all women. The legal aspects of marriage and widowhood are easier grasped by following individual women from wife to widow and by seeing the impact of early decisions on later ones than by abstract discussions of the law. So too is the diversity of choices made by Montrealers. The different experiences of Marguerite Paris, who married a French-Canadian labourer, Marie-Noflette Charland, who married an innkeeper, and Laura Mower, who married a bookseller, demonstrate three individual transitions from wife to widow, highlighting, I hope, just some of the ways this transition was lived in early nineteenth-century Montreal. Second, individual itineraries enable me to draw on particular primary sources in detail and to attempt to read them in order to

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

105

imagine the dynamics involved when the conditions of a woman’s widowhood were deliberated. Quebec historians, like so many other social and economic historians, have used the rich documents produced by notaries and the courts as the basis for quantitative assessments of a range of social and economic questions. In so doing, they have transformed our understandings of nineteenth-century social structure and of inheritance patterns.5 However, such studies seldom reveal much about where widows fitted in either the social structure or inheritance decisions. Nor have they problematized the power dynamics and personal stakes at play at the moments when such documents were created.6 In this study I draw on six main primary sources: parish registers, marriage contracts, wills, documents detailing provisions made for burials and funerals, decisions about tutors for widows’ children, and inventories made of a couple’s goods after the husband’s death. Rather than analyze them quantitatively, reducing their content to categories for comparison, I try to read them in some detail.7 By identifying the actors involved in each situation and their interactions with the wife or widow, it is possible to get a better sense of the particular power dynamics operating among wives, husbands, officials such as notaries or judges, and relatives and friends. It is also possible to see some of the ways in which widows were supported or constrained by family members, officials, and friends as they made the transition from dependent wife to widow. I do not seek to measure a widow’s emotions following her husband’s death. Such formal notarial and religious documents do not reveal how a woman felt. Nor can we eavesdrop on the conversations and possible arguments that led to the decisions reported in them or that led to less-formal resolutions. However, careful research to determine what kinds of documents couples generated, combined with piecing together relevant texts, can reveal some of the tasks many women were required to assume in the period between husbands’ final illnesses and the settling of property issues. My third reason for this micro-approach was that it allows me to apply a zoom lens to those situations where widows made or formalized decisions that would affect their economic future and that of their children, if they had them. What decisions those would be and whether they would leave archival traces varied for reasons related to the women’s culture, religion, and class. By looking intensively at a few women, it is possible to ponder the importance of situations that produced no record, as well as of those that did generate material that historians can study. Quantitative historians have too often eliminated people from their analyses because data is missing or there is no record. In attempting to piece together the trajectories of the over 1,000 wives who became widows who are part

106

Bettina Bradbury

of my broader study, I have been struck again and again by how not leaving a record is as significant as leaving one.8 Therefore in describing these women’s lives, I attempt not simply to read the silences in texts, as feminists have long urged, but also to interpret the meanings of no texts at all. Marguerite, Marie-Noflette, and Laura did not each leave similar archival traces. The decisions these three women made as they negotiated their status as wives and widows with family, friends, notaries, and judges were shaped by the possibilities and constraints of early nineteenthcentury Montreal. Their choices and experiences have little meaning outside that context. These three women shared the fact that each married for the first time in Montreal between 1823 and 1826, and that they outlived their first husbands. In other ways their lives before and during their marriage were very different. Marguerite’s father had been a labourer in Montreal, so she was likely raised in the city. Her husband, Joseph Guilbeau, came from the parish of Saint-Roch, south of the St Lawrence River in the Assumption seigneury. His parents were still living there at the time of their marriage in September 1825, but Joseph identified his place of domicile as Montreal. Perhaps like other landless men, he had come to the city seeking waged labour. Marie-Noflette Charland, in contrast, came from a family that was well established in the Saint-Laurent suburb of the city.9 Her father listed his occupation as “écuyer,” a title that carries some of the weight as well as the indeterminacy of its English equivalent “squire.” Neither the inscription recording their marriage in the Notre-Dame church nor their marriage contract gives any indication of Joseph-Henri Letourneau’s parents’ background. At the time they married, he was already established as an innkeeper in the Saint-Laurent suburb. Marie-Noflette and Marguerite, like roughly two-thirds of the couples who married in Montreal during the 1820s and two-thirds of the population, were Catholic. They were also French-speaking, like just over half the population enumerated in the 1825 census.10 Laura Mower, in contrast, was a Presbyterian and lived, spoke, and wrote in English. The paucity of information recorded on Protestant marriage records makes it hard to know whether she had family in Montreal or where she was born. The same is true for John Campbell, whom she married in January 1826. It is possible that they had both migrated to the city some time prior to their marriage as, despite the name that Laura shared with a prominent Montreal family, there is no indication that either of them had any kin in the city. Only further genealogical research can clarify their origins. At the time of their marriage, John Campbell was listed as a grocer, so Laura and Marie-Noflette shared the challenges of marriage to a relatively small tradesman whose finan-

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

107

cial stability depended on securing credit and steady customers for his goods. Like most French Canadians in early nineteenth-century Lower Canada, Marguerite and Marie-Noflette came from families whose roots stretched back long before the British conquest of 1765. The laws that governed questions of property in marriage and the rights of husbands and wives were familiar to them through family tradition and lore. The Custom of Paris had been confirmed as the law governing all civil matters in what would become the province of Quebec under the Quebec Act of 1774. The only major change, and it was a major one, had been the introduction of freedom of willing, a change that offered men the potential to completely overturn customary inheritance practice.11 For newly arrived British residents, possibly including Laura and her husband, in contrast, laws regarding marriage were very different from the common law to which they were accustomed if they came from England or the United States, though less strange, perhaps, for those arriving from Scotland.12 English, Scots, and French Canadians and the small Jewish community brought different understandings to marriage forged in their own particular customs, religion, and laws. At the time of the three women’s marriages, Montreal and Quebec politics were dominated by the shifting conflicts and allegiances that would erupt a decade later in the Rebellions of 1837–38, pitting the Patriotes, who sought greater representation, against the Constitutionalists who sought to maintain elite privilege. These conflicts continued to shape post-rebellion politics and society. As liberals and radicals questioned their political rights, they also reimagined what historian Alan Greer has called the “politico-sexual order.”13 Questions of marriage law and widows’ rights were integral to the broader conflicts about representation, property, and civil rights that were at the heart of the conflict. Following the rebellions, the fundamental shape of future legislation was forged by the twenty or so carefully chosen, conservative male government supporters who were named to the Special Council that governed Quebec when the Legislative Assembly was suspended in early 1838.14 The Collectif Clio argued years ago that these were times when women’s rights as both wives and widows were drastically curtailed. Patriote politicians attempted to prevent Quebec women from voting in 1834, as many had been doing in previous elections, just weeks after claiming universal suffrage in their 92 Resolutions. This law was declared ultra vires, but after the rebellions, former patriotes supported the 1849 act which clarified that voters in Lower Canada had to be male.15 Marie-Noflette, Marguerite, and Laura married at a time when questions about marriage, property, gender,

108

Bettina Bradbury

and citizenship circulated widely in newspapers, political pamphlets, and debate. They would not all live to see the outcome of these controversies. These then were times when major changes were occurring in the economy, society, and politics. True, in the decade that Marie-Noflette, Marguerite, and Laura married, the vast majority of the city’s male inhabitants continued to make their living as they had long done – in commerce, artisanal production, and wage labour. Montreal’s elite were diversifying their interests, moving from the fur trade and imperial commerce into new areas of accumulation in banking, land purchase, land transfer, and mortgaging. A new breed of Montrealers were making money as contractors in major construction works, most notably the Lachine Canal. In future years they would invest in railways and industrial production, gradually laying the groundwork for the modern industrial city that Montreal became later in the century. Most single women seeking paid employment found few opportunities outside the needle trades and domestic service, while most married women were fully occupied providing meals, raising children, and supplying invaluable support to husbands in trade, commerce, and artisanal production. Growing numbers of immigrants from Ireland combined with the move of rural French Canadians into the city to swell the proportion of property-less in Montreal’s population. These were years of major economic fluctuations, when the risks of business failure and unemployment were high. They were also years of high death rates for men, women, and children, and of marriages in which men were most frequently older than their wives, so that widowhood was almost as common a state as being divorced is today. Shifts in the bases of individual wealth away from land and into personal property and financial assets among wealthier citizens, as well as the growing proportion of the city’s highly mobile population that became dependent on wages, were beginning to challenge older traditions of providing for widowhood and old age.16

ma r gueri te pa r i s Marguerite Paris married labourer Joseph Guilbeau on 12 September 1825 in the old Notre-Dame church, the medieval-style church that had served as the only parish church for the huge Montreal parish since the early seventeenth century. Her labourer father was no longer alive when she married; her widowed mother and Joseph’s two parents were. Marguerite and Joseph may have considered making a marriage contract in the days or weeks leading up to their wedding. They must surely have been aware of the financial challenges that widowhood

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

109

posed to women such as Marguerite Brières, her mother, and of the importance of securing some guarantee of support. Yet, like most labourers and their fiancées, they did not do so.17 Since they had no real property and few possessions, it probably seemed pointless to pay the relatively small notary’s fee required to make a simple contract.18 The assets that Marguerite and Joseph brought to their marriage lay in his ability to find steady work and her skills at scrounging, shopping, cooking, and washing. These assets are invisible to us today. For this couple, as for over three-quarters of their fellow Catholics and almost nine out of ten Protestants, it was the rules of the Custom of Paris that determined their claims on each other’s property. In the absence of a marriage contract, their marriage created a community of goods, recognized as belonging in equal parts to each spouse but managed by the husband. Anything either of them earned or purchased during their marriage became part of the shared family assets, as did income from any properties they might have inherited, though such assets were unlikely for Marguerite and Joseph. The husband had pretty well total control over family property during the marriage, though unlike in common-law jurisdictions, wives, as well as husbands, could bequeath their half of the community or any inherited property of their own in a will. Had Joseph possessed any real property when he married or had he inherited any during his marriage, Marguerite would have been able to claim a widow’s dower right to use it during widowhood. Under the Custom of Paris, this constituted the right to use one-half of such properties or the revenues from them before her death, at which point they would pass to the rightful heirs, the children of the couple.19 Marguerite had already experienced the death of her father. Death also marked her marriage with Joseph.20 She gave birth to one son and one daughter. Their son, Joseph, died in 1827. Two years later, in July 1829, Joseph died, leaving Marguerite a widow after just four years of marriage, with their five-year-old daughter, Marie-Marguerite, to care for. Sickness, final illnesses, and death thrust most women who outlived their husbands into a series of formal and informal encounters with family, friends, and male professionals, only some of which are visible in records. Friends, family, and neighbours might provide informal assistance with nursing, child care, meals, and advice. Nuns and priests visited the city’s Catholics, sitting up at night with the sick and dying and attending to their physical and spiritual needs, though during the 1820s the numbers of both female and male religious personnel were small and falling in relation to the city’s population. Perhaps a priest visited once Joseph was clearly dying. Historian Louis Rousseau reminds us that this time between the first signs of death and the end of the mourning period involved the most important of all the

110

Bettina Bradbury

Catholic sacraments and rituals, as priests, family, and neighbours sought to save the dying person’s soul from eternal damnation. Catholic dying brought a retinue of religious officials, neighbours, and, potentially, strangers into homes. Priests attending to the dying either walked or came by carriage. They were meant to be accompanied by an assistant and specially attired for the occasion, with the final sacraments in a special container hidden under a cloth. The procession from the church to the bedside of the dying was a ritualized and public one. Its codes were well understood by Catholic friends and neighbours, who could join in and follow the sacrament, into the death chamber to offer their prayers and support.21 Yet the shortage of priests in Montreal in the decade that Joseph died may have meant that many Catholics died without receiving the final sacraments.22 When dying husbands wished to make last-minute wills or codicils, their wives or friends invited male notaries, lawyers, or law students and male witnesses into their homes. Joseph did not make a will, probably for the same reasons the couple had made no marriage contract: there was next to nothing to give away, notaries had to be paid, and the law would take its course. Nothing in the available records indicates how long Joseph was ill. Yet Marguerite appears to have gone to great lengths to consult doctors as she attempted to keep him alive. The inventory of their goods lists that she owed money to three doctors, Nelson, Gosselin, and Berthelot. All accounts still remained “to be settled” four months after Joseph’s death.23 The register of the Notre-Dame parish indicates that Joseph died on 1 November 1829 at the age of thirty-two.24 No records describe who washed his dead body and prepared him for the burial or who visited in the days between his death and funeral. Usually these tasks were the responsibility of female friends or relatives. Except in times of epidemics or extreme heat, it was general practice for the body to remain in the person’s home for several days while family and friends bid their last farewells. Coffins were carefully chosen, and religious services arranged. Joseph was buried just two days after his death, on 3 November 1829. In the inventory of the few goods they owned, Marguerite Paris reported that she had paid 15 francs for the coffin and a further 20 francs for the funeral.25 These are minuscule amounts compared to the costs for Montreal’s middling and wealthy dead, who displayed their social status in extravagant funerals. Marguerite, like the working poor elsewhere, was likely relieved to have been able to avoid a pauper’s burial. Nor, it seems, did she purchase new clothing to mark her change of status.26 Normally, such costs appear in inventories as the legitimate expenses of a mourning widow, a cost she had the right to claim from her husband’s portion of their shared property. Unlike

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

111

wealthier widows, Marguerite the labourer’s widow may have looked little different from Marguerite the labourer’s wife she had so recently been, unless perhaps a neighbour lent her black clothing for her mourning. Nor, it seems, did any bells, candles, special services, or masses mark Joseph’s funeral as they did the passing of middling and wealthy Montreal Catholics. The columns in the records of the fabrique of Montreal, where the details of the types of funerals and other death-related costs are recorded for other Montrealers, are empty for Joseph. This was the case for every husband in this cohort who was a labourer, except for those where “N” or “gratis” was inscribed next to the amount owing.27 Death raised the question that was muted during marriages – to whom did household goods, savings, and other assets belong legally? Without a marriage contract, a will, or, indeed, much property to complicate matters, the mathematics of property division were pretty simple in Marguerite’s case. The law gave her ownership of half the couple’s shared community of goods as well as the use of half any real property that Joseph had owned when they married or inherited thereafter as her customary dower. No legal or notarial act was necessary to allow a woman to take advantage of her dower.28 Marguerite and Joseph, unlike many labouring couples, had succeeded in purchasing a small 20-by-60-foot city lot with a one-storey wooden house just a year before Joseph’s death. It would have constituted part of their shared community of goods because they bought it during their marriage. This was potentially a much more useful asset for Marguerite than a dower right to use half the revenues from any land he had owned for the duration of her widowhood. However, at the time the inventory was taken, they owed some 390 shillings on the purchase price of the lot, annual payments, and seigneurial dues; the doctors’ bills had also not been paid.29 The prospects were looking pretty grim for Marguerite and her daughter, Marie-Marguerite. When a husband or wife died leaving minor children, it was necessary to have an inventory made of the community of goods to protect the children’s claim on the deceased parent’s half of the community. Before an inventory could be taken, the Custom of Paris required that a council of family members meet with either a notary or a judge to determine who would be named the tutor and the sub-tutor for the children. A tutor was responsible for the “care of the person of the pupil” and represented the minor in all civil acts. A tutor was also in charge of managing the minor child’s property.30 Those chosen as tutors were expected to manage the child’s property prudently. The gathering of family and friends to determine who would be named tutor for the children must have provided some widows with much-

112

Bettina Bradbury

needed support in the early period of their grieving. Yet others must surely have faced it with trepidation. Would they be chosen as their children’s tutors? If yes, were they capable of the new tasks this responsibility thrust upon them? If not, would it be someone they trusted? Even when they were chosen as their children’s tutor, these were occasions when widows were potentially subjected to ongoing patriarchal and familial control, despite, and no doubt at times because of, their recent legal liberation. The choice of a tutor by a family council was not an informal process, confined to the walls of the family home. Women may well have discussed their financial futures and the care of their children over cups of tea as they supported a grieving widow. However, the law placed the task of assigning a tutor firmly within the hands of men and in the legal realm over which notaries and judges presided. The meeting had to take place before either a notary or a judge. The Custom of Paris specified that at least seven people should be called, taken as equally as possible from both the paternal and the maternal line. If they met with a notary, he recorded any disagreements and differences of opinion and then sent his report to the Court of King’s Bench, where the choice of tutor and sub-tutor was officially registered.31 Or the members of the family council were called directly to the chambers of the Court of King’s Bench. It was over three months before a family council met to elect a tutor for Marguerite’s only surviving child, young Marie-Marguerite. This was longer than was normal or wise,32 for it was to a widow’s advantage to ensure that, before three months had elapsed following her husband’s death, a tutor was chosen for any minor children and an inventory made.33 Widows, unlike widowers, then had the option of accepting or renouncing the community, depending on what seemed most advantageous for them personally, as well as for their children if they had been appointed as their tutor. For this reason, it is much more common to find inventories of widows with minor children than it is for older widows. On 3 March 1829, four months after her husband’s death, Marguerite and her father-in law, along with other family members, appeared before one of the judges of the Court of King’s Bench in Montreal. These family members chose Marguerite as the tutor to her only daughter, while her father-in-law, Charles Guilbault, was named the sub-tutor. This pairing of the widow and some male was the most usual choice made by such family councils.34 Later that same day notary Labadie went to Marguerite’s one-room home on rue Vallée in the Saint-Laurent suburb to list the property she and Joseph had owned. She and her father-in-law had chosen two local men, one a master carpenter, the other a carter, to estimate the

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

113

value of their property. Four-year-old Marie-Marguerite was there too, for the law required that the heirs of the deceased’s estate be present. In the absence of a will, young Marie-Marguerite was the sole heir of her father’s half of the community property. As was usual on such occasions, the notary made sure that Marguerite swore on the Bible not to conceal any assets in front of these four men and her daughter.35 After she had pledged not to hide or omit any goods under pain of law, notary Labadie was required to remind her that she had the right to renounce the succession if that seemed the wisest financial choice. Only widows could renounce their part in the community. This was one of the paternalistic elements of the Custom of Paris which recognized that a husband could die leaving his state indebted and his widow in poverty. Men who were widowed had no right to renounce. Since they were sole managers of the community property with full legal capacity, the law held husbands accountable for the state of family assets.36 It would have been hard for Marguerite to conceal much in her modest, one-storey, one-room dwelling. Of course, she might have already sold some goods to purchase food or other neccessities, though she swore that she had not. It cannot have taken long for the master joiner, Léandre Prévost, and the carter, Nicolas Trucher dit Leveille, to call out their estimates of the worth of her belongings or for notary Labadie to transcribe them. There were only twenty-nine items to record. The listing took up a meagre page in the notarial act, compared to the thirty pages and more in the inventories of the wealthy. The most valuable possessions were a stove and her feather bed with its linen.37 There were four chairs and a table, as well as two smaller chairs, some cooking equipment, a pair of scales, and a few other items. Some 103 shillings were owed to the community, largely by Joseph’s relatives, while the debts for doctors, back rent, and seigneurial dues came to a total of 390 shillings. In addition, Marguerite still owed the 35 francs for Joseph’s funeral and 36 livres for making the inventory. When the inventory was complete, she had to again swear, this time to take good care of all the property and render it to whomever it belonged. Both Marguerite and her father-in-law marked the document with an X, after declaring that they did not know how to sign.38 The inventory suggests that Marguerite was facing widowhood in a desperate state. On paper, the value of her meagre furniture and monies owing her was much less than her debts to others. Would she have to relinquish the home that she and Joseph must have struggled to purchase and that promised some security for her and her daughter? Marguerite did not return to notary Labadie in the next forty days as she would have done had she wished to take advantage of a widow’s

114

Bettina Bradbury

right to renounce the community because its debts outweighed its assets. She succeeded somehow in keeping her home. I have as yet found no trace of how she supported herself and Marie-Marguerite over the following years. But it is clear that ownership of her small house on rue Vallée provided her with more than a living space; it made her a full-fledged citizen. In 1832 she took advantage of her rights as a property holder with a holding worth over 40 shillings39 to vote in the controversial by-election in Montreal West. Had she been solicited to vote by Daniel Tracey, the Irish Catholic Patriote who had recently been imprisoned for libel as a result of proposing the “total annihilation” of the Legislative Council in his newspaper, the Irish Vindicator and Canada General Advertiser?40 Certainly, Tracey accused his opponents, supporters of businessman and conservative Stanley Bagg, of dragging the elderly, the sick, and women out as they fought to secure the most votes.41 As the widow of a labourer, Marguerite was most likely to sympathize with Tracey. He eventually won by a narrow margin with the support of such prominent Patriote Montrealers as “Louis-Hippolyte La Fontaine, Côme-Séraphin Cherrier, Jacob De Witt, and of most of the craftsmen, farmers, carters, and day-labourers in the riding.” Elections were still public affairs at this time. Those voting called out the names of their chosen candidate. Their credentials could be challenged by the other candidate. This was one of the most violent and lengthy of Montreal elections. It lasted for twenty-three days of fighting and constant contestation of people’s right to vote. Before the election was over, three French Canadians had been killed. Running tallies of the results were published in the Montreal newspapers. Supporters of the candidate who was behind attempted to prevent those supporting the opponent from voting. As Marguerite Paris stepped up and announced her vote for Daniel Tracey, Stanley Bagg con÷ested her right to vote. Tracey in turn contested the vote of widows and others who sought to elect Bagg. Marguerite’s vote was accepted. She was one of 224 women, 140 of whom were widows, who chose to exercise their political rights. At least 8 of them were women who, like Marguerite, had married between 1823 and 1826 and were already widows. They included Émilie Tavernier, who had married in 1823 and was widowed in 1827, Anna Foster, who married in 1823 and was widowed in 1824, and Mary Howard, who married in 1823 and was widowed in 1830. Most of the widows who voted were from more-privileged backgrounds than Marguerite. Many were from families of politicians. As the widows called out the name of their chosen candidate, the other candidate or his supporters challenged their right to vote. They did the same for many of the male voters too. Officials allowed nearly all of them to vote.42

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

115

Marguerite Paris was not driven completely to the margins of society by the death of her labourer husband. She faced her widowhood with minimal household effects compared to many other widows, but she was able to retain her house and used it to assert her own political rights. After the election of 1832, however, I have not been able to determine what happened to her. She seems to disappear from the records, resurfacing possibly but not definitely as Marie Paris, widow of a Thomas Small, who died in Montreal in 1857.43

ma r i e-no flette ch ar l a n d Marie-Noflette Charland, in contrast to Marguerite Paris, came from a well-established family in the Saint-Laurent suburb. As we have seen, her father listed his occupation as “écuyer.” She was still a minor when she married the local innkeeper, Joseph-Henri Letourneau, on 22 November 1825. The day before her wedding the future spouses, along with both her parents and Joseph-Henri’s only living parent, his father, met at the home of her aunt, Julie Lemoine. Notary Pierre Ritchot drew up their marriage contract. Like their rural relatives and ancestors, as well as the vast majority of French Canadians who married in Montreal during the 1820s and made marriage contracts, they stuck closely to the provisions of the Custom of Paris. They stipulated that their goods would constitute shared community property. As was usual, each would keep any debts he or she had already contracted separate. Yet Joseph-Henri chose also to retain about £300 worth of merchandise separate as goods that would remain outside of the shared family assets. This decision, known legally as “réalisation,” was chosen by growing numbers of husbands in the 1820s and following years. It effectively isolated the property or sum identified from the couple’s shared assets, thus placing it outside the property that was recognized as belonging equally to husband and wife and fully within the property that a man could bequeath as he wished if he made a will. If he did not, wives such as Marie-Noflette would only have a claim on such property if they had no children.44 These characteristics of such a choice seem to work against the interest of wives who became widows. Did Marie-Noflette, her parents, and her aunt consider this a good decision? Any disagreements or discussions are hidden in the finality of the document. It provided Marie-Noflette with a claim to co-ownership of all the property that would be accumulated during the marriage and to a dower of £50 as well as the right to take a further £50 from the community, along with a “lit garni,” her clothing, and her jewels, prior to its division in half at the moment of its dissolution, should she outlive her husband. All the family members present at the making of

116

Bettina Bradbury

the marriage contract signed their names to the document.45 With the business of marriage settled, Marie-Noflette and Joseph-Henri were ready to attend to the religious ceremony. They were married the next day, like Marguerite Paris, in the Notre-Dame parish church. Their marriage lasted longer than Marguerite’s. Nine years later Joseph-Henri died on 3 March 1834. His death was listed in the parish register with a precision never found among the poor and illiterate. He is described as aged thirty-one years, four months, and four days and as a trader. The couple had two living children, daughters aged five and three years. There is no evidence that Joseph-Henri had made a will; nor was there much reason why he should have done so. Their marriage contract had been explicit as to what would happen should he die first. As Marie-Noflette refashioned herself as a widow, she could draw upon many resources that Marguerite Paris apparently lacked: she came from the comfortably established middling sorts involved in commerce in the city, she was literate, and she received assistance from her husband’s colleagues when he died. Another Montreal innkeeper, François Benoit, lent her £2 9s. 4d. to pay dry-goods merchant Messieur G.D.N. Ducondu for the black crepe, gloves, and ribbon she donned as a widow in mourning. Wearing black was a public signifier of her state of mourning, a sign of ongoing allegiance and of belonging to her dead husband.46 Wives such as Marguerite “carried their ... class status on their bodies.”47 They dressed as widows according to their late husband’s means, displaying their ongoing faithfulness and status in the modesty or richness of their black mourning clothes. Mourning for men was much less elaborate. When their wives died, they might wear a black mourning coat, gloves, and other external signs of mourning for the funeral, even for some time after. Yet they were not expected to change their daily work clothes; nor were they expected to wear black for two years following their wives’ death.48 We know what some Montreal widows, including Marie-Noflette, paid for their mourning clothes because, in contrast to Marguerite Paris, their costs were specified in the inventories made following their husband’s death. These costs were listed there because a wife’s mourning expenses were recognized as “chargeable to the heirs of her deceased husband,” with the “cost regulated according to the fortune of the husband.”49 The law clearly recognized a woman’s right to continue to represent the social standing of her husband in clothing chosen to mourn his death. Men whose wives died could claim funeral expenses out of their shared property, as could widows. These included the cost of the coffin, the hearse, the hire of persons to watch the corpse, and the church service. But only a widow could claim for the mourning clothing and accessories that announced to the world that

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

117

she was a widow. Widows’ right to have their mourning clothes paid for out of their husband’s estate was explicitly linked to their faithfulness. Marie-Louise Dufresne, a mason’s widow, remarried nine months after her husband died. The law penalized her for her unfaithfulness to her husband’s memory. She received no compensation for the costs of her mourning clothes. Only the £1 3s 7d. paid for his funeral remained a legitimate claim.50 Joseph-Henri Letourneau’s death was announced in La Minerve on 6 March. In this four-line announcement in Montreal’s leading Patriote newspaper, there was no mention of his wife and children. He was identified simply as the son of Joseph Letourneau of the Tanneries and as thirty-one years old. The funeral was announced for the following morning at 7 am.51 Readers did not need to be told where to go for the funeral. By the time of Joseph-Henri Letourneau’s funeral, the new, neo-Gothic, Notre-Dame church had replaced the old one where he and Marie-Noflette Charland had married nine years earlier. MarieNoflette and Joseph-Henri had likely attended the new parish church regularly, as they owed over £2 for their pew there and both of their daughters were baptized there.52 Described by architectural historian Jean-Claude Marsan as inaugurating the “era of Victorian architecture in the province,” it had been completed in 1829, five years before Joseph-Henri’s funeral. It was the largest religious building in “the Canadas and perhaps in all of North America.”53 Four days after his death, Joseph-Henri’s body was brought into the romantic interior of this large, new church for his funeral service. There was no will with formal written instructions to guide those who survived him in determining the most appropriate funeral and burial services. Any words he spoke on the subject were likely never put to paper. Yet what should be done was no mystery. Death was so common and religious and social ritual so deeply rooted that MarieNoflette and the neighbours and family supporting her in the days after her husband’s death likely agreed readily about a fitting funeral for this innkeeper and trader. Their choices, recorded in the documents of the parish fabrique, underline the differences between the funerals of labourers and those of relatively comfortable small merchants. Three bells rang for Joseph-Henri. His was an expensive second-class funeral, costing over £6 for the service, burial, candles, and extra-large grave. François Benoit, the Montreal innkeeper who had helped Marie-Noflette pay for her mourning clothes, also paid the beadle of Notre-Dame parish the £2 3s. 0d. owed for his role in the funeral service and burial. Marie-Noflette’s father-in-law would later cover the rest of the £6 18s.10d. owing to the parish.54 Marie-Noflette remains a shadowy figure in these transactions. It is quite possible that

118

Bettina Bradbury

she was more carefully monitored by male family members, concerned both about her well-being and her ability to manage economic and legal matters. This certainly seems to have been the situation among the anglophone elite. Joseph-Henri’s funeral, like Marie-Noflette’s clothing, clearly proclaimed his place among the ranks of that minority of respectable, middling Montrealers who could afford more than the simplest of ceremonies. The bells tolled, the candles lit, the length and class of the service were religious currency that sorted Catholic Montrealers at their death by class, wealth, faith, and respectability. It had taken Marguerite Paris and her father-in-law well over three months to organize an inventory of her meagre goods and her formal tutorship of the children. It was only two weeks after Joseph-Henri Letourneau’s funeral and burial that Marie-Noflette Charland met with friends and relatives to determine who should be the tutor for her two little girls. Like Marguerite Paris, she was chosen as the tutor for her five- and three-year-old daughters. This was not unusual. Roughly 80 per cent of the widows with young children among the cohort of women who married in the 1820s for whom I have been able to find information were elected their children’s tutor. Choosing the mother was least common among wealthy English-speaking Protestants. The next morning at 10 am Marie-Noflette Charland received notary Chevalier de Lorimier, Joseph Letourneau, her father-in-law, and two neighbourhood blacksmiths, Abraham Guigere and Toussaint Marcille, at her six-room home in the Saint Joseph suburb. She had summoned them herself in two of her new capacities as a widow. First, she had done so in her own name, as half-owner of the community of goods that she and Joseph-Henri had established in their marriage contract. Secondly, she requested the inventory as the tutor of her two daughters. Making the inventory of the goods this couple had owned took the better part of two days and a total of over ten hours. They began at 10 am in the morning of 2 April, broke at 11:30 am after only an hour and a half of inventory-taking, and resumed at 2 pm that day, continuing to 7:45 pm. The men all returned at 3 pm the next day, again “at the request of the said widow,” completing the process at 6:45 that night. The final document was fifty-five pages long. The listing of household and business items took nineteen pages, compared to Marguerite Paris’s one page. If the paucity of possessions signalled the likelihood of a difficult future for Marguerite, the large number of possessions of MarieNoflette and Joseph-Henri must have added to the stress of inventorytaking. Making an inventory must surely have been emotionally and physically demanding for many widows, as indeed it may have been for the assessors and notaries who took part. Assessors were always men.

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

119

Unlike the notary, however, they were not professionals. They were frequently of the same occupation as the deceased, neighbours, or men in trades such as upholstery or in branches of commerce that gave them some claim to know the current value of a range of goods.55 They were chosen by the tutor and the sub-tutor from people they knew. Though they were frequently illiterate, their knowledge of the value of various goods was apparently respected. Even within one inventory, the currencies they used in identifying an object’s worth varied. The notaries appear to have converted francs, piastras, and other currencies on the spot or later into either pounds, shillings, and pence or livres, sols, and deniers in the early years and dollars in later ones. One can imagine this retinue – at least four men, the widow, and her children – as they scoured the house, inscribing on paper the details of what the couple had accumulated and shared if marriage had created a community of goods, or what a husband owned if the spouses’ property had been kept separate in a marriage contract. From basements to garrets, front yards to stables, every item that was part of the community of goods or the husband’s estate was named, listed, and evaluated. The domestic details of a woman’s past life as a wife were translated in diverse currencies into the potential basis of her future as a widow and transcribed onto the pages by the notary. The evidence of a widow’s past and future wealth or poverty is numerically inscribed in the piastres, livres d’ancien cours, or pounds and dollars diligently totalled at the bottom of each page. It is echoed in the diverse lengths of the documents, and it reverberates in the footsteps of the notary, widow, heirs, and estimators in the listing of the number of rooms and their exact contents. What emotions went through a widow’s mind as this accounting of her past and potential future was tallied out loud before her eyes? There are some hints in the documents themselves. Why, I wondered, did the notary and assessors take a break so soon after beginning to tally the goods in the six rooms and stables of the new widow’s marital home? The very first items listed after Marie-Noflette had requested a break were her husband’s clothing. Had she perhaps called the break, steeling herself or breaking down as she realized that the following items would be the shirts, vests, gloves, and trousers, as well as books and music – the most personal reminders of her husband?56 Only a diary entry would confirm this speculation, and I have found no such document for Marie-Noflette. Yet there are hints in other inventories that of all the family goods, a husband’s clothes were likely the most powerful reminder of his absence. Marie-Noflette was not alone in the way her deceased husband’s clothes appear to have been especially difficult to deal with. Other widows left them

120

Bettina Bradbury

until last, claimed to have forgotten them, or set them apart in some other way.57 This listing of the couple’s assets a month after her widowhood clearly showed that the community’s wealth was greater than its debts. The total value of household and business goods came to some 2,329 livres, marking Marie-Noflette as a comfortable member of Montreal’s smaller merchant and proprietor class.58 She must have begun her widowhood knowing she had a home to live in and that she could support herself and her children on the considerable property she and JosephHenri Letourneau had accumulated while running their inn and on the relatively modest £50 he had promised her as a dower in their marriage contract, along with the additional £50 she could take from their shared goods as her own. These sums did not place her among the wealthiest of widows, but they unquestionably promised a brighter outlook than that facing Marguerite Paris. Marie-Noflette remained a widow for only five years. In 1839 she remarried. Her new husband, Victor Gonneau, was listed in the marriage register as a day labourer – surely a fall in the world for her. Unlike Marie-Noflette and Joseph-Henri, he was unable to sign his own name. She died nine years later, in 1848, of consumption. When Victor reported her death at the parish church, he listed his occupation as a merchant grocer. His marriage to a relatively wealthy widow with some experience in business had likely allowed him an element of upward social mobility that might otherwise not have been possible and that was reflected in the first-class funeral he provided for her.

laura mower When Marguerite and Marie-Noflette married, their claims on their spouse’s property as widows were framed by the rules of the Custom of Paris. Followed from generation to generation by French Canadians, these rules were embedded in their customary practices, part of a common-sense understanding of how marriage worked. For other Montrealers new to the colony, and especially those from jurisdictions governed by English common law, there was little that was familiar about the law. And there was even less that some of them liked when they learned of its provisions. From soon after the Conquest, elite anglophones had expressed disgust at what they argued were the feudal characteristics of the Custom of Paris. They ranted against community property and widows’ dower rights for giving wives and relatives too great a claim on a man’s property.59 As a result, as I have argued elsewhere, at least two different visions of family, marriage, property, and widowhood circulated and competed in Lower Canada,

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

121

especially in Montreal, during this period. These were rooted in the very different concepts of inheritance, family, and property encapsulated in the Custom of Paris and English common law. Those English, Scots, Americans, and Irish with significant property learned quickly to take advantage of local notaries to draw up marriage contracts. The flexibility of the Custom of Paris allowed them to make pretty well any provisions they wished. And making a contract was much cheaper and less cumbersome than making an antenuptial agreement or marriage settlement, the practice of people of wealth in common-law jurisdictions. Montreal notaries gradually learned to draw up watertight contracts supporting their wishes, though during the 1820s many made mistakes.60 When Laura Mower married the Montreal grocer John Campbell in 1826, they, like most other English-speaking couples, sought to avoid the community property and dower provisions of the Custom.61 In order to do so, they visited the office of one of Montreal’s busiest notaries, Nicolas-Benjamin Doucet, on 14 January 1826. Doucet already had eleven years of experience as a notary in Montreal. His customers included some of Montreal’s leading French- and Englishspeaking citizens, so he was more practised than many notaries at writing contracts that allowed Montrealers to avoid those aspects of the marriage law they disliked.62 Unlike most couples making contracts, no parents or kin accompanied Laura and John to the notary to witness their decision. Instead they went with a Mrs Allice Church, a friend of John’s, as well as another member of the Church family whose name is illegible, though it was likely her husband. It is extremely unusual to find married women who were not close kin or parents acting as witnesses of marriage contracts. Their contract indicates that John Campbell’s father, Samuel, was already dead and that neither his mother, Mary Campbell, nor Laura’s parents, Lucretia Kathan and John Mower, were present. It is not clear from their marriage contract whether their living parents resided in Montreal or elsewhere.63 Both John and Laura, in contrast, explicitly claimed Montreal as their place of residence. In seeking to avoid creating community property through their marriage, they made a choice similar to that of the majority of Englishspeaking Montrealers who decided to make a marriage contract. Of course, for the vast majority of couples of all origins who married without one, community property rules dictated each partner’s claim on property in their marriage, whether they knew it or not. Over half the couples who married between 1823 and 1826 and made a marriage contract in English specified, in addition, that the husband would have complete control over all property accumulated during the marriage.

122

Bettina Bradbury

This was the choice that was closest to the draconian provisions of English common law. It was not the choice that Laura and John made. Laura quite clearly had no intention of giving up either her autonomy or her goods to her new husband. Like many of the contracts that Nicolas-Benjamin Doucet prepared, theirs begins by echoing the words of the marriage ceremony, stating that each of them promised to take the other as his or her lawfully wedded spouse and that the marriage would be solemnized “forthwith in due form of law.” Doucet then made it very clear that during their marriage John and Laura wished to keep all the property that either partner owned, accumulated, or inherited completely separate. Furthermore, they used the marriage contract to specify that each spouse would have the power to manage her or his own assets as he or she wished exactly as if “the said John Campbell and Laura Mower had remained single and the said intended marriage had not taken place, any law or custom to the contrary.”64 They were not alone in making such liberal-sounding provisions, startling as they seem at a time when feminists had hardly started to make claims to the right to control their own property anywhere. Laura and John’s choice was similar to that of roughly 40 per cent of the couples marrying in the 1820s whose contracts were written in English. By two decades later many francophones would be making a similar choice.65 Laura’s reason for this arrangement was clearer than most other women’s. Doucet inscribed in the marriage contract that she was “intending to keep a store and commerce in the retail business.” The couple agreed that the “said trade and commerce shall be separate, distinct and free.” The contract then went on to specify that John, and John alone, would be responsible for all household expenses, provide all the necessary and decent clothing and other personal necessities for Laura. In proposing to assume the legal identity of a married female trader, Laura was taking advantage of one of the few loopholes in the Custom of Paris that allowed wives to regain some of the rights that marriage automatically eliminated for wives.66 True, a woman needed her husband’s permission to set up as a trader. This John apparently gave freely in their marriage contract. This identity and the rights that went with it were not bestowed on women who simply represented their husbands in trade. Had Laura wished to help John with his grocery, she could not have claimed to be a trader. Women had to have their own separate trade. Once this was secured, however, female traders could act autonomously in law and in court for everything concerning their own business.67 It was in the final clauses of their marriage contract that John dealt with the possibility that his wife might outlive him as his widow. The contract specified that, “in consideration of the love and affection he

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

123

hath and beareth unto the said Laura,” he would provide her with £50 annually for as long as she lived and that she was to receive this money in two instalments each year. Like other couples whose contracts are in English and in contrast to the vast majority of those written in French, this annuity was “expressly in lieu of and to barr dower.” Dower seemed to have taken on such negative associations among the Englishspeaking in business that it was avoided at all costs and at times with great flourish. To secure his promise, John Campbell declared he was mortgaging all of his property acquired and to be acquired. He authorized notary Doucet to do this.71 Thus even before their wedding, which took place in St Andrews Presbyterian Church later that day, some provision had been made for Laura’s widowhood. The wedding itself was apparently a simple affair. No banns had been published. John and Laura had instead secured a wedding licence. Had they decided to marry quickly and avoided the rather lengthy and public process whereby banns were published?69 There seem to have been only two witnesses, although legal treatises of the period state that four witnesses were necessary for a legal marriage. Neither of the men who signed the marriage register had accompanied them to the notary earlier that day. One of them may have been a church official. The other was a friend, J.A. Hoisington. The marriage register made no indication of Laura’s intention of keeping a shop, though John is recorded there as a grocer, as he had been in their marriage contract. Six months after their marriage Laura and John returned to notary Doucet to lease a house in the Sainte-Anne suburb. Although John had promised to pay all household expenses in their marriage contract, it was Laura who signed the lease with Lewis Cleveland, their future landlord and neighbour. The lease specified that she was a trader, separate as to property from her husband. She agreed to pay Cleveland £2 10s monthly for the house. Although their marriage contract had stated that Laura would administer her own goods, John Campbell explicitly authorized her to make this contract. This may have been a precaution suggested by Doucet, for Lower Canadian jurisprudence in this period was unclear about whether wives such as Laura whose goods were separate from their husband’s needed their husband’s authorization to sign documents. Doucet probably wanted to ensure that there would be no problems in the relatively unusual situation of a wife signing such a lease.70 Beyond this lease, I have not yet found any evidence of whether Laura worked as a trader or used her position as a wife in charge of her own property in other ways during her marriage. The next time she appears in records that I have located is ten years later. She and John

124

Bettina Bradbury

were living on rue Saint-François-Xavier, in the old part of the city. John Campbell no longer identified himself as a grocer; he is described as a bookseller. He was ill and wished to make his will. As a well-educated, literate man, John could have written out his own will, consulting a lawyer to ensure the provisions were watertight. This was the custom in common-law jurisdictions and one of the possibilities in Montreal which was chosen by many of the couples whose contracts were written in English.71 Instead, Laura or John called upon the same notary they had used to make their marriage contract and lease. Nicolas-Benjamin Doucet, came to their home on 19 September 1836, accompanied by Alexander Workman, a schoolmaster, and Campbell Bryson, a bookbinder. There is no way of knowing whether John had already consulted Doucet about the contents of the will, as was the usual practice except in cases of sudden illness.72 Perhaps he had not, for the will describes John as in a sickly state but of sound and disposing mind, memory, and understanding. In the sparse language usual in such notarial wills, John bequeathed all he had to Laura “to have and to hold the said by herself her heirs and assigns for ever, without any account to be by my said wife rendered to any person.” In a further display of his faith in her managerial capacity, he appointed her as his only executor. This was not uncommon among the husbands of this cohort. Indeed, about 80 per cent of husbands whose wills I have located who had them drawn up in French made their wives sole executors. Montrealers writing their wills in English, in contrast, were less likely to do so. About one-half chose a male friend or relative as the executor. Around 25 per cent named their wives as the sole executor, while a further 25 per cent chose their wife in association with some other member of the family or family friend. This latter practice was rare among French-speaking husbands. In such wills, as in other notarial documents, we can see only the end product of discussions and decisions. But it is clear that different cultural understandings of the law and of women’s capacity combined with wealth differences to shape divergent choices. Notary Doucet discussed John’s wishes and then recorded them. Once these had been established, notaries were then required to read them back to the testator, noting on the document that they had read and reread the will out loud as the law required. John, the two witnesses, and the notary then signed the will, initializing every change made in the first draft, as was required.73 Within a month John was dead at the age of thirty-two. This apparently remarkably egalitarian marriage had only lasted eleven years. He was buried two days later on 22 October in the Protestant Dorchester Street Burial Ground. The Reverend Mr Essen officiated at the funeral. Unlike many other widows,

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

125

Laura did not purchase a burial plot for her husband or use one already belonging to her side of the family or to his. Here again we see a couple who look as if they did not have kin they could call upon in the city. John was buried in a lot belonging to the schoolmaster, Alexander Workman, who had also witnessed his will and was likely his friend. Perhaps Laura could not afford to purchase a separate lot. Or Workman may have sought to shelter her from such a painful task as she entered her year of public mourning as a widow.74 Within a month of her husband’s burial, Laura returned to see notary Doucet alone. She came not as John’s executor, but as his heir. We cannot tell whether the notary gave her advice when she arrived or whether she had been discussing her options with friends. Doucet retrieved John Campbell’s will from his files and on the bottom recorded her decision. Laura had decided to renounce the provisions of her husband’s will, where he had given her all he had. Instead, she wished to take the annuity of £50 annually that he had mortgaged his property to ensure at the time of their marriage. This was a choice she was legally entitled to make, just as wives whose marriage had created a community of goods could renounce that community if it seemed advantageous.75 Perhaps John Campbell’s bookselling business was so indebted that his estate was worthless. Perhaps she would never be able even to reclaim the promised £50 annuity, though this choice gave her a chance to rank among his creditors. Unlike the dower, which the couple rejected in their marriage contract, an annuity did not give her a claim before all other creditors; it did place her squarely among them. Furthermore, the wisdom of her earlier decision to keep her own property separate was clear. Whether she had made money by keeping a store or not, his creditors had no claim on any of her own assets. Had she and John failed to make a marriage contract, as was true of so many immigrants, all of their property would have fallen into a community of goods and been susceptible to creditors’ claims. What happened to Laura after she made this decision is not clear. In 1842 the census enumerator listed a Widow Mower in a house on rue Saint-Antoine, in the Queen’s ward. She was living in an all-female household. The other residents listed included one servant, likely the only Catholic female in the house. Two of the women were under forty-five, as Laura would have been.76 It seems unfairly ironic, if this was indeed her, that this apparently feisty woman who had insisted on her rights within marriage and as a widow was one of the few household heads whose first name was not recorded, so that we cannot be sure it was her. Yet this was common practice among the census takers. Men who were household heads were always listed by their first name and their surname; women rarely were.77 Or was she perhaps the Mrs

126

Bettina Bradbury

John Campbell, listed as a sick nurse living in a lane off 88 St Constant Street in 1861 in the Mackay city directory? Again, the naming of women makes it impossible to know without other evidence. There is no indication in the parish registers or in John’s will that the couple ever had any children. Laura disappears from the record. In April 1859 John’s body was moved to the new Mount Royal Cemetery after it opened on the mountain side. The cemetery records suggest that it was once again his friend Alexander Workman who took charge of John’s body. There is no sign of Laura.

c o nclus i o n I hope that, by focusing on three women through the documents they generated as they married and began their lives as widows, this essay has highlighted three main points: the diversity of trajectories from wife to widow; the range of tasks that widows had to take on during their time of mourning; and the ways the sources they generated are themselves shaped by customs and concerns rooted in religious, cultural, and class practices. First, the range of ways these couples organized property within marriage and for widowhood highlights the diversity of arrangements that could readily be made within the broad rules of the Custom of Paris. No women could completely escape the patriarchal characteristics of nineteenth-century marriage law, but each couple negotiated its own individual version of it, within three broad configurations. In the first, marriage created a community of goods in which wives such as Marie-Noflette Charland and Marguerite Paris were recognized as owners of half the community with the right to claim dower on their husbands’ own property if he had any. In the second, couples reproduced English common law as best they could, attributing power over all family property to the husband, so that what he decided in a will was the major determinant of a widow’s claims. In the third, that chosen by Laura Mower and John Campbell, husbands and wives kept their property separate, and wives were usually given the authority to manage their own property independently, though they needed their husband’s permission to sell it. Similar diversity characterizes every aspect of the transition from wife to widow. Some women no doubt went from the safety and security of a marriage based on love and solid finances to the margins of dependence on charity and children. Others achieved new autonomy. For most, widowhood was shaped by the economic and legal characteristics of their marriage and the unpredictable influence of epidemics, disease, and death. The lives of Marguerite Paris, Marie-Noflette Char-

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

127

land, and Laura Mower shared the fact that each of them married for the first time in Montreal during the 1820s and that each became a widow after less than eleven years of marriage. Of course, many marriages were longer, and just about as many were broken by the death of the wife rather than the husband. In this period of epidemics and high death rates, death hit so erratically that it would be meaningless to compute an average length of marriage. The last Montreal woman I know of who became a widow in this cohort, Marie-Anne Descary, lost her husband in 1891. She died a year later. Obviously, experiences of marriage and widowhood were very different when both partners lived on into old age. Class differences divided Marie-Noflette, Marguerite, and Laura in their short times as wives, though less so as widows. As the wife of a relatively successful innkeeper, Marie-Noflette faced widowhood with money, assets, and support that Marguerite did not have and that Laura probably did not have either, though both Marie-Noflette and Laura had been promised annual payments of £50 as a dower or annuity respectively. Laura clearly had experience managing her own affairs and appears to have been a particularly independent woman. Yet the sources used here do not allow us to see what Marie-Noflette’s and Marguerite’s roles were in their family economies during their marriage. Certainly, the community-of-property provisions of the Custom of Paris recognized that contribution in allotting wives a halfshare of the wealth generated during marriage. This couple’s decision to buy a house during their marriage clearly helped Marguerite do more than take part in elections as she faced life as a widow. For other poor widows, this provision was little help. The mathematics of poverty are brutally simple: half of zero is zero. Marie-Noflette, in contrast, first managed and then transferred the wealth she had assisted Joseph-Henri to accumulate to a new husband, thus helping him improve his social standing in Montreal society. Second, the documents themselves allow us to see some of the many tasks that women were involved in during the early months of their widowhood. With the death of their husbands, Marguerite, MarieNoflette, and Laura were entering a new status that carried recognized meanings which continued to link them inextricably to their dead husbands and drew upon rules and regulations set out in custom, family practice, and the law.78 Historian Pat Jalland has described the period following the funeral week as one in which wealthy middle-class widows in England retreated to the home, to the support of their family, and to their individual grieving.79 Some obituaries also appear to freeze women into a state of immobility as they dealt with their grief.80 Yet as these Montreal women donned their widow’s weeds,

128

Bettina Bradbury

they had more to attend to than their grief. In their capacity as widows, they had new legal responsibilities and rights. If they had young children, they had to help choose a tutor at a formal gathering of family and friends. If they wanted to ensure the best possible basis for their widowhood and their children’s future, they had to make sure an inventory was made within three months of their husband’s death. If, like Marie-Noflette and Marguerite, their marriage had created a community of goods, they had to decide whether to accept or reject it within a further forty days. Widows, such as Laura, who had kept their own property separate and had been promised an annuity in a marriage contract, had to decide whether the promises made at marriage were more advantageous than the conditions in their husband’s will, when husbands had made one. No widows made these decisions alone. They may well have discussed them with female friends and relatives, but the formal recording always involved professional males and other men acting as witnesses or evaluators, roles from which most women were excluded. The lives of richer women than those examined here suggest that the wealthier the family was, the more likely it was that male relatives, rather than the widow, would be chosen as executors of wills and even as tutors of their children. Whatever their own responsibilities, most women’s widowhood began with a series of encounters in which the widow met with males in a range of official positions of power and authority who assessed and formalized the conditions of their widowhood in legal and other documents. In most of these encounters, widows had more obligations than obvious power. Marie-Noflette Charland could slow down the process of inventory-taking. Widows could hide goods, though they were sworn not to. Widows took part in the decision-making about whether to accept or reject community property or an inheritance. Yet the conditions they faced were only partially of their making. The traces they left tell only part of their stories. Each of these women left different traces of her times as wife and widow in the records that I have consulted. These vary with customs and concerns that are rooted in the women’s religious, cultural, and class practices and concerns. It is always easier to identify demographic data for Catholics than for Protestants because priests were required and taught to keep careful parish registers. It is also always easier to correctly identify French-Canadian wives and widows because of the Lower Canadian habit of listing wives in all official documents by their maiden names. The English custom of referring to wives and widows only by the surname of her husband confounds attempts at successful identification. Laura Mower may appear in Protestant registers of

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

129

deaths and remarriages, censuses, or English newspapers simply as Widow Campbell or Widow Mower. Hence my inability to be sure about whether she is the Widow Mower identified in the 1842 census or possibly even a Mrs Campbell listed as a widow and aged fortyseven when the 1861 census was taken.81 When Marie-Noflette Charland died of consumption in 1848 at the age of forty-two, in contrast, she was clearly referred to in the parish documents by her maiden name and as the widow of her second husband.82 Consulting a notary about making a marriage contract or will was customary among French Canadians, though the English-speaking quickly learned the advantage of this relatively cheap way of making legal documents. Yet Montrealers whose legal heritage was English common law continued to write their own wills. These had to be probated and so are easier to locate than notarial wills, which are located in the notary’s files. It is always easier to find notarial documents about the wealthy than the poor. This is not because these sources are biased; it is because the wealthy had more reason to use notaries or lawyers to sort out their financial and other affairs. These three women were all registered as marrying in Catholic or Protestant churches between 1823 and 1826, though the details given on marriage registers varied dramatically between denominations. We can only understand how the law governed property within Marguerite’s marriage by reading the Custom of Paris. Marie-Noflette and Laura, in contrast, decided with their future husbands to make a marriage contract with a notary. In contrast to wills, which might be made at any time during a marriage, these are relatively easy to locate in the notarial archives because they were always made immediately prior to marriage. It is much more difficult to determine whether such women made other kinds of notarial acts. Historians of earlier periods of Quebec history benefit from the existence of indexes of all notarial acts. This is not true for most of the nineteenth century. As a result, finding out whether couples made wills or wrote other documents determining succession in their families is extremely difficult, unless previous researchers have created indexes, or information for a whole region has been computerized.83 In a huge city like Montreal, where people arrived on boats, married, and departed, and where many shared the same names, systematic linkage of sources is a major challenge, as anyone who has attempted to recreate her or his own family genealogy will readily recognize.84 People left varying traces in the records, and not all those traces are equally accessible. I have focused here on three women’s trajectories rather than presenting a systematic, quantitative analysis of women’s trajectory from wife to widow. This was not merely because the extreme diversity of

130

Bettina Bradbury

practices in nineteenth century Montreal make such analysis difficult. Nor was it only a result of my growing disappointment with quantitative analyses in which those parts of people’s lives that can be categorized are artificially pushed into boxes not of their making and then analyzed in ways that disconnect different aspects of their identities. Rather, it is because intensive reading of the tasks that these three women took on allows historians to glimpse the “practices behind the acts that notaries,” judges, or parish officials drew up.85 It allows us to ponder more seriously the way that documents were produced and the dynamics of the situations that produced them. In so doing, we can better see widows at some of the moments when they took part in assessing and shaping their future lives. In each of the situations described here – marrying, making a marriage contract or not, making a will or an inventory of goods, electing a tutor, or accepting or rejecting an inheritance – individual wives and widows engaged with the legal system or other apparatuses of the state. They negotiated individual contracts or formalized individual arrangements regarding property and children. In so doing, they took part in framing the characteristics of patriarchy within their marriage and the conditions of their widowhood. Such private choices were also the subject of growing discussion and debate in the years between their marriages and their deaths. The mixture of customs and practices that can be seen through the experiences of these three women were debated and renegotiated at the political level in the years leading up to and following the Rebellions of 1837-38. By the time MarieNoflette Charland died in 1848, the Special Council, made up mostly of elite, conservative, loyal, and predominantly anglophone Montrealers, had reshaped both married women’s rights and the rules surrounding dower for widows. Subsequent cohorts of wives who became widows would continue to face many similar challenges, but the rules would change in ways that made dower less meaningful and individual contracts more important.86

no tes This study would not have been possible without the generous support of sshrc and fcar and the research of many graduate students over the last decade. The broader project on which it is based draws upon a combination of demographic, social, legal, and political records. It follows two cohorts of Protestant and Catholic couples in the Montreal parish registers from their marriages in the 1820s and 1840s (2,840 couples in total, though many disappear very quickly from the record) through to the death of the last partner

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

131

to die, identifying remarriages where they occurred. This material has been matched with marriage contracts in all the cases where couples made them and with wills and other notarial documents when I have been able to locate them. I have also identified all the widows in the Montreal censuses of 1831, 1842, and 1861 and made linkages, where possible, with the widows of the two cohorts. The broader work also draws on all the reported legal cases and the legislation passed in Lower Canada/Quebec across the nineteenth century that deal with marriage, widowhood, and related issues, as well as the relevant debates in the House of Assembly and Special Council. 1 Émilie Tavernier married in Montreal in 1823 and was widowed in 1827, so she falls into the cohort of women whose lives I am following. See Denise Robillard, Émilie Tavernier-Gamelin (Montréal: Éditions du Méridien, 1988); Marguerite Jean, “Tavernier, Émilie,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), 8: 863–6. 2 Reviews of this literature include Carl J. Barret, “Women in Widowhood: A Review Essay,” Signs 2 (1977); Ida Blom, “The History of Widowhood: A Bibliographic Overview,” Journal of Family History 16 (April 1991): 191–210; Bettina Bradbury, “Widowhood and Canadian Family History,” in Margaret Conrad ed., Intimate Relations: Family and Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1995), 19–41; Jan Bremmer and Lourens Van Den Bosch, Between Poverty and the Pyre: Movements in the History of Widowhood (London: Routledge, 1995). Books that have significantly influenced my thinking about marriage and widowhood include Margaret H. Darrow, Revolution in the House: Family, Class, and Inheritance in Southern France, 1775–1825 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Julie Hardwick, Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998); Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860 (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1984); Arlene Scadron, On Their Own: Widows and Widowhood in the American Southwest, 1848–1939, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988); Lisa Wilson, Life after Death: Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) 3 I review much of this literature in “Widowhood and Canadian Family History.” Most recently, several doctoral dissertations have examined widows, especially in the period of New France: Josette Brun, “Le veuvage en Nouvelle France: Genre, dynamique familiale et stratégies de survie dans deux villes coloniales du xviiie siècle, Québec et Louisbourg” (PhD, Université de Montréal, 2000), Nathalie Pilon, “Le destin

132

4

5

6

7

8

Bettina Bradbury

de veuves et de veufs dans la region de Montréal au milieu du xviiie siècle: Pour mieux comprendre la monoparentalité dans le Québec préindustriel” (ma, Université de Montréal, 2000). Men faced special but different challenges as widowers. These too deserve attention. On widowers in a slightly later period, see my Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993), and Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) Louis Lavallée, “Les archives notariales et l’histoire sociale de la Nouvelle France,” RHAF, 28 (déc. 1974); Jean-Pierre Wallot, “Inventaires après décès à Montréal au tournant du xixe siècle: Préliminaires à une analyse,” RHAF 30 (1977): 163–221; François Lebrun and Normand Seguin, eds., Sociétés villageoises et rapports villes-campagnes au Québec et dans la France de l’ouest XVIIe et XXe siècles. (Trois Rivières: Centre de recherche en études québécoises, Université du Québec à Trois Rivières, 1987); Rolande Bonnain, Gérard Bouchard, and Joseph Goy, eds., Transmettre, hériter, succeder: La reproduction familiale en milieu rural, France-Québec, XVIIIe–XXe siècles (Paris and Lyon: L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales/Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1992); Gérard Bouchard, John A, Dickinson, and Joseph Goy, Les exclus de la terre en France et au Québec XVIIe–XXe siècles (Sillery: Septention,1998); Gérard Bouchard, Quelques arpents d’Amérique: Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838–1971 (Montréal: Boréal, 1996), 635; Sylvie Dépatie, “La transmission du patrimoine au Canada (xviie-xviiie siècles): Qui sont les défavorisés? RHAF, 54 (printemps 2001): 557–70; Christian Dessureault, “Parenté et stratification sociale dans une paroisse rurale de la vallé du Saint-Laurent au milieu du xixe siècle,” RHAF, 54 (hiver 2001): 411–48. A recent, important exception is Jean-Philippe Garneau, “Droit et ‘affaires de famille’ sur la Côte-de-Beaupré: Histoire d’une rencontre en amont et en aval de la Conquête britannique,” Revue juridique Thémis 134 (2000): 515–61. The monograph “Wife to Widow,” which I am currently writing, combines a quantitative and qualitative reading of these sources. Where possible in what follows, I will give some indication of how their choices compare to those of others in their cohort. Of course, historians taking a social science approach have worked very hard to evaluate the biases of particular sources, including consideration of the people most likely to be ignored by census takers, unlikely to make wills, etc. My concern here is to encourage historians to think more carefully about how to understand the unfolding of people’s lives in ways that take those who did not generate records into account. This is most important for issues of marriage and widowhood, where in the absence

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

9

10

11

12

133

of individual contracts, the law’s provisions govern property and inheritance issues. Robert Sweeney’s discussion of when people turned to a notary is an excellent reminder of the dynamics involved and the reasons why notaries were or were not used in a range of other business and work-related situations. See his “Internal Dynamics and the International Cycle: Questions of the Transition in Montreal, 1821–1828” (PhD thesis, McGill University, 1985), 89–108. Julie Hardwick draws attention to the need to look more at the “practices behind the acts that notaries drew up” and the role of notaries and their instruments in determining the ways people ordered their world in her Gender and the Politics of Household Authority, 18. Similarly, Garneau stresses the importance of looking at the interactions between household heads and notaries in his “Droit et ‘affaires de famille.’” The establishment of this suburb outside the city walls prior to 1810 is described exceptionally well in Alan Maxwell Stuart, “Settling an 18thCentury Faubourg: Property and Family in the Saint-Laurent Suburb, 1735–1810” (ma thesis, McGill University, 1988). Jean-Claude Robert, “The City of Wealth and Death: Urban Mortality in Montreal, 1821–1871,” in Wendy Mitchinson and Janice Dickin McGinnis, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Medicine (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 23. The total population in 1825 was listed as 22,540. It increased to around 40,290 by 1842 and to some 90,323 in 1861. The proportion of francophones fell to 42 per cent in 1842, and then rose again to around 73 per cent by 1861. Robert cautions about the reliability of these figures. Bruce Curtis, in The Politics of Population. State Formation, Statistics, and the Census of Canada, 1840–1875, (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2001), makes quite clear not only the problems of these early censuses but also the ways these numbers were the focus of intense political and public scrutiny at a time when representation by population was an issue. 41 Geo. iii, cap. 4: “An Act to Explain and amend the Law respecting Wills and Testaments.” Legal historian André Morel argues that this was a drastic change and that, as clarified in 1801, freedom of willing made it possible for husbands and wives to favour one child over another, to give most of their property to strangers, or to will most of their property to each other. It “made the testator judge without appeal.” See his Un example de contact entre deux systèmes juridiques: Le droit successoral du Québec (s.l, s.n., 1964?), 6–7, and Les limites de la liberté testamentaire dans le droit civil de la Province de Québec (Paris: R. Pichon et R. Durand-Auzia, 1960) Scottish marriage law created a community of property somewhat similar to that of the Custom of Paris. A particularly interesting discussion of this takes place in the Torrance Papers. See McGill University Library,

134

13 14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Bettina Bradbury

Rare Books and Special Collections, Torrance Papers, Mss. 220, “Case for Opinion from Kerr’s Estate,” Montreal, 2 May 1842. For more general information, see Frederick Parker Watson, A Handbook of Husband and Wife According to the Law of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1893). Alan Greer, The Patriots and the People: The Rebellions of 1837 in Rural Lower Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 131. See my “Debating Dower. Patriarchy, Capitalism and Widow’s Rights in Lower Canada,” in Tamara Myers, Kate Boyer, et al., eds., Power, Place and Identity: Historical Studies of Social and Legal Regulation in Quebec (Montreal: Montreal History Group, 1998), 56–78. Le Collectif Clio, L’histoire des femmes au Québec depuis quatre siècles (Montréal: Le Jour, 1992), 164–6; Nathalie Picard, “Les femmes et le droit de vote au Bas-Canada de 1791 à 1849” (ma thesis, Université de Montréal, 1992). Jean-Paul Bernard, Paul-André Linteau, and Jean-Claude Robert, “La structure professionnelle de Montréal en 1825,” RHAF, 30 (déc. 1976); Sweeney, “Internal Dynamics and the International Cycle.” Only 3 of the 250 Catholic and Protestant couples marrying between 1823 and 1826 where the husband was listed as a labourer made a marriage contract. For the Catholic population only, see Bettina Bradbury, Peter Gossage, Evelyn Kolish, and Alan Stewart, “Property and Marriage: The Law and the Practice in Early Nineteenth-Century Montreal,” Histoire sociale/Social History 26 (mai 1993). The cost of a contract was sometimes listed on the document. Most of those made by notary Nicolas-Benjamin Doucet during the 1820s cost 15 s., though a few were 5s. and some as much as 25s. See Montreal branch of the Archives nationales du Québec (anq-m), Nicolas Benjamin Doucet, 1823–26. Various treatises from the period set out the rules of the Custom of Paris. Those I have found most useful are James Armstrong, A Treatise on the Law Relating to Marriages in Lower Canada (Montreal: John Lovell, 1857); Henry des Rivières Beaubien, Traité sur les lois civiles du BasCanada, 3 vols. (Montréal: Ludger Duvernay, 1832); J. Maximilien Bibaud, Commentaires sur les lois du Bas-Canada (Montréal: Cérat & Bourgignon, 1859–61), Nicolas-Benjamin Doucet, Fundamental Principles of the Laws of Canada as They Existed under the Natives, as They Were Changed under the French Kings, and as They Were Modified and Altered under the Dominion of England (Montreal: John Lovell, 1841); Thomas McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, together with a Synopsis of Changes in the Law, References to the Reports of the Commissioners, the Authorities as Reported by the Commissioners ..., 2nd ed. (Montreal: Dawson Brothers, 1873). Among the couples marrying between 1823 and 1826, roughly 25 per

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

21

22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34

35

135

cent of Catholics made marriage contracts, but only 10 per cent of Protestants. See Bradbury et al., “Marriage and Property,” 15. Louis Rousseau, “Les passages de la vie,” in Louis Rousseau and Frank Remiggi, eds., Atlas historique des pratiques religieuses: Le sud-ouest du Québec au XIXe siècle (Ottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 1998), 150–1. René Hardy, Contrôle social et mutation de la culture religieuse au Québec, 1830–1930 (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1999), 144. anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the goods of Marguerite Paris and Joseph Guilbault, 3 March 1830. Fabrique of the Parish of Notre-Dame (fpnd), Necrologies, Joseph Guilbault, 3 Nov. 1829. A.B. McCullough reports that 5 franc pieces were only in circulation until 1826, though people used to counting in francs no doubt continued to use them in paper assessments of costs and debts. At this time, 5 francs was rated at between 4s. 6d. and 4s. 8d. local currency, so 15 and 20 francs would have been roughly the equivalent of 13s. 5d. and 18s. local currency respectively. See McCullough, Money and Exchange in Canada to 1900 (Toronto and Charlottetown, Dundurn Press and Parks Canada, 1984), 93. anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the goods of Marguerite Paris and Joseph Guilbault. fpnd, Necrologies, 1823–26. Doucet, Fundamental Principles, 268–72; Beaubien, Traité, 6–7; Armstrong, A Treatise, 36. anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the goods of Marguerite Paris and Joseph Guilbault. Ibid.; McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, section 290. McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, sections 260, 261, 255, 251. If either men or women with minor children failed to make an inventory of the goods they had shared in common with their deceased spouse, the community continued unless the children or their tutor requested its closure; see ibid., sections 1323, 1335, 1336, 1337. Ibid., sections 1342, 217. anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the goods of Marguerite Paris and Joseph Guilbault. Nearly 80 per cent of the widows whose husbands died in the 1820s or 1830s who had young children and whose inventories I have located to date were elected as the only tutor. According to a mid-nineteenth-century list of questions and answers for law students, widows found guilty of having hidden or sold goods from the community or of not having everything enumerated in the inventory lost their chance to renounce the community. They were also obliged to pay half its debts indefinitely and lost their claim on half of the goods

136

36 37

38

39 40

41

42

43 44 45 46

47

48 49

Bettina Bradbury

they had taken. See McGill University Archives, mg 4166, Law Papers, box 10, no. 79, “Student note books, 1850s,” question 18. McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, sections 1338–41,1343, 216–17. This was not unusual. Sherry Olson points to the importance of these two “warm spots” in Montreal homes of the period in “Feathering Her Nest in Nineteenth Century Montreal,” Histoire sociale/Social History 33 (May 2000): 7. anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the Goods of Marguerite Paris and Joseph Guilbault. Note the wide range of currencies used in this inventory. 2 Geo iv (1822), chap. 4, articles vi–viii. France Galarneau, “Tracey, Daniel” DCB, 6; John A. Dickinson and Brian Young, in A Short History of Quebec (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1993), 162–3, report that the Patriotes renamed St James Street the “Street of Blood” because of the exceptional violence in this particular election. La Minerve, 3 mai 1832, 21 mai 1832, 4 juin 1832. Nathalie Picard, “Les femmes et le vote au Bas-Canada de 1792 à 1849” (ma thesis, Université de Montréal, 1992), 42–4, deals with the process of voting. The thesis examines the women who voted and the legislation that eventually withdrew this right from the women of Canada East. The marital status of 194 women voting in this election and in the election in Montreal East was indicated in the pollbook. Of these, 72 per cent were widows, 13 per cent were wives, and 14 per cent were single women. I am grateful to Nathalie Picard for sharing this data with me. See also her “Les femmes et le vote au Bas-Canada de 1792 à 1849.” fpnd, necrologies, 27 Aug. 1847, Marie Paris, widow of Thomas Small. Bradbury et al., “Property and Marriage,” 19–20. See especially notes 22 and 23. anq-m, Notary Ritchot, Marriage contract of Joseph-Henri Letourneau and Marie-Noflette Charland, 21 Nov. 1825. anq-m, Notary de Lorimier, Inventory of the community of goods that existed between Joseph Henry Letourneau and Marie-Noflette Charland, 2 April 1834. Leonore Davidoff, “Regarding Some ‘Old Husband’s Tales’: Private and Public in Feminist History,” in Davidoff, Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender and Class (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 252. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 300–5. McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, section 1368. McCord’s citations in this 1873 treatise go back to Pothier.

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

137

50 anq-m, Notary Labadie, Inventory of the goods of the late Pierre Mallette and Marie-Louise Dufresne, 6 April 1833. 51 La Minerve, 6 mars 1834. The Inventory of the goods of the late JosephHenri Letourneau cites the advertisement as costing 4s. 7d. Jean-Marie Lebel, “Duvernay, Ludger,” DCB, 8, cites the circulation of La Minerve in 1832 as about 1,300, “a respectable circulation for the period.” 52 anq-m, Notre-Dame parish, Births; ibid., Notary de Lorimier, Inventory of Joseph-Henri Letourneau and Marie-Noflette Charland. On the importance of revenues from pew rentals in the finances of the fabriques, see Jean-Guy Landry, “Les finances de la fabrique,” in Rousseau and Remiggi, Atlas historique, 98–9. 53 Jean-Claude Marsan, Montreal in Evolution (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1981), 133. 54 fpnd, Necrologies, 7 March 1834. The total amounts recorded as paid in the fabrique’s records between the 1820s and 1840s clustered at specific prices, related no doubt to the class of funeral. The cheapest were 4s. 6d. The most frequent other amounts paid were £1 9s. 6d., £2. 10s., and £10 15s. 0d. At £6 18. 10d., Joseph-Henri’s funeral was thus just somewhat less than the most expensive, first-class funerals. For a later period, see Landry, “Les finances de la fabrique,” 100. 55 Martin Cardin and John A. Dickinson, “Les inventaires de biens après décès et la civilisation matérielle dans les plaines de Caen et de Montréal, 1750–1780,” in Lebrun and Seguin, Sociétés villageoises et rapports villes-campagnes, 132. 56 anq-m, Notary de Lorimier, Inventory of Joseph-Henri Letourneau and Marie-Noflette Charland. 57 Scholastique Bissonnette recalled notary Guy to her house on 1 May in part to tell him she had forgotten to produce her dead husband’s clothes when the inventory was taken five days earlier. See anq-m, Notary Etienne Guy, Inventory of the community of goods of Scholastique Bissonette and Louis Ducharme, 26 April 1834, 1 May 1834. The very last household items listed in the inventory of Oliver Wait’s possessions were his clothing. His widow, Caroline Campbell, had stuffed them all in a trunk some time between his death and the taking of the inventory in November that year; ibid., Notary Arnoldi, Inventory of the goods of Oliver Wait, 10 Nov. 1832. 58 At this time 2,329 livres represented around £116 9s. Quebec currency; see conversion table in McCullough, Money and Exchange in Canada, 292. 59 Evelyn Kolish, Nationalismes et conflits de droits: Le débat du droit privé au Québec: 1760–1840 (LaSalle, Qué.: Hurtubise, 1994); Bradbury, “Debating Dower”; Bradbury, Wife to Widow: Class, Culture, Family

138

60 61

62

63 64 65 66

67 68 69 70

71

72

Bettina Bradbury

and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Quebec (Grandes Conférences Desjardins, pamphlet no. 1, Programme d’études sur le Québec de l’Université McGill, 1997), 1–45; Bradbury et al., “Marriage and Property.” Bradbury et al.,“Marriage and Property”; Bradbury, “Debating Dower.” anq-m, Notary Doucet, Marriage contract of John Campbell and Laura Mower, 14 Jan. 1826. Over 90 per cent of the contracts written in English by couples marrying between 1823 and 1826 avoided community of property. Ibid. Fifteen years later Doucet would draw upon his bilingual skills, his extensive experience, his commitment to his profession, and his good name to publish a bilingual treatise setting out the articles of the Custom of Paris in his Fundamental Principles. On his life, see Jacques Boucher, “Doucet, Nicolas-Benjamin,” DCB, 8. To date, my genealogical searches have not produced any further information. anq-m, Notary Doucet, Marriage Contract of John Campbell and Laura Mower. Bradbury et al., “Marriage and Property.” Brian Young, “Getting around Legal Incapacity: The Legal Status of Married Women in Trade in Mid-Nineteenth Century Lower Canada,” in Peter Baskerville, ed., Canadian Papers in Business History, vol. 1 (Victoria: Public History Group, University of Victoria, 1989). Doucet, Fundamental Principles, articles 234, 235, 236. Bradbury, “Debating Dower”; anq-m, Notary Doucet, Marriage Contract of John Campbell and Laura Mower. Banns had to be announced on three successive Sundays or holidays in the parish church of each party; see Beaubien, Traité, 1: 27–8. anq-m, Notary Doucet, Lease between Lewis Cleveland and Mrs L. Mower, 24 July 1826.Years later, in 1875, an amendment to the Quebec Civil Code made it quite clear that they could. Quebec, 39 Vict., cap. 24, “An Act to amend article 210 of the civil code,” amends article 210 to read: “The separation renders the wife capable of suing and being sued, and of contracting, for all that relates to the administration of her property; but for all acts and suits tending to alienate her immoveable property, she requires the authorization of her husband, or upon his refusal the authorization of a judge.” The only comparison of the ways francophones and anglophones made wills in Quebec that I know of is Claude Champagne’s thesis, “La pratique testamentaire à Montréal, 1777–1825,” published in Cahiers de Thémis 1 (jan. 1972). Notary Glackmeyer explained at mid-century that when he was making a will for someone who was healthy, he usually discussed the content ahead

Marriage and Widowhood in Nineteenth-Century Montreal

73 74 75

76 77 78

79 80

81 82 83

139

of time. He only took notes if the wishes were complicated. During this initial discussion he would set up the day, time, and place for making the will. This allowed him, prior to the final meeting, to write up a copy of the will and to make sure that the second notary would be present. Other notaries and lawyers of the period agreed that this was how notarial wills had been made since around the beginning of the century. See Joseph Sirois, De la forme des testaments (Montreal: Wilson and Lafleur, 1907), 148–51, citing evidence taken in Evanturel vs Evanturel. In this case, children tried to argue that their illiterate mother could not make a will because of mental and physical incapacity; they lost. See Lower Canada Reports, 16 (1866); Quebec Law Reports, 1 (1875): 74, 144–52. anq-m, Notary Doucet, Last Will and Testament of John Campbell, 19 Sept. 1836. Mount Royal Cemetery, Dorchester Burial Ground, 3: 54, 22 Oct. 1836, La Minerve, 20 Oct. 1836. McCord, The Civil Code of Lower Canada, 217–18; articles 1338–45; St Aubin versus Dame Lacombe, in Montreal Law Reports, Superior Court 2 (1886): 110. In this case the widow, Lacombe, was named the universal legatee, though there were other bequests. She renounced the inheritance in favour of the advantages set out in her marriage contract, which was allowed, but she was required to pay the amount promised St Aubin. 1842 Census, Montreal, Queen’s Ward. On the problems with this census and the history of its making and taking, see Curtis, The Politics of Population, 55–9. See William H. Sewell, “The Concept(s) of Culture,” in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds., Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 48. Sewell is discussing how workers accepting a job are entering a relationship that is both economic and cultural, and he is arguing about the “relative autonomy” of cultural understandings. I am not sure that for widows the cultural, economic, and social can be readily detached from one another. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 211 See, for example, the obituary of silversmith Paul Morand, which describes him as leaving “in mourning an inconsolable wife and sister”: La Minerve, 22 juillet 1854. Laura would probably have been closer to fifty-five by 1861, though an age discrepancy of seven years in censuses is not unknown. fpnd, Necrologies, 23 Feb. 1848. The Mormons are gradually creating indexes to all the documents they have microfilmed, and these include the notarial acts of Lower Canada/Quebec. In this study the index of inventories made by Christian Dessureault was an invaluable tool to capture inventories made by

140

Bettina Bradbury

couples marrying in the 1820s. Unfortunately, it only covers the period up to 1840. Gérard Bouchard is able to claim to know with some certainty about inheritance decisions for the people of the Saguenay because his research strategy involved identifying all documents about all people. 84 Sherry Olson and her colleagues have sampled by surname, which enabled them to build up an extensive collection of longitudinal records on particular families and streets. See her “‘Pour se créer un avenir’: Stratégies de couples montréalais au xixe siècle,” rhaf 51 (hiver 1998): 357–89. 85 Hardwick, Gender and the Politics of Household Authority, 18. 86 I discuss these changes in detail in “Debating Dower” and Wife to Widow.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

141

4 Marginal by Definition? Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920 peter go s sag e

Let us begin with a riddle. What did Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Abbé Lionel Groulx have in common? Certainly not their politics. Besides being prominent Quebecers for whom many streets, buildings, and subway stations have been named, Laurier and Groulx were both stepchildren. Laurier lost his mother when he was seven years old, and his father remarried soon afterwards. Groulx was barely six weeks old when his father died; about a year later, his mother also remarried. Laurier and Groulx, to whom we will return, were both raised in what I will call stepfamilies – families formed when a single parent remarried, or what we often call “blended” or “reconstituted” families today. A century ago, of course, most of the remarried parents were widows and widowers, and this is an important contrast to today’s stepfamilies, most of which are formed in the wake of divorce or separation. But there are important parallels as well, as I argue in a wider project on remarrige and stepfamily formation in Quebec between 1866 and 1920.1 My focus here is on stepchildren, and the big question I would like to address is framed in the terms laid out by the editors of this collection: Were stepchildren “marginal by definition,” or does the historical record reveal a different kind of stepfamily, one in which the children of former marriages found nurture, respect, and love rather than the neglect and abuse suffered by the Cinderellas and David Copperfields of the popular imagination? The essay is built around the following hypothesis: that historic stepfamilies and historic stepchildren were normative and marginal at the same time. They were normative, on the one hand, in that they

142

Peter Gossage

represented efforts – more often than not by widowed fathers – to reconstitute the standard nuclear family as a functioning social and affective group with which its members identified. This was to be accomplished by blending the survivors of the ruptured family with newcomers: a second wife, say, and, more rarely, her children. The households they formed did, after all, consist of husband, wife, and children, the classic nuclear-family triad. Stepfamilies are very difficult to distinguish from other kinds of nuclear-family households in administrative documents such as manuscript census lists. Indeed, most historians of the family, following Laslett’s household-classification scheme, do not bother to try.2 Nor did the language of kin relations distinguish these families from other kinds. In this period, there was no name for a blended or reconstituted family in either English or French; even “stepfamily” is a neologism.3 The names used to refer to stepmothers, stepfathers, and stepchildren in French were vague, ambiguous, and – it seems to me – rarely used. The word belle-mère, for example, could (and does) mean both mother-in-law and stepmother; and stepchildren were at least as likely as not, I have learned, to use terms such as mère and Maman when referring to their fathers’ wives. Stepfamilies, from this perspective, blended nicely into normative constructions of the nuclear family in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. On the other hand, stepfamilies and stepchildren can certainly be seen as having been “on the margins of family” in Quebec during this period. Stepfamily formation involved the creation of familial relationships that were, by reputation at least, filled with the potential for conflict. It was certainly portrayed as risky venture in European popular culture, which associated stepmothers in particular with a kind of innate cruelty – a much analyzed inversion of the positive, nurturing role assigned to “natural” mothers.4 Stepfatherly roles could also be seen as cold and harsh, and stepchildren, of course, were perennially constructed as victims. As a peculiar, vaguely deficient mutation of the nuclear family – a second-chance plot, in Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s phrase,5 which might or might not succeed – stepfamilies therefore could be constructed as marginal to or, worse, subversive of the dominant discourses of family, grounded as they were on notions such as interdependence, nurturing, harmony, and respect for authority. This, in a nutshell, is the framework for the ongoing inquiry. Where do stepchildren fit in? In the larger project, stepfamilies are considered as social groups and as networks of relationships; no one “subject position” is privileged.6 With its specific attention to stepchildren, this essay tightens the focus and allows us to examine a wide range of

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

143

issues through the eyes of one of the players in this drama, the one most likely to be marginalized and constructed as victim. The text is divided into three parts, each drawn from a distinct research initiative within the larger project. I look in turn at various representations of stepchildren in popular culture, at the legal status of stepchildren under Quebec’s 1866 Civil Code, and at the ways in which a handful of stepchildren recorded their childhood experiences, sometimes in youthful diaries but most often retrospectively in published memoirs and autobiographies.

ste pch i ld r en i n po pular c u lt u r e At least in English, the idea of a stepchild is laden with negative meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “stepchild” straightforwardly as “a stepson or stepdaugther,” while “stepdaughter” has the following, equally benign definition: “a daughter, by a former marriage, of one’s husband or wife.” But there is also a figurative sense to the word which is illustrated by a series of quotations, such as one from a British journal in 1911, according to which “the navy (had) been the step-child of both parliaments.”7 In English, then, the very word “stepchild” means to be marginalized, neglected, second-class, a victim. This is certainly the meaning most often used in book titles. Indeed, if one does a literature search on “stepchild” using standard bibliographical search engines, most titles that come up will use the word in this figurative sense. And family historians have not been immune to this usage. In 1976 Hans Medick wrote in the introduction to an important article on the proto-industrial family economy that “the history of household and family can no longer be regarded as the stepchild of historical research.”8 Medick’s meaning could not have been clearer: to be a stepchild means to be neglected, deprived, a victim. The word may call up images of an underfed, overworked, but of course virtuous Cinderella crouched over a sooty hearth, deprived of both sustenance and status while lessdeserving (and uglier) step-siblings live in luxury. In Western culture, stepchildren have consistently been portrayed as victims of step-parents whose attitudes toward them range from cold indifference to jealous rage. There are lots of variations, but the Cinderella story, in which an adolescent girl is the target of a cruel stepmother, stands out as the most frequently recurring pattern. Others, such as the David Copperfield version, where the conflict is between a boy and his harsh stepfather, Mr Murdstone, occur somewhat less often, it seems to me, but nonetheless have the same effect, which is to depict the position of stepchildren in Western familial culture as marginal and without status.9

144

Peter Gossage

One of the objectives of my research project has been to document the extent and force of these motifs and stereotypes in Quebec through an examination of various genres of popular culture. The study ends in 1920, a date that, from this perspective, might well be said to mark a sea change in popular constructions of stepchildren in Quebec. It was in 1920 that the tragic death of a ten-year-old victim of domestic violence named Aurore Gagnon made headlines all over Quebec. So too did the subsequent murder trials of her father, Télesphore Gagnon, and especially of her stepmother, Marie-Anne Houde, who was widely believed to be the author of the abuse and neglect that led to the child’s death. I have written elsewhere about this Quebec version of the Cinderella story, which became the basis for an extremely successful theatrical melodrama, a popular 1950s film, several novels, and many other cultural productions.10 The enduring resonance of the murdered stepchild known in Quebec as “Aurore, l’enfant martyre,” establishes, I think, the pre-existence of a set of stereotypes around “unnatural” mothers, and especially stepmothers, in French-speaking Quebec. This comes as no surprise, since the wicked stepmother myth dates back to classical antiquity in Western culture and exists in many non-Western cultures as well.11 Here, however, I want to experiment with a slightly different interpretation. Consider the hypothesis that constructions of stepmothers as cruel, self-serving, acquisitive, and jealous and of stepchildren as victimized, second-class, and marginal may not have been as strong in Quebec prior to 1920 as they became in subsequent years, with the huge popularity of the Aurore story and its cultural spinoffs. Although I have not yet established this conclusion with any degree of certainty, my impression now is that in Quebec prior to 1920, these motifs were actually somewhat muted in comparison to what one finds in other societies. This hypothesis is based on a preliminary examination of two kinds of evidence. In the first place, I have searched the folklore archives at Université Laval (and some published anthologies as well) for FrenchCanadian versions of well-known folk tales, focusing on eleven types of story (including Cinderella and Snow White) in which the wicked stepmother–neglected stepchild motifs are typically found.12 There are many wicked stepmothers in this material. I will quote briefly from a version of the Cinderella tale told in the Beauce region: “Once there was a man who was a widower. He had a daughter and she was very beautiful. He remarried to a widow who also had a daughter. The widow’s daughter was very ugly. The widow was always jealous of her husband’s daughter. She put ashes in her hair and always kept her badly dressed and called her Cinderella.”13 This stepmother beats her

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

145

husband’s daughter for claiming to be as beautiful as the mysterious stranger who had danced with the prince at the castle (of course, this was the girl herself, transformed by her fairy godmother). What seems more surprising is that there were many versions, even of this story, where the villain was not a stepmother but, rather, some other female character (or characters). There does not have to be a stepfamily, in other words, for the Cinderella story to work. And in the Quebec versions, there often is not. A storyteller in Saint-Raphael-de-Bellechasse told the story of the youngest of three sisters of a king and queen. “And then ... the two older ones were jealous of the youngest. She was far more beautiful than they were.”14 It is thus two older sisters and not a stepmother or stepsisters who torment Cinderella in this version. Without going into further detail, suffice it to say that where the stepmother–stepdaughter motif was an optional component of a wellestablished story type (such as Cinderella), it was very often left out by Quebec storytellers. I also have also gone systematically through the first two volumes of the Dictionnaire des oeuvres littéraires du Québec (pre-1900 and 1900–39) reading plot summaries and searching for published works, especially novels, that deal with the themes of remarriage and relations with step-parents.15 This exercise certainly gives the impression that the sensation created by the death of Aurore Gagnon breathed new life into stepfamily conflict as a theme in Quebec literature, one that had been relatively unpopular beforehand. Thus I found only thirteen stories dealing more or less directly with remarriage and step-relationships published in the entire period prior to 1920. But the DOLQ identifies seventeen published in the 1920s and thirteen in the 1930s. Among these more recent offerings is Henry Deyglun’s Les aventuriers de l’amour: Roman canadien inédit, published in 1929. Set in the Lac Saint-Jean region, the story is complicated, salacious, and very improbable. It involves a girl whose cocaine-addicted stepmother has murdered the girl’s mother and then married her father for his money. The “adventuring” stepmother’s general motivation is greed, but she is also inclined to take her frustrations out on her stepdaughter through physical violence. In her summary of the book, Lucie Robert mentions Deyglun’s use of several standard literary motifs, including the wicked stepmother, “made popular (in Quebec) by Aurore l’enfant martyre.”16 The motif found its way into homegrown children’s literature as well. In Le filleul du roi Grollo (King Grollo’s godson) of 1926, Marie-Claire Daveluy weaves a fantasy in which “La reine épine” (Queen Thorn) is stepmother to the adorable princess Aube and makes her life miserable, with the help of a male accomplice. Note the close

146

Peter Gossage

association between “Aube” and “Aurore” – both words mean dawn or first light. There is also a background figure, a malevolent fairy called “la fée Envie,” who has the kingdom in her grip. But the main character is a woodcutter’s son whom the king makes his godson, who is educated by gnomes and who ultimately loves and liberates Aube and discovers his true identity – a nobleman, the king’s nephew.17 My study, however, deals primarily with the period before 1920, when Quebecers seem to have been relatively disinclined to write or tell stories about victimized stepchildren. Let us assume that this impression is borne out by the ongoing research. The question then becomes why this might have been and why, by extension, stepfamilies and stepchildren in Quebec before 1920 were not as marginalized as one might have assumed on the basis of stories such as Cinderella and David Copperfield. In the first place, one could suggest a demographic explanation. Many, many children would have had the experience of living with a step-parent and particularly with a stepmother. How many? Historical estimates are difficult to generate, but Quebec’s Catholic parish registers allow us to attach some tentative numbers to this experience. For New France, recently published figures show that fully one-quarter of the children born to a sample of seventeenth-century canadien couples would have experienced life as a stepchild for at least some segment of their lives prior to the age of emancipation (twenty-five years old in that period).18 Numbers are harder to find for the period of my study, but I have been able to derive some very useful ones for the Saguenay region. With the collaboration of Mario Bourque, I recently generated some figures for the Saguenay region on an infant’s chances of becoming a stepchild in the years between 1870 and 1929 on the basis of the balsac population database. This exercise has allowed me to identify some 94,000 children born to first marriages in the Saguenay area and to calculate how many of them experienced the death of their mother or father and the remarriage of the surviving parent before they reached the age of twenty-one. The overall figure is just over one in ten (10.3 per cent), less than half the figure for New France but quite substantial just the same. And there is a clear trend in the data, with levels in the 12–13 per cent range for the children of marriages celebrated before 1910, but falling off dramatically for marriages in the teens and twenties.19 Now, it is obvious that there were strong material incentives to remarry in a peasant economy such as the Saguenay’s, where the standard unit of production was the family farm.20 The incentives, moreover, were stronger for widowers than for widows, as this analysis also

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

147

illustrates. Seven in ten Sagueny stepchildren (6,738 of 9,644) were sons or daughters of widowers who acquired a stepmother through their father’s remarriage – more than twice the number who acquired stepfathers (2,926). In a society and culture where the experience was this common, perhaps there was also some measure of sympathy for second wives and the recognition that taking on a widower, his children, and the potentially thankless role of stepmother was no bed of roses. So did the prejudices and negative perceptions around stepfamilies increase in twentieth-century Quebec as the experience became less commonplace, if, indeed, this was the case, as it seems to have been in the Saguenay region? It is at the very least a theory that deserves further study. In Quebec prior to 1920, furthermore, the relatively smooth “blending” of a new member into an existing nuclear family might also have been encouraged by the practice, particularly for widowers, of remarrying dans son cour – of choosing as a second wife a servant, a cousin, a sister-in-law: someone the children knew already. The “strange case” of the deceased wife’s sister is an interesting example. Such marriages were not unknown in nineteenth-century Canada; the promoter-politician Alexander Tilloch Galt and the renowned railway engineer Thomas Keefer were among the many men who married their sistersin-law after their first wives had died.21 But the nineteenth century was also a period during which the legality of a widower’s marriage to his dead wife’s sister was hotly contested by parliamentarians and religious authorities in both Great Britain and Canada.22 Objections to the practice were framed mainly in religious terms, drew on scriptural interpretation, and were voiced principally by conservative Protestant clergy (in particular, Travers Lewis, the Anglican Bishop of Ontario, as well as several theological scholars at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Quebec). But proponents of the practice, such as mp Désiré Girouard, who authored the federal law that officially legalized it in 1882, argued, on social grounds, that such remarriages simplified issues around inheritance and avoided many of the kinds of conflict and tensions that tended to disrupt stepfamily harmony.23 Apparently – and this is my point for the moment – there were fewer obstacles in Catholic Quebec to such marriages than in Protestant English-speaking Canada. Having an aunt for a stepmother was not the majority situation for stepchildren in Quebec, but it was perhaps more common there than elsewhere in the dominion. Much later and far from Quebec, Margaret Laurence’s recollections on this score are illustrative just the same. Laurence was a girl of four when her mother, Verna Simpson, died in 1930. Her mother’s older sister, Margaret, a distinguished Calgary schoolteacher, had cared for

148

Peter Gossage

her sister in her illness and remained in the household to look after her young niece. The next year she married Laurence’s father, the lawyer Robert Wemyss. They had one son together before Wemyss died of pheumonia in 1935, leaving his widow to raise her niece/stepdaughter and her own young son. In her memoirs, Margaret Laurence expresses nothing but fondness and admiration for Margaret Simpson, to whom she refers not as her aunt or stepmother but as her “other mother” or simply as “Mum.” She writes about the local gossip surrounding her father’s remarriage to his sister-in-law, who was also four years his senior: “I can only guess at how she felt. I know she loved me, her sister’s child ... Bob [her father] was a young lawyer, left alone with a four-year-old daughter. He needed support and help. Margaret Simpson gave it.” Laurence also muses in an interesting way about the negative stereotype surrounding stepmothers: “I have often wondered why tales and jokes about wicked stepmothers are so much a part of our culture. They are so much a putdown of women who, like Mum, take on the sometimes difficult role of loving and caring for children not their own. Is it to assign a lowly place to a woman who has not borne children herself? Or is it perhaps to say that only a birth mother can really be brought under society’s control because a stepmother may be a more independent woman? In fact, in my eyes, Mum was never my stepmother. She was just my Mum.”24 So, stepchildren were not necessarily construed as victims in the popular imagination in Quebec, particularly in the period prior to 1920. Of course, they might have been. But they might also have been represented as unfortunate orphans who benefited from the surviving parent’s remarriage, insofar as remarriage was a way of re-establishing a functional, productive family unit and of avoiding the economic and other stresses associated with single parenting. One might add here that it is easy to overestimate the level of nurturing that any child might expect in a nineteenth-century family. Those in the working class and in rural areas were certainly required to work hard from an early age and could expect little in the way of education or luxuries. They also suffered from high levels of infant mortality and from childhood diseases, some of which could also kill. If pity is the emotion most strongly evoked by stories of victimized children such as Cinderella and “Aurore l’enfant martyre,” then there is perhaps no reason to suspect that stepchildren deserved more than many others.25 Perhaps a rising standard of parental care within the urban bourgeoisie (where most of the discourse was produced) created conditions in which it was easier to idealize the “standard” nuclear family, to pathologize the stepfamily, and to make stepchildren (like the poster child Aurore) the focus of a great deal more pity (including, as

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

149

often as not, self-pity) than they had been a half-century earlier. Again, it is a theory worth exploring more fully, not least in light of the growing body of literature on children and child rearing in early twentieth-century Canada and Quebec.26

stepc h i ld ren and th e l aw It may be, then, that being a stepchild – un enfant du premier lit, to give the nearest French equivalent – was not an especially problematic familial position or status a century ago. It may also be that, at least prior to 1920, nuclear families comprised of remarried widows or widowers with children from former marriages were neither marginal nor particularly stigmatized. Although the remarriage of widowed parents was tightly regulated – by church and state, certainly, but also by popular traditions such as the charivari – there was also a sense of “normalcy” around stepfamily formation which would, I submit, decline dramatically as mortality and remarriage rates fell in the twentieth century. But an examination of the legal apparatus designed to regulate stepfamily formation appears to tell quite a different story. A man’s stepchildren, for example, were certainly “on the margins” if the standard for comparison is the formal, legal status of his legitimate, biological daughters and especially sons. And although she might well agree to nurture her husband’s children, there was nothing in the civil laws of Quebec that obliged a stepmother to offer any kind of support or sustenance whatsoever to her stepchildren. Whereas much of Quebec family law was built around the mutual rights and obligations of parents and their children, few of these laws applied to stepchildren and step-parents, who – unless they made specific arrangements to the contrary – might as well have been strangers. Take the issue of parental duties and responsibilities towards minor children. What responsibilities, if any, did a step-parent have under Quebec’s Civil Code toward the children of his or her spouse’s former marriage? In the case of a widow’s remarriage, her minor children acquired a new stepfather. If the mother herself had been formally named legal guardian, or tuteur, to her children at the time of their father’s death, then her new husband – as the new head of the family – automatically assumed that position. Note, however, that a child’s new stepfather did not necessarily become her legal guardian. Many children of widows were, after a formal family council and the signature of an acte de tutelle, placed under the legal guardianship of an uncle, a grandfather, or another male relative rather than their mother. Her remarriage would do nothing to interrupt that ongoing relationship,

150

Peter Gossage

although the stepfather could assume the role of guardian following a new family council and a new acte de tutelle. The genetic relationships that underlay the mutual rights and obligations of fathers and their children, then, did not exist between stepfathers and stepchildren, although a more limited set of rights and obligations (the institution of la tutelle) could be voluntarily created if the child had a tutor other than her mother, and they automatically came into being if the mother was also the legal guardian.27 What about a woman who acquired stepchildren by marrying a widower? In formal legal terms, a new stepmother had even more limited rights and duties with respect to her husband’s children than did a stepfather. Under Quebec’s civil law, women – other than a child’s ascendant kin (meaning mothers and grandmothers) – could not be appointed legal guardians under any circumstances. In fact, for a complex and fascinating set of reasons, a stepmother’s legal interests were generally constructed as being in opposition to those of her stepchildren, and the law was set up in such a way as to offset the potential for conflict that was presumed to exist between a man’s second wife and the children of his first marriage.28 Yet here again there appears to have been a good deal of distance between the letter of the law and the prevalent social practice in Quebec. Widowers with minor children had a strong interest in remarriage; they did so in great numbers and with considerable alacrity. The women they married, it must be assumed, would have expected – and been expected – to fill a maternal role with respect to their husband’s children. They often, moreover, signed ante-nuptial marriage contracts in which they agreed to contribute to the support of their stepchildren. When Hélène Lucier married farmer Louis Jodoin in Saint-Hyacinthe in 1869, for example, both were widowed and both had the charge of minor children. Their marriage contract contained the stipulation that the children of both prior marriages “will be maintained, brought up, and educated according to the circumstances of the parties at the expense of the said community.”29 As minors, then, stepchildren had no legal reason to expect support or nurture from their step-parents, except under specific circumstances: where a stepfather had taken on the role of tuteur or where a stepparent had agreed by marriage contract to provide such support. The care and protection that biological children received as a birthright, stepchildren could only hope to acquire as a privilege, if at all. Duties and responsbilities between parents and children, moreover, were a two-way street. Children, in other words, could expect to be taken care of while they were still minors. But adult children also had certain legally enshrined responsibilities toward their parents. Filial duty was

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

151

an important aspect of Quebec family law. But to what extent did stepchildren share in these responsibilities? To no great extent at all, as one might by now expect. Quebec’s civil law, as codified in 1866, contained provisions requiring adult children to give material support to aging or infirm parents who were unable to provide for themselves. Article 166 could not have been clearer on this point. “Children are bound to maintain their father, mother and other ascendants, who are in want,” wrote the codifiers.30 But how did the death of one parent and the remarriage of the other affect this requirement? Article 167 required sons-in-law and daughters-in-law to provide maintenance for their mothers- and fathers-in-law, and it further stated that the obligation ceased in the case of a mother-in-law who contracted a second marriage.31 Remarried mothers, fathers, and fathers-in-law (but not mothers-in-law) continued to benefit from the protections against want offered by articles 166 and 167. But the requirement to provide for aging parents, grounded in the notion of filial duty, did not extent to step-parents. Three cases heard before Montreal’s Superior Court in the 1880s and later reported in Quebec law journals made this abundantly clear.32 All three cases involved remarried widowers who sued the children of their former marriages for maintenance in the form of a pension alimentaire, or alimentary allowance. The courts were clear and unanimous in their holding that the filial duties established by articles 166 and 167 did not apply to stepmothers (or to stepmothers-inlaw). They were less clear on how the alternative remedy of offering bed and board to a needy parent might be exercised in the case where the parent in question was a remarried father. In all three cases from the 1880s, the children argued that they were themselves indigent and unable, therefore, to pay an allowance. Article 171 of the Civil Code had foreseen this possibility and granted the court the authority to order a person who “owes a maintenance ... to receive and maintain in his house the party to whom such maintenance is due.”33 But the children were not required to provide any support or maintenance for his new wife, their stepmother. How, then, in such circumstances could articles 166, 167, and 171 of the Civil Code be reconciled with article 175, which required a wife to live with her husband and to “follow him wherever he thinks fit to reside,” while obliging a husband to “receive” his wife “and to supply her with all the necessaries of life, according to his means and condition”?34 The Civil Code provided little guidance as to how this conundrum might be resolved, and it was up to the courts to do their best to sort things out.

152

Peter Gossage

While we are on the topic of the courts, the judicial archives provide us with another window into the question of whether stepfamilies and stepchildren in Quebec were “marginal” or “normative.” When we think about the law insofar as it related to stepchildren, it is useful to ask whether court records of civil suits reveal the kinds of stepfamily tensions described so widely in Western popular culture, but which seem to have received only very muted echoes in Quebec prior to 1920. In a word, the answer is yes. But, then, what else can be expected when one has scoured the judicial archives looking for cases involving remarriage and stepchildren? Still, it is useful to ask why these particular stepfamilies found themselves before the courts. Without seeking a verdict on whether stepfamilies were or were not more fractious than others (something that would require an elaborate “control group” of court cases involving families where there had been no remarriage), I am interested in the issues that divided such families when they did become involved in litigation. Stepfamilies that wound up in court also provide hints of the strategies that were use by people trying to blend their families sufficiently to avoid such disputes (even though, in these particular cases, the strategies had clearly failed). This is another issue about which I have written elsewhere and on which I am continuing to work.35 The court records I have found could certainly be used to document the fact (and it is a fact) that some stepfamilies were very fractious indeed – that they therefore represented very unsuccessful attempts to reproduce the dominant familial norms of the period. Many of the suits involved complicated, sometimes protracted disputes over property and inheritance. Others were suits for separation of bed and board, a particularly useful kind of source for documenting stepfamily conflict and the place of stepchildren in such conflict. Let us look briefly at two cases, the first of which was a dispute about inheritance that was argued in the 1890s, while the second was a suit for separation of bed and board that raises the issue of a stepmother’s failed attempts to assert her authority over her husband’s children. The first case was heard in the 1890s but can be traced to events that began in 1818, when a young servant, Marie Chenaille, married the farmer Isidore Poissant.36 In terms of property, this was an unequal marriage; Chenaille had no financial assets to speak of, whereas Poissant brought two valuable farms into their community of property. It is important to note that he did not have to do this by law; indeed, had there not been a specific provision in the marriage contract, these farms would have remained outside the community as his own propres, or personal property. The couple had six children over the next twelve

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

153

years; they also continued to prosper, acquiring four additional farms. Indeed, when Poissant died in 1830, the total value of this community of goods was quite substantial: six farms plus moveable property valued at 7,695 livres ancien cours.37 Soon after her husband’s death, Marie Chenaille remarried, this time with Constant Palin. Palin was not penniless, but he had little compared with the substantial holdings of his bride. Here again, special considerations not foreseen by the Custom of Paris were extended to a marriage partner, although this time it was the wife, Marie Chenaille, who was the generous one. Even though Palin specifically excluded from the community all of his property – moveable goods valued at 2,000 livres ancien cours – Chenaille placed all that she had into the community. Now, at this time there were specific provisions under Quebec’s civil law which limited the generosity of widows and widowers towards a second spouse. Predicated on the notion that a new spouse posed a potential threat to the patrimony of les enfants du premier lit, the sixteenth-century French Édit des secondes noces (Edict on second marriages) had been incorportated into the Custom of Paris and was in effect in Quebec until it was specifically extinguished at codification in 1866. The edict prevented any individual who remarried from transferring to the new spouse any share in his or her estate that exceeded the portion devolving to one of the children of the first marriage. And it prevented a widower or widow from transferring to anyone other than the children of the first marriage (including, obviously, the new spouse) any property that he or she had acquired specifically through the “liberalities” – or the special consideration – of the deceased partner.38 Marie Chenaille’s second marriage contract, then, was in clear violation of the Édit des secondes noces. But her children were very young when she remarried, and no one thought to contest her gesture at the time. The remarried woman had a son, Pierre Palin, by this second marriage, and they lived for several decades as a blended family composed of six children from the first marriage (two of whom died while still quite young), their birth mother, their stepfather, and their younger half-brother, Pierre. Now, there is no evidence that Constant Palin treated his stepchildren with harshness or cruelty, à la Murdstone. On the other hand, when it came time to make decisions about inheritance, it was clear whom Palin wanted as his heir. In 1866 Constant Palin and Marie Chenaille prepared legal, notarized wills in which both parties named Pierre Palin, the only child of their union, as their universal legatee. Pierre inherited his father’s estate when the latter died in 1867. Marie Chenaille survived for another twenty-six years; but when she

154

Peter Gossage

died in 1893, without having altered her will, her youngest son, the only child of her second marriage, inherited her entire estate as well, most of which she had originally acquired through the generosity of her first husband. Over sixty years after Marie Chenaille contracted her second marriage, one of her grandchildren by her first marriage accused her in court of showing undue – and in fact, illegal – generosity to her second husband. Samuel Perrier was one of the ten children of Marie Chenaille’s daughter Marie Poissant, now deceased. In 1896 he brought a suit against Pierre Palin, who would have to be described, I suppose, as his half-uncle (his mother’s half-brother). Perrier contended that the provisions of the 1830 marriage contract violated the Édit des secondes noces and, to simplify somewhat, that the extensive properties transferred to Constant Palin and subsequently, by will, to the defendant, Pierre Palin, rightfully belonged to the children and grandchildren of Isidore Poissant. Perrier was suing to recover his share, which was one-tenth of the one-fourth portion that would, under this reasoning, have devolved to his late mother, Marie Poissant. (This must have been quite a substantial estate, given that he would go to this much trouble to recover one-fortieth of it.) I’ll leave this story there, except to say that Samuel Perrier, the grandson, lost his case, both at trial and on appeal. The judges agreed that the terms of the 1830 marriage contract indeed violated the Édit des Secondes Noces. But they also pointed out that after 1801, when testamentary freedom was established in Lower Canada, the edict only applied to inter vivos transfers; its provisions could be circumvented by the signing of a will. And in this case, they had. To quote a published report on the case: “The Gordian knot of all the complications is cut by the will of Marie Chenaille, the grandmother, dated 2nd June 1866. Plaintiff contended that the will should not be held to be valid, because it was made whilst Constant Palin, Marie Chenaille’s second husband, was still alive and she was under his influence. That contention cannot be accepted. Marie Chenaille lived from 1867, the date of her husband’s death, until 1893, and she was free to change the provisions of her will on any day during all those years. She died leaving that will in full force and effect, and it must be considered as the free expression of the testamentary disposition the law entitled her to make.”39 Disputes over property and inheritance are a dominant theme in the stepfamily litigation I have found in Quebec’s civil courts. They do not, however, tend to reveal much about the day-to-day life of people living in stepfamilies. Although they are obviously biased towards instances where conflict was persistent and serious, suits for separation of bed

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

155

and board offer an interesting perspective on the kinds of difficulties that might be expected. One of the most recurrent of these issues was step-parental authority, especially a stepmother’s authority with respect to her husband’s children. A suit for separation heard in the 1880s in the Eastern Townships is worth describing in some detail for this reason. This is the case of Louise Vertefeuille and Jean-Baptiste Picard, who married in a Catholic ceremony in Stratford Township in July 1877.40 At the time of their wedding, they were both widowed and responsible for minor children: Louise had six children from her former marriage (of whom she brought three into the new stepfamily household), while Jean-Baptiste had ten. (It is worth pausing here to let that image sink in: it is their wedding day in 1877 and they already have sixteen children between them!) By February 1886, after nine years of stepfamily life, the tensions in this large, complicated rural household had boiled over. Louise Vertefeuille therefore brought a suit for separation of bed and board (séparation de corps et de biens) before the Superior Court of the St Francis district. One of her chief allegations was that her stepchildren treated her with disdain and cruelty – an interesting reversal of the wicked-stepmother motif – and that her husband, far from intervening to stop this behaviour, in fact encouraged it. In her declaration, Louise claimed the following: “That on many occasions, mainly over the past three years, the defendant, who has children from a former marriage, incited those children against the plaintiff and encouraged them to disobey her, to the point where she was daily a victim of mockery and of the most crude and insulting language on their part; and that one of the defendant’s daughters, aged fifteen years, raised a poker against the plaintiff to strike her, and that the plaintiff was in fact struck by her.” 41 Louise also alleged that her husband had assaulted her and that in times of sickness he and his children had refused to provide her with proper care. Aged fifty-two at the time of the suit, she further stated that her age and health “did not allow her to endure the mistreatment and the tyranny of the defendant and his children.”42 In his defence, Jean-Baptiste Picard denied the allegations against himself and his children, claiming that his wife was a difficult and demanding woman who brought her misery upon herself.43 The court in this case heard from eleven witnesses, many of whom testified to the difficulties encountered by this couple and their children in adapting to each other and to the stepfamily situation. Records of this kind of testimony need to be read carefully and critically. But it seems clear enough that challenges posed by the large, complex household created disagreements on the issue of parental authority,

156

Peter Gossage

disagreements that played an important role in the disintegration of this marriage. Characteristically, one of the major confrontations – recounted by many of the witnesses – surrounded food and mealtime behaviour and rituals. (After all, families were and are defined, in one important sense at least, as groups that live together and share meals at a common table.) As one of Louise’s daughters, Félonise, recalled, the couple’s most bitter argument occurred after her mother, Louise, attempted to accommodate this large family around their kitchen table. Not quite managing to do so, she had instructed her husband’s youngest son to sit apart from the others. Félonise recalled the incident this way: “I remember that we were all seated at the table, ready for our meal; there were too many of us for everyone to have a seat, and the plaintiff wanted to place one of the defendant’s sons at another table; the child didn’t want to sit at this other table; the plaintiff wanted to scold the child a bit and the defendant got angry; [he] stood up, lost control, and said to the plaintiff: ‘Damned woman! We’ll see if this child doesn’t sit at the table with the others.’ The plaintiff replied: ‘seeing as he was the youngest, that she thought it was reasonable to put him off to one side of the table’; at this point, the defendant said to the plaintiff such painful, impious, and shocking things as to strike at her heart.”44 Following this incident, which occurred on a cold winter evening, Louise left the house covered only in her shawl, intending to spend the night in the snow in the hope she might die from exposure – which she well might have, had she not been found by one of her children. This story contains another intriguing twist. Félonise Lussier, the young woman whose testimony on behalf of her mother we have just heard, was testifying against both her stepfather and her father-in-law. In 1883, three years before this suit, she had married her stepbrother Prudent Picard, Jean-Baptiste’s son by his first marriage. I am not quite sure what to make of this relationship, but one of the things it suggests to me is that stepfamilies with this kind of complex “yours, mine, and ours” structure could be the setting for the development of feelings other than jealousy, resentment, and anger. Whether marriages between step-siblings were seen as “normal” or “marginal,” however, is a question that will have to wait for another study.

ste pch i ld r en a nd th ei r sto r i e s Legal documents, and court cases in particular, certainly seem to present stepchildren and stepfamilies as marginal to dominant discourses of familial relations, built as they were on notions such as cooperation, affection, and respect for authority. It is of course difficult

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

157

to find narratives that are not focused on conflict in the judicial archives. Legal records in general tend to focus attention on the margins. In theory at least, life stories recorded in diaries, journals, and memoirs should be more neutral (although one sometimes wonders about this, since diarists and memoir writers have a tendency to focus on the dramatic). It is useful, at any rate, to ask whether stepchildren who wrote diaries, memoirs, and autobiographies tend to confirm the negative stereotypes that are so strongly reinforced by the legal sources. Or do such documents reflect the spirit of “normalcy” with which, I have submitted, many people viewed stepfamily formation in the nineteenth century? Ultimately, asking the question of how stepchildren felt, thought, and wrote about their experiences in stepfamilies may be the best way to decide whether stepchildren were “normal” or “marginal” in Quebec society prior to 1920. Other scholars have asked similar questions for other times and places and arrived at some interesting conclusions. Nathasha Burchardt, using thirty-six oral histories and looking at twentieth-century Britain, observes that children with stepfathers were less likely to have negative feelings than those with stepmothers. “Stepfathers,” she writes, “found an easier acceptance than the stepmothers, the key quality for an Edwardian stepfather being his capacity to bring about an improvement in the family’s material circumstances.” As for stepmothers, they “consistently provoke strong emotion in the interviews – in six cases positive and in six negative. All those with positive memories had acquired their stepmothers in early childhood and five of the six had no memory at all of their own mothers.”45 Neil Sutherland, for English Canada in the twentieth century, using written “life stories” and oral histories, makes a similar evaluation – some very good experiences with step-parents and some very bad experiences as well. “Although the odds were longer that children would find themselves appropriately nourished by parents other than their natural ones,” he writes, “some certainly did.”46 The evidence is spottier for Quebec in this period. But, I suspect, the conclusion is equally valid. If we want to know whether stepchildren flourished (like Margaret Laurence) or suffered (like Cinderella) in their reconstituted families, we must begin by admitting that some flourished and some suffered. The central question then shifts to focus on diversity and contrasts – on the range of experiences reported by stepchildren and on the factors that influenced whether the experience would be good or bad. Once more I will provide a few examples, most of which come from memoirs and other published sources.47 It is here, in fact, that we return to the two prominent men mentioned at the outset. Wilfrid Laurier, the future prime minister, was

158

Peter Gossage

born in Saint-Lin, north of Montreal, in 1841. His mother, Marcelle Martineau, died in 1848 when Wilfrid was seven. His father, Carolus, remarried soon afterward, to Adéline Ethier, who, according to one source, had been a servant in the household. Laurier biographer O.D. Skelton describes young Wilfrid’s stepmother as “a very kindly and capable mother to all her flock,” which included the boy’s four halfbrothers and his half-sister, as well as his own sister, Marie Honorine Malvina, who died, however, when Laurier was eleven. I have not yet looked at Laurier’s own correspondence to see how he described his relationships with his stepmother, but a letter written by Carolus Laurier in 1886 suggests that it was close and affectionate: “I am certain that Wilfrid loves his stepmother just as if she was his own mother,” wrote his father. “I always remember that at the age of eleven, when he came home from school, he would go and sit on his stepmother’s lap to eat his bread and jam or bread and sugar, with his arms ’round her neck, and that he would put his piece on his knees and wipe his mouth with his handkercheif and kiss her over and over, and then pick up his piece, eat a few mouthfuls and begin to kiss her again.”48 Laurier was already a rising star in the federal Liberal Party in 1878, when the nationalist priest-historian Lionel Groulx was born, in a farmhouse on the “rang des Chenaux” in Vaudreuil, just west of Montreal island. He was the youngest of the four children of Léon Groulx and Philomène Pilon and only six weeks old when his father died, apparently of smallpox, in February 1878. After a year as a poor widow with four young children, Groulx’s mother remarried, to a family acquantaince and friend of her first husband, the twentyfive–year-old labourer Guillaume (William) Émond. In his memoirs, Groulx describes the remarriage in an interesting way, as the resumption of an unfinished task: “After my mother’s second marriage,” he writes, “the Chenaux house resumed its accustomed life, the silent, laborious life of a young couple who had taken up the unfinished task.” Groulx writes with deep emotion about his childhood, which was marked by the death of several siblings and half-siblings, including three within eight days during a diphtheria epidemic in 1882. Nonetheless, his memories seem to be mainly happy ones, and his account contains no hint of stepfamily conflict. On the contrary, he loved and admired his stepfather enormously: “I dare repeat,” he writes, “the grey Chenaux house sheltered a happy family. We were of two paternal lines ... Guillaume Émond had adopted the children of the first marriage as his own. Among us reigned always the most perfect accord, the bond of an indissoluble fraternity, a bond like those that encircled sheaves of wheat in former times.” Writing about Émond’s

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

159

death in 1924, Groulx offers a long tribute extolling his stepfather’s courage, not least in marrying a friend’s widow and taking responsibility for her four young children, as well as his honesty, fairness, and simplicity. “In Father Émond, I always admired his equity, his generosity. Between the children of the first marriage and the many who followed – fourteen in all – I never knew him to show any preference or reveal the least partiality.”49 Since one aspect of Groulx’s conservative nationalism was a belief in the rural, patriarchal family as a bulwark of the traditional FrenchCanadian, Catholic order, he certainly had an interest in mythologizing his own childhood and family life for public consumption.50 Not all first-person accounts of stepfamily life were so glowing. The journalist Henriette Dessaulles – who, after Aurore Gagnon, may be Quebec’s second most famous stepdaughter – certainly told a different kind of story. Born in 1860, Henriette was the second of GeorgesCasimir Dessaulles and Émélie Mondelet’s three children. GeorgesCasimir was a banker, industrialist, politician, and head of one of the richest and most prominent families in the town of Saint-Hyacinthe. Émélie was a devoted mother, an active philanthropist, and a leading member of the local bourgeoisie. When she died in the summer of 1864 at the age of twenty-eight, Henriette was four years old. Shortly after his wife’s death, Georges-Casimir invited a widowed cousin, Honorine Papineau Leman, to move into the house to manage his household and care for his children. Honorine was in her mid-forties and had a daughter in her twenties named Frances Louise (known as Fanny), who also moved into the household. Georges-Casimir, now in his late thirties, and Fanny Leman began a relationship. Some five years after Émélie Mondelet’s death, on 14 January 1869, they were married at the SaintHyacinthe cathedral. Over the next ten years, Fanny Leman bore five more Dessaulles children, three girls – one of whom died as a child of seven – and two boys. 51 The well-known diaries written by the teenaged Henriette Dessaulles in the years 1874–81 deal with many aspects of the life of a young bourgeoise in small-town Quebec in the 1870s.52 But among the really important themes are the girl’s position as Fanny Leman’s stepdaughter and the strong emotions sparked by that tendentious relationship. According to Henriette’s granddaughter, the distinguished historian Louise Dechêne, “Their conflict mainly arose from the fact that Henriette’s stepmother tried to impose her own strict, typically bourgeois sense of decorum and social position on Henriette.”53 Whatever its source, the anger and resentment she felt toward her stepmother were expressed often in the pages of Henriette’s journal. “She is sometimes so severe and her manner so harsh,” the girl wrote in 1874, “it brings

160

Peter Gossage

out all my defiance. I never talk back, the things I feel when I’m angry would be too ugly to say, besides I’m too proud to show how her harshness affects me.”54 Some months later she confided to her diary that she was “upset because Mama scolded me yesterday very severely for such a small thing, just an insignificant slip. She has been stern ever since, giving me harsh looks, and I am sad at heart all the time.”55 The tension between Henriette and her stepmother came to a head when Fanny opposed her courtship with Maurice Saint-Jacques, the young law student and neighbour whom she would ultimately marry nonetheless. But although she railed against her as a teenager, Henriette seems to have been reconciled with her stepmother later in life. Her letters from the 1880s are affectionate and somewhat contrite in tone. After visiting her father’s house with her own young children in 1884, for example, Henriette sent a note thanking Fanny Leman for her hospitality. “I have learned to know you and I love you with much confidence,” she wrote to her stepmother, signing herself “ta grande fille, Henriette.”56 Another professional writer, Claire Martin, brings a mixture of resentment and pity to her depiction of her stepmother, in a twentiethcentury memoir in which the real villain is an abusive father. Born in Beauport in 1914, Martin begins her memoir with the death of her mother in 1927, when the girl was thirteen years old. She recalls in vivid detail her father’s harsh treatment of his children, particularly on the occasion of their mother’s death; the separation he then imposed between the children and their maternal grandparents; the death in 1928 of her older half-brother (Claire’s mother had been her father’s second wife); her father’s outrageous proposal of marriage to his son’s twenty-five–year-old widow; his persistent attempts to remarry (“as soon as he met a widow or a spinster, he made up his mind to marry her,” she writes); and ultimately, the author’s unpleasant relationship with her father’s third wife, in addition to many other details of an unhappy childhood.57 There is much detail here and little space. But let me just quote Martin’s account (written in the 1960s, however) of her first meeting with the forty-nine–year-old woman who would become her stepmother: What we saw enter the house was a kind of Buddha with cascading chins. The lovely brown eyes [we had imagined] were mighty small, and no trace of thought enlivened them. The mouth was shapeless and looked more like a bad scar – and a scar that opens from time to time is abominable. Behind this, two cheap dentures clattered loosely and noisily. The body was like a cone standing on its point; the shoulders were massive, the breasts enormous, the waist bigger than the hips. The remainder dwindled down: thin hips, skinny legs.

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

161

This precarious structure rested on a pair of uncommonly deformed feet. But the worst thing, I come back to it, was the chins. They were enhanced by long vertical wrinkles, and they trembled ceaselessly. We were speechless.58

This is one of the most biting accounts from an angry stepchild that I have found. One could hardly imagine Claire Martin making peace with her stepmother, as Henriette Dessaulles seems to have done later in life. Is this perhaps another indication that things got worse, not better, in the twentieth century with respect to the marginalization and stigmatization of stepfamilies in Quebec? Again, it is a theory worth exploring, as I will more fully in subsequent publications.

c o nclus i o n Novels, folk tales, legal records, and first-person accounts all have their own light to shed on the questions posed at the outset of this chapter. How, then, should we respond in a general way to the question of whether stepchildren were “marginal by definition”? And have we unearthed sufficient evidence to either confirm or reject the hypothesis that Quebec’s historic stepfamilies and its historic stepchildren were normative and marginal at the same time? I think that the answer to the first question is no, that stepchildren did not necessarily live “on the margins of family” in Quebec in the half-century or so prior to 1920. They were not “marginal by definition,” except insofar as that definition may have been a narrow, legalistic one. But it is also true that they could be marginalized, neglected, and even victimized under certain circumstances, and that they sometimes were. Certainly, the civil law gave children little standing in their relations with their step-parents. Litigation reveals the “tangled webs” of familial conflict that were sometimes woven, often around the recalcitrant issue of inheritance. Some autobiographical accounts do emphasize jealousy, resentment, and conflict. Children in this position had to rely on the generosity of their stepparents, and that generosity did not always materialize, or at least not in sufficient quantity. And step-parents had to rely on the generosity of their spouses’ children as well, something which, once again, was anything but guaranteed. Many, many stepchildren and step-parents, on the other hand, found the generosity and other resources they needed to successfully navigate the tricky path out of the margins into a blended nuclear family. Indeed, I think this was probably a much more common version of the remarriage tale than those told by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Charles Dickens. I have mentioned several indices of this

162

Peter Gossage

notion by which stepfamilies were assimilated into normative views of “family” in Quebec prior to 1920. For one thing, my reading of popular culture in this period is that it was not as negative as one might have expected, and certainly not as full of distrust and misgivings, toward stepmothers especially as it became in the 1920s and 1930s. Some stepchildren, moreover, a few of them quite famous, go out of their way to emphasize the positive, nurturing roles played by their step-parents in their upbringing. Many factors went into whether or not this successful blending would happen. The two mentioned by Natasha Burchardt may have been especially important. It mattered, first of all, who remarried, whether it was a widow or a widower. From a child’s perspective, the question of whether the single-parent household was adding a substitute mother or a substitute father was of crucial significance. Since widowers married more frequently and sooner, the stepmother situation was much the more frequent. And since mothers (step or otherwise) had direct responsibility for nurturing children, a child’s relationship with a stepmother was bound to be more intense – for better or worse – than with a stepfather. It also mattered, following Burchardt and most literature on contemporary stepfamilies, how old the children were when their families were reconfigured. At six weeks of age, Lionel Groulx can hardly be expected to have formed a strong bond with his birth father. Wilfrid Laurier’s memories of his birth mother were vague. But Henriette Dessaulles and Claire Martin each felt her mother’s death as a deep loss; their resentment of the women who took over the wifely and maternal roles must be understood in this context.59 So it is helpful to think of stepfamilies and stepchildren in Quebec as both normative and marginal in the decades prior to 1920. Perhaps there was a balance in the nineteenth century, a balance in which the cautionary tales about what might, and sometimes did, go wrong in stepfamilies served mainly to reinforce dominant constructions of “family” and of familial roles such as father, mother, son, and daughter. Indeed, to a large extent, I think, the culture tended to assimilate the roles of stepfather, stepmother, stepson, and stepdaughter into these general categories. There was something contingent and voluntary about stepfamilial roles which perhaps made transgression of those roles more likely or predictable, but which certainly did not mean that those who played them were required to act any differently from other varieties of fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters. But this balance, if it existed, may have begun to break down after 1920. As adult mortality and the frequency of remarriage declined, ideas about what constituted a “normal” family began to change, and it became easier and easier to define stepfamilies and stepchildren as

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

163

being on the margins. All that has changed, of course, in the past forty years or so, as stepfamilies have re-emerged and been redefined. As more and more adults and children are again faced with the challenge of finding the generosity and love they need to forge successful blended families, definitions of “normal” that place these and other kinds of socalled non-traditional families on the margins are fading back into the distance. At least, I hope they are.

no tes I gratefully acknowledge the Fonds fcar and the Université de Sherbrooke for funds in support of the research reported in this essay. Many graduate students assisted in collecting the information, and they all have my sincere thanks, as do Nancy Christie, Michael Gauvreau, the other participants in the “Margins of Family” conference, and the anonymous reviewer who commented on an earlier draft. 1 A monograph, tentatively entitled “Cinderella Stories? Stepparents and Their Children in Quebec, 1866–1920,” is currently in preparation. Previously published work related to this project includes Annmarie Adams and Peter Gossage, “Chez Fadette: Girlhood, Family, and Private Space in Late Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe,” Urban History Review 26 (March 1998): 56–68; Peter Gossage, “La marâtre: Marie-Anne Houde and the Myth of the Wicked Stepmother in Quebec,” Canadian Historical Review 76 (Dec. 1995): 563–97; and Peter Gossage, “Tangled Webs: Remarriage and Family Conflict in 19th-Century Quebec,” in Edgar-André Montigny and Lori Chambers, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Family History (Toronto, Canadian Scholars Press, 1998), 355–76. 2 I developed this point and examined several possible explanations in my 2000 paper to the Canadian Historical Association, entitled “Canadian Stepfamilies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.” The international literature on historic stepfamilies is small but growing. Most of it reflects a cultural or legal approach to family history, rather than the social-demographic perspective popularized by Laslett and others in the 1970s. For a sampling, see Natasha Burchardt, “Structure and Relationships in Stepfamilies in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Continuity and Change 4 (1989): 293–322; Stephen Collins, “British Stepfamily Relationships, 1500–1800,” Journal of Family History 16 (1991): 331–44; Margaret Morganroth Gullette, “The Puzzling Case of the Deceased Wife’s Sister: Nineteenth-Century England Deals with a Second-Chance Plot,” Representations 31 (summer 1990): 142–66; David Noy, “Wicked Stepmothers in Roman Society and Imagination,” Journal of Family History 16

164

3

4

5 6

7 8

Peter Gossage

(1991): 345–61; Sylvie Perrier, Des enfances protégées: La tutelle des mineurs en France (XVIIe-XVIIIe siècles) (Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes, 1998), especially chapter 4; Nicole-Anne Diederich, “The Second Angel in the House: Disruption of Domestic Ideology in the Literature of Nineteenth-Century Great-Britain and the United States” (PhD dissertation, Washington State University, 1997). The word “stepfamily” is absent from the The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961 and 1989) but is defined in the more recent Canadian Oxford Dictionary (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998) as “a family unit in which either or both of the parents has children from a previous relationship or marriage.” The term has come into general use in recent decades, to the point where it can now be found in modern versions of European fairy tales. A recent storybook, based on Walt Disney’s film version of Charles Perrault’s Cinderella, begins as follows: “Once upon a time ... Long ago in a faraway land, poor Cinderella lived with her mean stepfamily. They filled her days with cooking, scrubbing, washing, and chores of every kind.” See Della Cohen, Walt Disney’s Cinderella: A Read-Aloud Storybook (New York: Mouseworks-Disney Enterprises, 1999), 2 (my emphasis). Contemporary social science, counselling, and self-help literature, as well as fiction, dealing with step-, reconstituted, and blended families is legion. A recent search on “stepfamilies” using the Barnes and Noble website () turned up some 174 hits. Bruno Bettelheim, for example, sees the wicked stepmother motif so common in European fairy tales as a symbolic “splitting of the mother into a good (usually dead) mother and an evil stepmother.” See Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Knopf, 1976), 69. Morganroth Gullette, “The Puzzling Case of the Deceased Wife’s Sister.” I borrow this concept from Diederich, “The Second Angel in the House.” In the stepfamily story, other “subject positions” include those of the second spouse /step-parent, the remarried parent, the children of the first marriage, the wider kin group, and so on. The Oxford English Dictionary (1961), 10: 920. I located many titles incorporting this usage from the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Some examples: Iida Katariina Hirvasaho, “A Stepchild of the Empire: Finland in Russian Colonial Discourse” (PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 1997); Kathryn May Robinson, Stepchildren of Progress: The Political Economy of Development in an Indonesian Mining Town (Albany: suny Press, 1986); Joe Paradis, Abingdon Pottery Artware, 1934–1950: Stepchild of the Great Depression (Atglen, Penn.: Schiffer Pub., c.1997). The Hans Medick quotation is from his article “The Proto-industrial Family Economy: The Structural

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

9

10 11

12

13

14

165

Function of Household and Family during the Transition from Peasant Society to Industrial Capitalism,” Social History 3 (Oct. 1976): 291. Murdstone’s ill opinion and harsh treatment of his young stepson are, of course, major themes in David Copperfield. “This unhappy boy ...,” the stepfather proclaims, “has been the occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition.”; Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield, ed. Trevor Blount (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961 [1849–50]), 266. Gossage, “La marâtre.” The stereotype seems to have been particularly strong in Japan, for example. See Marian Ury, “Stepmother Tales in Japan,” Children’s Literature: Annual of the Modern Language Association’s Division on Children’s Literature 9 (1981): 61–72. The strategy employed here was essentially as follows. First, I used the Aarne-Thompson international classification scheme to determine which folk-tale types were most likely to contain the wicked-stepmother motif. (It became abundantly clear in the course of this research, by the way, that tellers of folk tales have traditionally paid almost no attention at all to stepfathers, wicked or otherwise.) Most helpful here was Antti Amatus Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, second revision, translated and enlarged by Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemien, 1961). Having identified eleven story types, I then searched published anthologies and especially the Archives de folklore de l’Université Laval (aful) for stories corresponding to these eleven types told in French Canada and recorded by ethnologists prior to 1960. I have thus identified for analysis about 115 folk tales, corresponding to types 403, 450, 451, 480, 510A, 510B, 511, 706, 708, 709, and 720 in the Aarne-Thompson classification scheme. aful, Collection Luc Lacoursière, enregistrement no 1769: version of Cinderella (story type 510A) told by M. Alphonse Gagné and transcribed by Elizabeth Roy-Tessier: “Un jour y’avait un homme qui était veuf. Y’avait une fille et puis elle était ben belle. Y s’est remarié avec une veuve qui en avait une aussi. La celle de la veuve était ben lette. Toujours que la veuve était jalouse de la fille de son mari. Elle lui mettait de la cendre dans les cheveux et pis a la tenait toujours mal habillé et pis a l’appelait Marée Cendrouillon.” Ibid., enregistrement no 1586: version of Cinderella told by Cléophas Fradette and transcribed by Carole Richard: “Et pis ... les deux plus vielles eux autres, a, i éta jalouses de la plus jeune. Alle était ben plus belle qu’eux autres.”

166

Peter Gossage

15 Maurice Lemire, ed., with the collaboration of Jacques Blais, Nive Voisine, and Jean du Berger, Dictionnaire des oeuvres littéraires du Québec (Montréal: Fides, 1978–84), vol. 1, Des origines à 1900, and vol. 2, 1900–1939; hereafter DOLQ, 1 and 2. 16 Lucie Robert, “Les aventuriers de l’amour, roman d’Henry Deyglun,” DOLQ, 2: 126; Henry Deyglun, Les aventuriers de l’amour:. Roman canadien inédit (Montréal: Éditions Édouard Garand, 1929). 17 Alvine Bélisle, “Le filleul du Roi Grollo, roman de Marie-Claire Daveluy,” DOLQ, 2: 496–7; Marie-Claire Daveluy, Le filleul du Roi Grollo, suivi de «La médaille de la vierge» (Montréal: Bibliothèque de l’Action française, 1926). 18 Hubert Denis, Bertrand Desjardins, and Jacques Légaré, “Les enfants dans un contexte de rupture et de reconstitution des unions en NouvelleFrance” (Paper presented to the Demography Network of the International Congress of Historical Sciences, Montreal, 1995). An English translation was published in The History of the Family: An International Quarterly 2 (1997): 277–93. 19 From 13.2 per cent for children whose parents married in the 1890s to 7.5 per cent for those of couples married in the 1920s. 20 For the definitive treatment of family and society in this mainly rural region, see Gérard Bouchard, Quelques arpents d’Amérique: Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838–1971 (Montréal: Boréal, 1996.) 21 Jean-Pierre Kesteman, “Galt, Sir Alexander Tilloch,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography (DCB), 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press); H.V. Nelles, “Keefer, Thomas Coltrin,” (DCB), 14. 22 On the debate in Britain, see Morganroth Gullette, “The Puzzling Case of the Deceased Wife’s Sister.” For an excellent discussion of the Canadian case, see Analee Lepp, “Dis/membering the Family: Marital Breakdown, Domestic Conflict, and Family Violence in Ontario, 1830–1920” (PhD dissertation, Queen’s University, 2000), 71–80. 23 Girouard himself married three times – although not to sisters – and had a total of ten children. See Michael Lawrence Smith, “Girouard, Désiré,” (DCB), 14. 24 Margaret Laurence, Dance on the Earth: A Memoir (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989) 49–50. 25 On pity as a key aspect of Quebec popular attitudes toward children in this period, see Denise Lemieux, Une culture de la nostalgie: L’enfant dans le roman québécois de ses origines à nos jours (Montréal: Boréal Express, 1984). 26 For an important English-Canadian contribution to this literature, see Neil Sutherland, Growing Up: Childhood in English Canada from the Great War to the Age of Television (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997). Aspects of this discussion also emerge in several contribu-

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

27

28

29

30

31 32

33 34 35 36

37

167

tions to this volume, including those by Bettina Bradbury and Nancy Christie. The civil law, by the way, made no provision for legal adoption prior to 1924. See Denyse Baillargeon’s contribution to this collection and also the ongoing work of Université du Québec à Montréal doctoral candidate Chantale Quesney on the Société d’adoption et de protection de l’enfance and its work with Montreal children between 1937 and 1972. The state, through its laws, was particularly wary of the potential for conflict around property and inheritance in cases of remarriage. This had been the case since the earliest days of the French colony in North America. See Geneviève Postolec, “Le mariage dans la Coûtume de Paris: normes et pratiques à Neuville aux xviie–xviiie siècles” (Paper presented to the Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française, October 1995); see also Gossage, “Tangled Webs.” Archives nationales du Québec à Montréal (anq-m), Notary Horace Venant St-Germain, minute no. 5353, Marriage contract between Hélène Lucier and Louis Jodoin, 7 Oct. 1869: “seront entretenus, élevés et instruits suivant l’état des parties aux dépenses de la dite future communauté.” Quebec Civil Code (1866), art. 166; see Paul-A. Crépeau and John E.C. Brierly, eds., Civil Code 1866–1980: An Historical and Critical Edition (Montréal: Chambre des notaires du Québec, 1981; hereafter Crépeau and Brierly), 88. Quebec Civil Code (1866), art. 167; see Crépeau and Brierly, 88. anq-m, Superior Court, District of Montreal, 1881, dossier no. 1118, Casimir Labranche v. Napoléon Labranche et al.; cf. Legal News 6 (1883): 60; Summary of Alfred Bachand et al. v. Joseph Bachand, La Revue légale 12 (1884): 38–53; anq-m, Superior Court, District of Montreal, 1881, dossier no. 1286, Pierre Lafon v. Pierre Lafon et al.; cf. Legal News 6 (1883): 84. The details of these cases are discussed more fully in my article “Tangled Webs.” Quebec Civil Code (1866), art. 171; see Crépeau and Brierly, 90. Quebec Civil Code (1866), art. 175; see Crépeau & Brierly, 90. See Gossage, “Tangled Webs.” anq-m, Superior Court, District of Montreal, 1896, dossier no. 1410, Samuel Perrier v. Pierre Palin; cf. Rapports judiciaires du Québec 14 (1898): 332–9. According to Lower Canadian inheritance law, Chenaille owned one-half of this property outright; the other half belonged to their surviving children, all of whom would have been minors at the time of their father’s death – their interests would have been represented by a court-appointed tutor, who may or may not have been their mother.

168

Peter Gossage

38 My thanks to Don Fyson and Evelyn Kolish for their help in sorting out these matters. 39 Rapports judiciaires du Québec 14 (1898): 337. In 1866, by the way, the Édit des secondes noces was expressly not incorporated into the new Civil Code. Article 764 read, in square brackets, “The prohibitions and restrictions respecting gifts and benefits bestowed by future consorts in case of second marriages no longer exist” (art. 764). From this point on, people who wanted their succession to be regulated by the edict could so specify in their (re)marriage contract. Otherwise, it was void. 40 Archives nationales du Québec en Estrie [anq-e], Superior Court, St Francis District, 1886, dossier no. 707, Louise Vertefeuille v. Jean-Baptiste Picard. 41 Ibid., Plaintiff’s Declaration, 1–2: “Que, dans maintes circonstances, surtout durant les trois dernières années, le défendeur, qui a des enfants issus d’un premier mariage, a soulevé et incité sesdits enfants contre la requérante et les a encouragés à lui désobéir, au point qu’elle a été quotidiennement victime de leurs moqueries et de paroles des plus grossières et des plus insultantes de leur part; et qu’une des filles du défendeur, âgée de quinze ans, a levé contre la requérante un tissonier pour la frapper, et que de fait la requérante en a été atteinte par elle.” This and the following translations are mine. 42 Ibid., 3: “ne lui permet point de supporter les mauvais tratements et la tyrannie du défendeur et de ses enfants.” 43 Ibid., Defendant’s Response, 3: “La demanderesse est une femme acariâtre, toujours mécontente et qui se rend elle-même misérable ... [mais] le défendeur désire garder la dite demanderesse comme son épouse et vivre avec elle comme son époux.” “The plaintiff is a quarrelsome woman who is always unhappy and who makes herself miserable,” he submitted, but in spite of it all, he continued, painting himself in the colours of the long-suffering spouse, “ the defendant wishes to keep the plaintiff as his wife and to live with her as her husband.” 44 Ibid., Deposition of Félonise Lussier., 2–3: “Je me souviens que nous étions tous à la table, après rendre notre repas; nous étions trop pour tous nous placer et la demanderesse a voulu mettre un des fils du défendeur sur une autre table; l’enfant ne voulait pas se mettre sur cette autre table; la demanderesse a voulu gourmander un peu l’enfant et le défendeur s’est choqué; le défendeur s’est levé, s’est emporté, et a dit en s’adressant à la demanderesse: ‘Cré femme, on va voir si cet enfant ne se mettra pas à la table avec les autres.’ La demanderesse fait réponse, ‘vu que c’était le dernier, qu’elle trouvait que c’était raisonnable de la mettre à côté de la table’; le défendeur a dit en cette occasion à la demanderesse des paroles si pénibles, impieuses, choquantes pour lui porter au coeur.” 45 Burchardt, “Structure and Relationships in Stepfamilies,” 304–6.

Stepchildren in Quebec, 1866–1920

169

46 Sutherland, Growing Up, 96. 47 Research into these kinds of sources is ongoing and should yield about thirty reasonably well documented cases. A paper using these materials, entitled “Living in Step: Narratives of Remarriage and Stepfamily Life in Quebec, 1870–1940,” was presented at the 2002 meeting of the American Historical Association in San Francisco. 48 English translation quoted in Oscar Douglas Skelton, Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, vol. 1 (Toronto: S.B. Gundy/Oxford University Press, 1921): 27–8. 49 Lionel Groulx, Mes mémoires (Montréal: Fides, 1970–74 ), 1: 19 and 27; 2: 410, for the citations: “Après ce second mariage de ma mère, la maison des Chenaux reprit sa vie accoutumée, vie silencieuse, vie laborieuse d’un jeune couple qui allait reprendre la tâche inachevée.” “J’ose le répéter, la maison grise des Chenaux abritait une famille heureuse. Nous étions de deux souches paternelles ... Guillaume Émond avait adopté comme les siens les enfants du premier lit. Entre nous régna toujours l’accord le plus parfait, le lien d’une fraternité indissoluble, lien pareil à celui qui ceignait les anciennes gerbes de blé.” “En Père Émond, j’ai toujours admiré son equité, sa générosité. Entre les enfants du premier lit et les siens qui survinrent nombreux – quatorze en tout – je ne sache pas qu’il ait jamais manifesté quelque désagréable préférence, jamais laissé voire la moindre partialité.” 50 My thanks to Bettina Bradbury for this observation. 51 See Adams and Gossage, “Chez Fadette,” for further details on life in this household. 52 Several versions of this well-known diary, including an English translation, have been published. The original is in the Fonds Dessaulles in the Textual Archives of Montreal’s McCord Museum of Canadian History. There is also a complete photocopy of the manuscript at the archives of the Société d’histoire régionale de Saint-Hyacinthe, which I consulted extensively. See Journal d’Henriette Dessaulles, 1874/1880 (Montreal: Hurtubise hmh, 1971); Hopes and Dreams: The Diary of Henriette Dessaulles 1874–1881, translated by Liedewy Hawke (Willowdale: Hounslow Press, 1986); Journal, édition critique par Jean-Louis Major (Montreal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1989). 53 Dessaulles, Hopes and Dreams, Introduction, 12. 54 Dessaulles diary, 17 Sept. 1874; Hopes and Dreams, 18. 55 Dessaulles diary, 13 Feb. 1875; Hopes and Dreams, 29. 56 “J’ai appris à te connaître et je t’aime avec tant de confiance”: McCord Museum, Fonds Dessaulles, Henriette Dessaulles to Fanny Leman, 9 March 1884. 57 Claire Martin, The Right Cheek: An Autobiography, trans. Philip Stratford (Montreal: Harvest House, 1975 [1966]), 27.

170

Peter Gossage

58 Ibid., 134. 59 These examples remind us that the children’s gender mattered as well and that, as in the Cinderella story, the stepmother-stepdaughter relationships tended to be the most intense of all, either in a positive (Laurence) or in a negative (Dessaulles and Martin) way.

Introduction

bac h e l o rs an d s p i n s t e rs

171

172

Leonard Kuffert

Reconstructing Canadian Culture

173

Introduction nancy ch ri s tie

One of the suggestive sub-themes pursued by Bradbury, Brun, and Christie in the previous section – the tension between individual choice and the constraints of culture, economics, and legal imperatives – forms the central interpretive axis of the essays by Ollivier Hubert, Jack Little, Gwendolyn Davies, and Michele Stairs in the following section. These essays overtly pursue the ambiguities of selfhood and social identities by studying the experience of single men and women through evidence of both prescription and practice in diaries, wills, literature, and demography. To date, the historiography on singleness focuses mainly on the experience of women, and partly because of this emphasis, there is an automatic assumption that spinsterhood was equated with a marginal status in both the family and the wider society. Christine Adams, for one, has referred to the spinster as having “a functionless role,” and despite the almost ubiquitous presence of both unmarried men and women in Ireland, Janet Nolan concludes that young women were marginal to the family because of their economic inutility, and that this led, during the nineteenth century, to the emigration of huge numbers of Irish women anxious to avoid the stigma of celibacy.1 Similarly, David Fitzpatrick has characterized unmarried women as “redundant daughters,” and spinsterhood in general as a life spent in “humiliation and despair.”2 Many historians who have explored female singleness have emphasized the need of unmarried women to find an alternative sphere of fulfillment beyond the family. This perspective imposes upon the experience of these women a sense of “otherness” because it unconsciously and anachronistically assimilates the status of women to

174

Nancy Christie

notions of usefulness derived from contemporary categories of paid labour. The reverse of this interpretive coin is to devalue the unpaid labour of women within their home and to portray these women as more affirmedly subordinated because they were supposedly rendered even more dependent on male authority than married women. Aside from the peculiar logic that assumes a lower status for dependents within their original biological family unit than in one headed by a husband, whose potential for arbitrary authority was greater because it was not tempered by the involvement of horizontal male kin, this proposition does not prove that the domestic sphere was seen by women to be a constraint.3 When they consider singleness, there is an even greater tendency among historians to correlate social deviancy with marital status, especially with regard to women. All too often, historians have extrapolated from their reading of the prescriptive literature, which centres on a peculiarly British obsession with the “spinster problem” after 1850 among middle-class families,4 to reach universal conclusions regarding the experience of all unmarried women across the centuries. Often, pejorative characterizations of unmarried women emanated from very particular contexts. For example, in the settler society of British Columbia, recently arrived female immigrants were often maligned because they were found to have breached their contracts to remain as servants within the families of aspiring colonial gentry (however, it should be noted that these women were also criticized for getting married and escaping their employment obligations), while specific groups of unmarried working women in late-nineteenth-century Toronto were similarly castigated largely because they, for the most part, lived and worked outside the context of the family.5 However, this discourse pertained to a very small minority of working-class women, for as Greg Kealey’s analysis of the 1889 Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital demonstrates, family patriarchs preferred that their daughters work in factories, because at that time the tradition of whole families labouring within one workplace was still observed, rather than seek work as domestic servants, which would have ineluctably removed them from parental control. As one witness testified, “There are not often girls who are alone who go to work there. They come there with their families and live with their parents generally.”6 The rhetoric of “spinster as other” that proliferated during the late nineteenth century may not have had universal application, and it raises the question as to whether the attitudes formulated by the promoters of the “spinster problem” reflected the valuation actually placed upon single women by their families. In other words, does the rhetoric conform to female experience? Further, how

Bachelors and Spinsters

175

did the rhetoric regarding the social status of the spinster compare with that directed at bachelors? What the contribution of Ollivier Hubert demonstrates was that there was a rhetorical campaign regarding the “bachelor problem” in nineteenth-century Quebec which paralleled the regulation of the behaviour of single women that Perry and Strange have documented for a later period. Hubert postulates that in the decades between 1860 and 1900, with the erosion of older rural community controls through networks of parish sociability, not only was there a general sense of crisis, but this fear of disorder came to centre on the problem of mobile, unmarried young men. This spectre of crisis, which was constructed by clerical and lay elites, led to the creation of new – and what Hubert would term more modern, because they were more private – systems of social control that utilized the mechanism of marriage and family as the primary vehicle by which social order was affirmed. These new mechanisms of control, as they redefined masculinity in terms of the domestic sphere and in terms of the male’s normative role as the family breadwinner, at the same time problematized the persistent bachelor. In this scenario, male social status was derived not simply from one’s public roles in the workplace or in associational life but from the conjunction of work and family formation through one’s role as a husband, father, and provider.7 As Hubert shows, the bachelor anti-hero in the novels under analysis is a hard worker, but his work has no social value because he fails to use it to support a wife and children. Hubert’s study offers two broad trajectories for analysis. First, he demonstrates that while a stigma was attached to all single people outside family networks, bachelors were deemed especially deviant because the state regulated society through the figure of the male household head, who in turn controlled his female dependents and minor children. Second, through his analysis of prescriptive literature in Quebec, Hubert has situated the origins of the interconnectedness between the nuclear norm and the emergent breadwinner ideal, what was to become the central idiom of the modern liberal state. That the interconnectedness of work, marital status, and marginality for men was not simply a rhetorical construct but exemplified the lived experience of men in the nineteenth century is explored in Jack Little’s close analysis of the diary of Ralph Merry. As he shows in his detailed description of Merry’s life, this individual’s early failure to acquire the family farm because of the longevity of his father led him to pursue a peripatetic and rootless existence as a peddler of religious literature. Merry not only lived geographically at the margins of his own and other families where he temporarily boarded as a visitor, but his marginal social status, which derived from his poverty and lack of regular

176

Nancy Christie

work, was reinforced through his choice to pursue a religious culture at odds with that of his father. In addition, because of his lack of wealth, he was unable to marry until very late in life, when he finally acquired land. The international historiography on nuptiality is an extensive one, and it revolves around the pivots of economic and demographic constraint and choice as determinants of marriage. While historians disagree on the specific confluence of factors that affected the age or proclivity to marry, which include sex ratios, local marriage customs, cost of living, the availability of state relief, or one’s occupation – farmers traditionally married later as sons awaited their inheritance, as did women in service, as they saved money for their dowry, and generally speaking, the poor married earliest – what this literature has in common is the emphasis upon paid labour as the principal lens through which to examine the problem of the timing of marriage.8 The articles by Gwendolyn Davies and Michele Stairs establish a clear departure from the conventional interpretive frameworks, for their focus is upon the role of women within the family, with particular attention, especially in the case of Stairs, to the important role of the unpaid labour of both male and female adult offspring within the family economy. Read together, the essays by Davies and Stairs direct historians towards the variables of class, the urban/rural divide, and the role that ethnicity plays in shaping the contours of singlehood. Through her study of two nineteenth-century female diarists, Davies explores the interrelationship between one’s subjective identity and the public ideologies fashioned around literary prescription. Davies has found that there was very little opprobrium attached to unmarried women from the vantage point of public ideologies in early nineteenthcentury Nova Scotia. However, some women, such as Mercy Seccombe, experienced tremendous anxiety and feelings of marginality when their desires for marriage remained unfulfilled. Seccombe’s feelings of uselessness may have been conditioned by her class position as the daughter of a clergyman whose family was wealthy enough for servants but lacked the means and extended kin networks that might have provided a role for an unwed daughter. In contrast, an elite woman such as Griselda Cottnam was able to brave much better the vicissitudes of the marriage market because her very large and geographically disparate family connections provided the satisfactions of companionship which might otherwise have been provided by a spouse. Confined within her inward-looking family, once Seccombe lost her sister to marriage, she lost her only source of sociability, for as Jean-Louis Flandrin has observed, clergymen’s families were the most closed in and exhibited a degree of privacy exceptional to a society still characterized

Bachelors and Spinsters

177

by complex family forms.9 What Davies’ paper demonstrates – and this is a point that needs much further investigation in the Canadian context – is that the ambit of courtship was so narrow within colonial society that women had very little choice of marriage partners. And this highly restricted marriage market may have exacerbated the feelings of futility, especially among women of the middling sort, for whom marriage may have been intended by their parents as a route to upward social mobility. In her broad correlation of literary evidence, local folklore, census data, and wills, Michele Stairs presents a radically revisionist perspective on the status of the unmarried in her comparative study of bachelors and spinsters in Prince Edward Island in the late nineteenth century. Stairs’s weighty evidence puts paid to the standard equation of singleness and deviancy. Not only does she show through an analysis of literary evidence that the regional culture assigned a positive value to the presence of single adults in families, but her census data demonstrates a pervasiveness of singleness among both men and women, so much so that in some families virtually no offspring decided to marry. Stairs’s evidence that there were multiple single individuals of a particular gender within certain families indicates clearly that it was not one’s lack of employment, if one was male (many of Stairs’s single males possessed their own farms), or being the unfortunate daughter left to care for aged parents that forced lifelong celibacy upon a marginal few; rather, singleness was a dominant feature of that society, one shaped either by economic circumstances or by ethnic cultural bias. As Stairs shows, one was particularly prone to be single if one was Scottish, a finding echoed in Jack Little’s study of the Eastern Townships of Quebec,10 and a fact that undermines the view that Prince Edward Island was simply an anomaly within the broader Canadian context. Indeed, if anything, the ethnic factor of Scottishness simply amplified and somewhat skewed what was already a key feature of rural economies in many regions of Canada: consistently high levels of single men and women occasioned by the need of farm families for labour. More significantly, Stairs’s emphasis upon the correlation between the economics of an agricultural society and, in particular, one that relied almost exclusively upon family, rather than on hired labour, has broad implications for the further study of the interrelatedness of farm economies, the persistence of familialism, and rates of celibacy. In a fashion similar to the path-breaking work of Timothy Guinnane for Ireland,11 Stairs deftly balances the imperatives of the familial need for economic labour, which may have subtly precluded both bachelors and spinsters from seeking a spouse, with the potential for choice, which women, in particular, were beginning to exhibit towards the end of the

178

Nancy Christie

nineteenth century. High levels of spinsterhood indicate that many preferred to give their unpaid labour to their biological family of origin – which Stairs shows was accorded a specific monetary valuation by fathers in their wills – rather than to the uncertain prospects of an unpredictable spouse. According to Stairs’s interpretive framework, both men and women preferred their own kin relations and did not see the family as a circle of constraint. Indeed, as her essay so well demonstrates, brothers and sisters sought to replicate the gender division of labour within the traditional nuclear family by establishing households together,12 in which nephews and nieces were often included as substitutes for the more orthodox labour of biological children. Through these revised nuclear families, Prince Edward Island’s spinsters and bachelors found both companionship and economic interdependence, an outcome that obviates the need for historians to posit rigidly nuclear or non-nuclear family forms.

no tes 1 Janet Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women’s Emigration from Ireland, 1885–1920 (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 11, 37; Christine Adams, “A Choice Not to Wed? Unmarried Women in Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Social History 29 (1996): 884. 2 David Fitzpatrick, “The Modernisation of the Irish Female,” in Patrick O’Flanagan, Paul Ferguson, and Kevin Whelan, eds., Rural Ireland, 1600–1900: Modernisation and Change (Cork: Cork University Press, 1987), 166, 173. 3 See, for example, Martha Vicinus, Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women, 1850–1920 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985); Ruth Compton Brouwer, New Women for God: Canadian Presbyterian Women and Indian Missions, 1876–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990); Rosemary Gagan, A Sensitive Independence: Canadian Methodist Women Missionaries in Canada and the Orient, 1881–1925 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992). For the literature that sees spinsters in the family experience as more confined than widows, see Amy M. Froide, “Marital Status as a Category of Difference: Single Women and Widows in Early Modern England,” in Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, eds., Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 237–71; Susan Dwyer Amussen, “The Gendering of Popular Culture in Early Modern England,” in Tim Harris, ed., Popular Culture in England ca. 1500–1850 (New York and London: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 54; P. Sharpe, “Literally Spinsters,” Economic

Bachelors and Spinsters

4

5

6

7

179

History Review, 1991, 61; Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty a Better Husband (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 1; Bridget Hill, Women, Work, and Sexual Politics in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989), 192, 226; Victoria E. Bynum, Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 44–5; Elizabeth Jane Errington, Wives and Mothers, Schoolmistresses and Scullery-Maids: Working Women in Upper Canada, 1790–1840 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 26. For a critique of this perspective, which evaluates the status of unmarried women in terms of their paid work outside the family, see Pamela Sharpe, “Introduction,” in Sharpe, ed., Women’s Work: The English Experience, 1650–1914 (London and New York: Arnold, 1998), 7, 27. For an incisive critique of the correlation between domesticity and anti-feminism, see Amanda Vickery, “Historiographical Review: Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women’s History,” Historical Journal 36 (1993): 383–414. Judith Worsnop, “A Reevaluation of ‘The Problem of Surplus Women’ in 19th Century England: The Case of the 1851 Census,” Women’s Studies International Forum 13 (1990): 21–31. For this interpretation, see Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995); Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 139–66. Strange herself, in a more recent treatment, observes that single women who were deemed “more deviant” were those living outside their family. See “Patriarchy Modified: The Criminal Prosecution of Rape in York Co., Ontario, 1880–1930,” in Jim Phillips, Tina Loo, and Susan Lewthwaite, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 226–9. Greg Kealey, ed., Canada Investigates Industrialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 272. For similar conclusions, see Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time: The Relationship between the Family and Work in a New England Industrial Community (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982). While there was an increase in the number of spinsters in the late nineteenth century, the nascent historical work on masculinity likewise shows an increase in bachelorhood in this period. See, for example, Peter Ward, Courtship, Love, and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century English Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 51–2. On bachelors, see John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the MiddleClass Home in Victorian England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 173–4. On the greater conformity to the conjugal ideal

180

Nancy Christie

after the 1850s, see John R. Gillis, For Better, for Worse: British Marriages, 1600 to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 242–3. Thus singleness was becoming equally anomalous for men and women. On the need to conceptualize masculinity in terms of men’s lived experience in the home, see Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent, eds., Gender and History in Western Europe (London and New York: Arnold, 1998), 74–7; Nancy Christie, “Introduction,” in Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); Patricia R. Hill, “Writing Out of the War: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Averted Gaze,” in Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 268; Elizabeth Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England: Honour, Sex, and Marriage (Harlow and New York: Longman, 1999), 46. On the limits of work as the determinant of male social status, see James R. Farr, Artisans in Europe, 1300–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 5. On the stigma attached to bachelorhood, see Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, “Service and the Coming of Age of Young Men in Seventeeth-Century England,” Continuity and Change 3 (1988): 41–64; Christine Peters, “Gender, Sacrament and Ritual: The Making and Meaning of Marriage in LateMedieval and Early Modern England,” Past and Present 169 (Nov. 2000): 63–96; Mark E. Kann, The Gendering of American Politics: Founding Mothers, Founding Fathers, and Political Patriarchy (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1999), 72–3. Most significantly, see Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (New York: Knopf, 1996), 10, 41–2, who makes the interesting point that in new societies of settlement, there were less voluntaristic attitudes to marriage than in England, an observation reaffirmed in Hubert’s essay. 8 See, for example, Michael Anderson, “Marriage Patterns in Victorian Britain: An Analysis based on Registration Districts for England and Wales, 1861,” Journal of Family History 1 (1976): 55–78; Roger Schofield, “English Marriage Patterns Revisited,” Journal of Family History 10 (spring 1985): 2–20; D.A. Kent, “Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth Century London,” History Workshop Journal 28 (autumn 1989): 111–28; David Tidswell, “Gender, Family, Work, and Migration in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” in Pamela Sharpe, ed., Women, Gender, and Labour Migration (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 128; Kerby Miller with David N. Doyle and Patricia Kelleher, “For Love and Liberty: Irish Women, Migration and Domesticity in Ireland and America, 1815–20,” in Patrick

Bachelors and Spinsters

181

O’Sullivan, ed., Irish Women and Irish Migration (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995), 43–59; Rita M. Rhodes, Women and the Family in Post-Famine Ireland: Status and Opportunity in a Patriarchal Society (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1992), 88–110; Timothy W. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish: Household, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 194, 199. Historians of Ireland have particularly emphasized the role that patriarchy, inheritance patterns, and the availability of dowries for women have played in determining marriage patterns. For one of the few treatments that emphasizes the role of education for women in affecting their choice of marriage, see Jane Pease and William H. Pease, Ladies, Women and Wenches: Choice and Constraint in Antebellum Charleston and Boston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). The best analysis to date of the historiography on nuptiality is Bridget Hill, “The Marriage Age of Women and the Demographers,” History Workshop Journal 28 (autumn 1989): 129–47. Hill’s analysis is important because she was one of the first to include women’s labour as a variable. 9 Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 33. On the positive views of singleness in this period, see Elizabeth C. Sanderson, Women and Work in Eighteenth-Century Edinburgh (London: Macmillan, 1996); Ruth Freeman and Patricia Klaus, “Blessed or Not? The New Spinster in England and the United States in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Family History 9 (winter 1984): 397. On the surplus-women question as being a specifically middle-class and urban problem, see Mary Abbott, Family Ties: English Families, 1540–1920 (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), 119. On the narrow geographic and social confines of courtship, see P.I. Woods and P.R.A. Hinde, “Nuptiality and Age at Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England,” Journal of Family History 10 (summer 1985): 127; Peter Gossage, Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century Saint-Hyacinthe (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 87. Indeed, the intense endogamy which Gossage describes may have accounted for the fact that there were more dispensations for marriage given after 1880. 10 Little, Crofters and Habitants, 90, 111. Interestingly, Little also finds low levels of hired labour in the Eastern Townships (39). On high ages of marriage among both Scots and Irish in Canada, see Ward, Courtship, Love, and Marriage, 53. On the high levels of singleness in Scotland, attributed to stronger patriarchal control, see “Introduction,” in R.A. Houston and I.D. Whyte, Scottish Society, 1500–1800 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4.

182

Nancy Christie

11 Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 6, 23, 93–105, 195–237. Ireland forms a good theoretical parallel with Prince Edward Island because it was a rural society that was marked by high rates of absentee ownership and tenancy and that had higher than normal levels of celibacy and higher than normal rates of out-migration. Guinnane argues against the early emergence of nuclearity and shows the persistence of patriarchal control, which, combined with female choice not to marry, accounted for high levels of singleness among both men and women. Like Stairs, he underscores the tendency for brothers and sisters to form households together. 12 Here Stairs argues against the propensity for historians to emphasize female clustering, for as she shows, single people sought to replicate the traditional gender divisions of the conjugal family. For a different view, see Bennett and Froide, “Introduction,” Single Women in the European Past, 23–5.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

183

5 The Invention of the Margin as an Invention of the Family The Case of Rural Quebec in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries o lli v i er h ub e rt The question that the “margins of the family” allows us to raise is not so much about the margins as about the family itself or, more precisely, about the nuclear family as an historical construction, every interrogation of “marginality” as a cultural fact being a means of positing the norm as a construct. Since the family is an institution that asserts itself with such socio-economic obviousness, such anthropological resonance, and such historic permanence, it is difficult to understand it as a cultural construct as well. The task is becoming easier, however, to the extent that our society questions some of the family’s most fundamental attributes – reproduction (childless couples, same-sex couples, test-tube babies), sexual gratification (single-parent families or those headed by “parents” who are not a couple), structural stability (families in constant re-formation), gender-based distribution of duties, and so on. It is no longer possible to assume a definition of the family as comprising a man and a woman, legally married and living with their biological children. It is precisely against just this norm that those living an “alternative” reality rebel and, moreover, seek social acceptability and the extension of the label “family” to cover their domestic arrangements. This evolution might well encourage historians to view their use of the concept of “the family” in a whole new light. In order to underline the arbitrary character of the conjugal model (father, mother, and the biological offspring under the same roof) and to liberate the present from the weight of the “traditional” family, trumpeted as “natural” in conservative circles, we must first search the past for traces of irregular

184

Ollivier Hubert

configurations (single men or women, households of single persons, childless couples, unwed families, blended families) and then turn our attention to the fate of individuals who were integrated into a conjugal structure or an adjunct to one, either relational or domestic. From the perspective of the idea of margins, it would, moreover, be especially interesting to measure the degree of legitimacy of these various configurations and statuses and then attempt to establish a correlation between the level of cultural acceptability and the position of the individual in the ranks of political and economic power. In this way, a possible correlation might be established between perceived and structural marginality. The multiplicity of real models of domestic life must not, however, obscure the fact that a structural norm does indeed exist and that this norm is embodied in the archetype of the nuclear family. What the history of the Quebec family presents is the long-standing ascendency of the conjugal family in its most elementary form, with the most common type of “extension” being the presence of the grandparents.1 A high rate of marriage, a very high fertility rate, very few illegitimate births, the establishment of young couples in autonomous production units, a low number remaining unmarried, let alone the finer points beloved by those specializing in socio-anthropological approaches – all of these would seem to make the nuclear family the incontrovertible, stable, and in the end, very simple model of the Quebec family from its beginnings right up until the first half of the twentieth century.2 In these nuclear families, perpetually reproducing thanks largely to the constant expansion of lands open to settlement, we see the crude portrayal of the rural Quebec family dynamic of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the reality of this longevity of the “traditional” family (which is traditional because of its longevity) carries with it the danger of making what is a cultural construct appear to be a natural phenomenon, or of imagining it to be coexistent with social organization or even as necessary to the functioning of the economy. Now that the essential directions of this traditional Quebec family have been, if not completely mapped out, at least well-marked (“kinship structures,” “matrimonial models,” “reproductive modes,” “material culture,” “domestic units,” “family rituals,” “types of cohabitation,” and so on), it seems useful to turn the historical focus away from the family itself and toward whatever authority permitted this particular mode of social organization to be established as the norm. After all, until quite recently, this Quebec family had not been “transformed” as much as all that, especially since its fundamental patriarchal cast and its habit of producing large numbers of children remained constant,

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

185

though in somewhat modulated form. To put the issue in other words, it is a matter of seeing how this organizational norm corresponds to a cultural norm which was intimately linked to a modern system of sexuality and strongly influenced by change by adapting to the demands of successive contemporaneous realities, and which, among other factors, still allowed the Quebec conjugal model to remain stable.3 We can thus hypothesize that the longevity of the nuclear, devised “traditional” family resides in the very historicity of the cultural affirmations of that family (which are implicit in social codes, beliefs, and rituals and in clerical, bourgeois, official, and “scientific” discourse) and in the success with which these adapted to constantly changing conditions. Hence the importance of interrogating the margins. What better way exists, indeed, of determining the means by which these norms are imposed than by analyzing the treatment meted out both materially and symbolically to those who diverge from the norm? I will analyze two “systems” through which the family margin is established. The first let us call, for lack of a better term, the “community system” of marginal construction, in order to identify the range of powers that it brings to bear. These are the practices and representations in circulation that function to validate the idea that the family is, as it were, the sole legitimate mode of social existence, as well as to confirm the social structures that govern their actualization – the margin is a taboo, societally unthinkable. Obviously, I can provide only a partial presentation here; it would require a substantial study to cover the whole question of exclusionary procedures in rural, preindustrial Quebec (all exclusion being, in the end, exclusion from the order of legitimate families). I will, however, endeavour to demonstrate that marginality, and thus the family, has been constructed using an apparatus intended to establish the idea of a sexual activity absolutely confined to heterosexual relations between two married individuals. The second system we might term ideological or discursive. It involves typical, ideal representations fashioned by socio-cultural elites which have the purpose of privileging the nuclear family, of actualizing it, and of not only making it the single legitimate mode of social organization but also reaffirming its cultural, moral, and political value in the context of the rising tide of capitalist society. In this system, the margin is possible, but it is not in any way desirable – it is a matter of degrading the marginal figure while demonstrating that marginality is a poor choice. It might be believed that these two systems were superimposed as particular expressions of a shared family paradigm, but this is not, I believe, precisely the case. There is a historic dimension that must also

186

Ollivier Hubert

be taken into account. One might believe, for example, that the ultramontane Catholic Church, when it enhances the prestige of the “traditional” family, is preaching to the converted, or that intellectuals, when they write of the rural family, intend to put into words an anthropological observation of the rural scene. But here, the essentials would elude us. What is essential is the later nineteenth century appearance of an elite discourse concerning the family which caused it to be moved from immanent categories of social structure to transcendent ones; to put it another way, there is an intellectual sanctification of the family. And I would go even further – it is precisely because the pre-industrial rural family was, however unclearly, threatened by the transition to capitalism that the need became pressing to sanctify it by denominating it as marginal, though that is not in fact what it was. At the very moment that the anthropological imposition of the norm and the margin was beginning to break down, the elite discourse took over to some degree by replacing the negative value of the taboo with the positive value of the father. In other words, what we have is an intellectual and clerical appropriation of the rural family, and thereby an attempt at a redefinition of the cultural value of that family. To begin to open up this idea, this essay will analyze a highly regarded novel of the second half of the nineteenth century, Jean Rivard,4 an exceptionally rich text which, among other things, places the figure of the father in opposition to that of the unmarried man. In this way, I should like to pose the question of the ascent of the patriarchy in nineteenth-century Quebec from a slightly different perspective, that of masculinity, as patriarchy may oppress men too, both those who are excluded from the family, that primary seat of masculine power, and those who submit to an unwilled fatherhood out of a desire to conform.

th e co mmuni ty syst e m o f ma r gi na l co nstru c t i o n What underlies my argument is that there was in pre-industrial rural Quebec a broadly diffused community norm that existed in a condition of semi-autonomy with Catholic ideology, conveying a built-in masculine order and promoted by men and women alike. A rural, pre-industrial “sociability” thus appears which is characterized by its coercive nature and which produces an extremely clear, narrow, and final image of what constitutes marginality. In my research into Quebec parochial ritual, I have had the opportunity to determine some of the cogs in this mechanism of community control, aligning it with the mechanisms of Catholic ritual and of clerical control. In so doing, I have begun a larger consideration of the

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

187

function of rumour and scandal in rural Quebec communities.5 Indeed, it seems to me that the fundamental dynamic of community pressure is governed by a rather stable and hardly distinctive anthropological schematic – gossip compels secrecy, and scandal demands correction.6 I will have to confine myself here to a sketch that will simply flesh out the vague term “community control,” to show that it operates according to a punitive system based on a dynamic of inclusion/exclusion and that this punitive system has, perhaps as its primary intention, to stigmatize the members of the community who deviate from the model of the nuclear family. This ritualistic-infrajudiciary system has its place in the social regulatory system of the community in the same way as does, for example, the charivari.7

o ne ta r get o f gossi p : th e pa r i sh pr i e st We perhaps have the tendency to regard the parish priest as a man of the church. He certainly was that. But he was also a full-fledged member of the micro-society that shaped him and therefore subject to the control of public scrutiny, like any other member of that community. The priest is of particular interest to us because he was, both by definition and in theory, on the margin of the family. Now, it is the extramarital sexual act and, more precisely, extramarital procreation that is for the community the prime object of “scandal,” in the accepted word used to express transgression and mark taboo. Here lies the crux of the matter in every case of marginalization that I can come up with: no sex before marriage, marriage being the exclusive legitimate area for sexual activity.8 This perspective allows us to step a bit beyond the view that sees the church as the supreme institution of the control of sexual behaviour. Indeed, I would be inclined to say that the church administered the system of conjugal sexuality on behalf of the community, as it were, and with its agreement and active participation. Of course, it goes without saying that this system, assimilated as the norm by the community, depended upon the priestly ideology of sexuality and was implanted by the church through the confessional. As a man whose status excluded him from the bonds of matrimony, the parish priest was thus the object of the community’s gaze in sexual matters – the priest was being watched. In order to avert scandal, the Catholic Church in Quebec sought to prevent the offence by eliminating the domestic arrangements that fostered it. Saint-Vallier, the second bishop of the diocese of Quebec, was already concerned with the problem of cohabitation among rural priests. He excluded any feminine presence altogether from priests’ households. For their domestic

188

Ollivier Hubert

service, they would have be content with male servants, “without making use of servants of the other sex, regardless of their age; this we most expressly forbid.9” But the rule, judging by the records of pastoral visits at the end of the eighteenth century, was never widely observed. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Bishop Plessis ruled that, in order to live in a rectory, a woman had to be more than forty years old.10 Thus it was not sex itself that was the target but procreation; that is, the visible evidence that produces scandal. This reaffirmation of ecclesiastic discipline seems to me to stem more from a response to popular outcry than to any episcopal initiative. Community vigilance was acute in respect to the country priest, that marginal creature. It often happened that the parishioners informed the bishop, through a petition, of a sexually tinged scandal involving their parish priest. This is how M. Keller, the parish priest of Lachine, wrote to his bishop: “As to my excessive interest in dinner parties, I assure you that I constantly refuse invitations ... I have never omitted reading my breviary. But I swear to you above everything else that I have never driven persons of the opposite sex in my carriage, except for my mother, whom I took into the city four or five times ... If I ever had the indecency to give girls a lift in my carriage, it would not be to lachine [sic], let alone to Montreal. I assure you that I have never done such a thing.”11 Then there is the case in Sainte-Rose, for example, in 1791, when the wardens and stewards advised Bishop Hubert that for the last five years, “with the whole parish looking on,” Father Galet had been in constant attendance at the home of one of the choir members, who was living with his sister, Marie. We might observe in passing that this affair involves three protagonists living on the margins of the nuclear family. It emerged that, “to the great surprise of the aforementioned parish,” the pastor had recently taken Marie by night to a surgeon in Terrebonne, “where a few days ago she was delivered of a child.”12

illegi ti mate a nd basta r d i z e d fa m i l i e s Finally, the case of the parish priest seems to be a characteristic expression of a consensual rejection of the illegitimate family, specifically of the bastard. One should note that it was only when the child appeared that the parishioners of Sainte-Rose decided to condemn a situation that had been a matter of public notoriety for several years. It was not the sexual act that disturbed the community norm so much as the birth that followed from it. It is difficult to get a complete grasp of the phenomenon of illegitimacy because it was shrouded in secrecy. To delineate it more fully, one would have to launch a fairly large-scale study

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

189

of parish baptismal registers. But it is a good bet that the illegitimacy rate that we would observe would be low. The social sanction was such that few infants were probably officially registered as bastards. Nevertheless, Allan Greer provides an illegitimacy rate of about 2 per cent between 1740 and 1939 for the rural parish of Sorel, by no means a negligible rate.13 But to these figures must be added children who were not baptized or who were abandoned, adopted, or aborted, children whose prenuptial conceptions were legitimized by a hasty marriage, children who were the victims of infanticide – and there is no reason to imagine that they were less frequent in Quebec than in Ontario, as studied by Constance Backhouse14 – children registered by the parents or relatives of the mother, bastards accepted by deceived husbands, and children belatedly acknowledged by an illegitimate father as the result of a court order. If we add to all this the fact that complete sexual relations did not by any means always result in conception and that not all sexual relations were inevitably complete, we will have to admit that sexual activity outside of marriage may escape statistical investigation. Are we, then, looking at permissive rural societies? Of course not, quite the contrary. The evidence does reveal that sex existed outside marriage. But at the same time, it must be said that all the figures concerning sexual practices tend to reveal a society that was very conservative in these matters. It must be understood that, if we set the historical statistics and the many examples of “scandal” side by side with the society, what emerges from these cases (numerous but exceptional, contrary to the norms, normally normalizing) is the expression of the force of a repressive and effective “public opinion” that demanded conformity or camouflage. Let us clarify things. In his book on sexual practices in Lower Canada, Serge Gagnon, who has studied an impressive volume of parish correspondence in great detail, establishes a significant distinction between the old parishes of the St Lawrence valley and the new parishes.15 In the former area, illegitimacy appears to have been rare or at least effectively disguised. In the latter, unmarried couples and illegitimate births were more frequent. Now, what might we make of the difference between the two? Fewer parish priests, those guarantors of public morality? That is certainly one explanation, but not the principal one. I would suggest that the essential factor resides, rather, in the weakness of community control, which meant that marginality was better tolerated, or at least better dissembled, than in the old parishes. In certain cases, in the western and southwestern parts of Quebec, we find a population coming from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, fracturing any uniform and effective mechanism of surveillance. This was a mobile population in constant flux,

190

Ollivier Hubert

hence the impossibility of achieving that parochial microcosm inscribed in the collective memory which is one of the foundations of the control mechanism of gossip. Among other reasons, it was in order to flee the community memory of transgression, a shame to be borne until death, that the unwed mother living in an old rural parish was generally forced to move to the city. Finally, the population of the newer parishes was generally young. Three consequences of this last circumstance were: •

•

•

the frequent absence of parents and grandparents, and thus of visible agents of control more important, the absence of an extended family to be dishonoured, for we know that an individual’s sin, especially that of a girl, had a direct impact on the reputation of an entire clan (a chief element in the “symbolic capital,” dear to Pierre Bourdieu’s heart) and even more important, the more young people, the more the danger, because – and I will come back to this factor – youth is the time of every danger and of every illegitimacy

th e i mpo ss i b le mar g i n Parishes in newly settled areas were in themselves marginal and transitory (we shall see that Antoine Gérin-Lajoie sets his novel precisely in just such a parish). The structures of community control re-established themselves quite quickly, and everything returned to “normal.” Thus these new parishes are interesting primarily because of what they reveal about the foundations of normalization in “ordinary” homogenous, multi-generational parishes firmly fixed in memory. The idea I would like to suggest in this connection is that in a rural setting, to be on the margin of the legitimate family was to be in an untenable situation. This was the region of the sacred, of taboo, of societal interdiction. From that point, two routes were open to individuals involved in a proscribed situation – secrecy or reparation. Clearly, two conceptual axes are essential to thinking about the phenomenon of family marginality – to hide oneself from public scrutiny in order to escape gossip, which would be followed by ostracism, or, if the situation was already public, to make amends, to legitimatize what was initially illicit. It is therefore in terms of the almost total impossibility of life beyond the borders of the legitimate family that both the nature of marginality in a pre-industrial, rural setting and the widely varying individual behaviours and entire range of strategies offered to the deviant must be understood. What defines marginality in the rural setting is its transitory,

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

191

ephemeral, fugitive, episodic, unstructured character, qualities that at the same time underline the stable, structured character of the representation of marginality. This is why one often finds restricted instances, affairs that have a beginning and an end, which appear as accidents, as recurring breaches in the norm and as so many scenes – strongly ritualized ones at that – which come to reinforce the normalizing culture. I feel that marginality appears as a recurring set of events of an educational nature. Whereas, as a historian of the rural, preindustrial world, one comes across deviance, one is never in the presence of an emergent marginality in the modern sense of the term, that is, of social groups that legitimate themselves within a structured subculture, but rather, of controlling societies in full function. To put it another way, instances of deviance, while visible, are indications of micro-societies that leave no room for deviance. It is necessary to pause here in order to provide a close analysis of secrecy. A multitude of strategies of dissimulation are so many ways to cunningly avoid the omnipresent public gaze – the cover of night, the forest, the outer limits, the journey, the flight; where to meet her lover, whether have her baby, give it up, or kill it. We cannot adequately discuss the public gaze without calling to mind the places in which it was possible to hide from it. Expiation was the sole logical consequence of scandal, that is, of public recognition of the sin. Then one was in the full light of day, and I have elsewhere described at some length what often happened in the church, that privileged site of social interaction in rural areas. This is often the place where gossip set up residence. There were cases where heavy-handed priests publicly denounced from the pulpit an illegitimate situation that had come to their attention. There were young women who came to display their swollen bellies to the parish. The priests thundered their denunciations; the young women displayed the crime in public, not the parishioners. Community and church moral standards were not completely in accord. What mattered to the community was not a period of premarital sexual activity so much as premarital birth. The scandal of a prenuptial association that was rather too enthusiastic was rapidly healed by a marriage in due course. Sometimes, a pregnancy might force the parents to agree to a match to which they had not been ready to consent. We emphasize, however, that this was a fairly rare practice in Quebec; for various reasons, it appears that prenuptial pregnancy was comparatively more common in other societies.16 But when the situation was more serious, and the most telling example in this regard concerns couples with children living commonlaw, the mechanism of atonement for the sin was more complicated, even if the ultimate intention remained putting an end to the disgrace

192

Ollivier Hubert

by means of a legal marriage. We offer two examples. The first case occured in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in 1792. Louis Pâquet and Josephte Loson were living together but unable to marry since the “father of the suitor was the brother of the mother of the deceased husband of the intended bride.”17 Parish members did not understand why the parish priest refused to perform the marriage “in order to lift the scandal that the couple was creating in the parish,” and they offered to pay the sum for a dispensation required by the priest for Pâquet, who was very poor.18 The response from the bishop was, however, delayed, and the lovers, who had already had a two-year-old child together, were in despair. On the first of March, the priest wrote once again to the bishop: “It pained me to learn on the Monday following Quinquagesima that the two of them were exchanging vows during the Gospel of my mass, and they had each stated they wished to take the other as their spouse; I learned this not just from them, but there were more than sixty persons present at the mass, of whom three-quarters were witnesses; I consulted with Monsieur Brassier, who, having seen, like myself, that they were going to give themselves permission to live together in this way, he told me to write to your Lordship to learn how I ought to proceed in this matter.”19 The priest’s tale has a significant point: above everything else, it was the public character of the ritual appropriation that gave the union its reality. Indeed, these irregular marriages served both to make an instance of cohabitation legitimate in the eyes of the community and to force the priest to act by formally expressing a social consensus aimed at bringing about the normalization of the situation by means of an official marriage. Another mechanism, probably more standard, of reparation and normalization for illegitimate couples involved public atonement. The details of the rite varied, but it would take roughly the following form: • •

• •

•

•

public knowledge of the transgression of the taboo; an ecclesiastical censure proclaimed by the parish priest, generally prohibiting the transgressors from taking the sacraments and entering the church; the end of the cohabitation; a penitential rite: the sinners would stand at the door of the church holding a candle during a mass in which the priest would read their petition for forgiveness; the ritual of progressive reintegration of the penitent deviants – in general, attending mass every Sunday for a period of time, not in the family pew but at the rear of the church; a church wedding, which would include the couple’s formal request, before the congregation, for pardon for the sin they had committed.20

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

193

These ritual procedures of atonement, which functioned according to a dynamic of exclusion/reintegration, permit us to draw attention once again to a central consideration: the legitimate family is always a cultural construct. Like every familial model, the Quebec pre-industrial nuclear family did not simply exist, but was constructed through of a series of beliefs, taboos, and rituals forming a social culture that rendered illegitimate those arrangements that were precarious by definition. Instead of marginalizing its deviants, this culture had the aim of normalizing their situation, that is, by atoning for scandal through marriage. Individuals could use this culture to get around obstacles presented by their circumstances, notably a father or recalcitrant priest. The other possible route, and it was always more tragic, was the avoidance of scandal through secrecy. In this case, it was often the pregnant young woman who bore the responsibility of dissembling. Remember that the force of community pressure urged reintegration only when it was socially acceptable. If, for one reason or another, the bastard child could not be supplied with a legitimate father, it was up to the unwed mother to see to it that scandal did not ensue or take the consequences. Finally, if this community pressure was to work well, it required certain societal characteristics: institutional, that is, clerical, support, which allowed the mechanism of exclusion/reintegration to function, and, in particular, a symbolic, memorial, and material interdependence among members of the community, the close networks of neighbours and relatives, which made the culture of honour restrictive, and surveillance effective. All of this, as we shall see, began to crumble in the second half of the nineteenth century.

the develo pment o f an eli t e d i sc o u rse on fath erh o o d and mascu l i n e c e l ibacy I now move to the identification of a discourse on the masculine condition in Quebec in the middle of the nineteenth century. As far as I know, this elite discourse has not hitherto been the object of a systematic study. Elsewhere,21 I have begun a consideration of fatherhood as it was expressed in ultramontane discourse, which was on this point, as well as on others, a “modern,” that is, eminently patriarchal discourse, as paradoxical as this might appear. The disapproval of “traditional” masculine behaviour was a most important component of ultramontane discourse; violence, alcohol, male looseness of language, all-male social groups, gambling – in short, all the constituents of male sociability – were systematically condemned, while what was praised was the father, the head of the family, the regular communicant (the extension of the practice of confession in the second half of

194

Ollivier Hubert

the nineteeth century may be seen as a device by which to “moralize” men), who was responsible, dignified, rational, and watchful over his children’s education, his sons’ good conduct, his daughters’ social activities, his wife’s deportment. In short, this was all very much akin to bourgeois “liberal” discourse. Clearly, the image of the Quebec father in the second half of the nineteenth century may be linked to the birth of the modern family. We must look for this discourse in various places, especially within the secular middle classes, and this is what brings me to the analysis of two well-known Quebec novels, Jean Rivard le défricheur (1862) and Jean Rivard économiste (1864), by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie. These are extremely rich, dense texts for a variety of subjects, but I am interested here in one particular expression of marginality: the celibate male (to be or not to be a father?). Gérin-Lajoie’s hero, Jean Rivard, is success incarnate – the novels are an American-style success story, as Robert Major’s study has clearly pointed out.22 Among the more interesting elements of Rivard’s success, and one that seems partially to have escaped most critics, is the fact that he becomes a father. And he does not become one just like that, from one day to the next, by chance, but by patiently assembling the conditions for a perfect fatherhood. What is even more interesting is that this novel, one that is at once utopian, pragmatic, and didactic, opposes the heroic figure of Rivard, accomplished father, and those other young men who do not successfully manage this transition and who remain single. None of the other young men will achieve the double requirements for modern success – happiness (since happiness can only be domestic) and wealth. Indeed, fatherhood conveys male social success. I believe that in general there is a tendency to overlook the fact that patriarchal culture injures, and has injured, men as well as women. This theme might be extended much further, but for now we may simply say that the race for control of social power produces not just winners, of whom perhaps too much is said, but also losers, who perhaps are too little considered. Patriarchal middle-class culture forces young men onto a road to success that has a tendency to exclude those who cannot follow it and thus causes them to suffer. One of the stages along this road is fatherhood and the assumption of the role of domestic patriarch. There are a number of interesting male characters in Gérin-Lajoie’s novel, but for the sake of simplicity, I will concentrate on Jean Rivard, who succeeds in becoming a father and who thus attains domestic bliss and social power (Rivard, after achieving fatherhood, will become a prosperous farmer, mayor of his community, and member of the provincial assembly for his riding), and on his boyhood friend, Gustave Charmenil, who will live out years of mental

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

195

suffering and economic misery in the city and who will not, despite his efforts, ever succeed in getting married. In his introduction to the novel, Gérin-Lajoie states that Jean Rivard le défricheur is not a novel but, rather, a factual account. It is factual and not a novel because it pretends to narrate the actual life of a young settler (even though Jean Rivard is wholly fictional). It is factual also because it deals with down-to-earth topics, essentially home economics and regional development, and not passionate intrigues of the emotional sort. In this way, Gérin-Lajoie says, he hopes to discourage the typical novel-reading audience – young ladies. There are, however, very rich underlying emotional threads in the novel, comprised of the love affairs that crown Rivard’s success and the emotional despair that afflicts his counterpart, Gustave Charmenil. The critics, however, seem largely to have been taken in by Gérin-Lajoie and tend to consider his book a serious – indeed, tedious – agricultural novel, completely disregarding its emotional content. Even Robert Major, who has transformed the reading of this book by defining it as a liberal American novel rather than as a conservative agricultural treatise, has said: “Gustave essentially relates his romantic disappointments – the girls he loves, who haunt his dreams, whom he awkwardly pursues and who cause him tremendous pain. Mixed with this eminently ‘novelistic’ material is the old romantic business of the young man out in the world who tries, despite his poverty and misery, to make his way in the social jungle. His long letters are obviously a kind of sugar-coating for the readers of the time. Paradoxically, it is this part of the novel that we find the dullest going today.23 That said, Major loses almost all interest in the emotional element of the work, which is far from being of minor significance, to concentrate his attention on the political, economic, and commercial dimensions of the book, as Antoine GérinLajoie, that sensible, pragmatic, utilitarian – in short, liberal – intellectual bids us do. What Major misses, it seems to me, is that the private dimension of the novel is an integral part of the middle-class argument, not merely a sugar-coating on a serious novel intended to please any potential female audience. What is at the heart of this double account of the hero, Rivard, and the anti-hero, Charmenil, is the entire question of domestic success as an obligatory route to socio-economic success and political power. What could be more fundamental to the bourgeois reconstitution of nineteenth century politics than this double emotional strand; indeed, what less frivolous at that moment than stories of the heart? I believe that it is here we find a systematic rereading of the representation of the middle-class Quebec male, directly and systematically linking the emotional to the political, based on the coincidence of .

196

Ollivier Hubert

the father’s familial authority, hence familial success, with male power in the public space throughout the entire array of institutions that were appearing in the Quebec countryside from the 1840s on. Fatherhood/virility/social power – in my view this nexus became established and was first disseminated in this decade, especially in the discourse that I am examining. Of course, in the shadow of this nexus, participation became more difficult for homosexuals, in particular, but also for single men. It is not beside the point to mention that behind the character of Charmenil we can make out Antoine Gérin-Lajoie himself, who experienced his own misfortunes in his social and love life. Gérin-Lajoie’s existence in his twenties was precarious and unstable, and he eked out a living doing odd jobs for publishers and the press. He flirted with politics but never achieved any real position of power. He took a civil service position when he was twenty-five and remained a public servant for the rest of his life. He did not marry until he was thirtyfour.

two c o urses Gérin-Lajoie’s novel may be read as a text criss-crossed by two socialization routes. One, that taken by Jean Rivard, succeeds; the other, Gustav Charmenil’s, is a quite lamentable failure. The work is also the narrative of a very critical time in a man’s life – the departure from the adolescent sphere (the high school) and entry into the adult social world (the second chapter is called “Choosing a Career”). Rivard and Charmenil, like Gérin-Lajoie, are two rural youths, the sons of farmers. They were boyhood friends, and went to primary school together and then to high school. Charmenil follows the classical course and a profession. He enrols in law school in Montreal. One day at church, he spots a young woman and falls instantly in love. Unfortunately, he cannot declare his love because he is not as yet established, and his precarious position as a young man from the country who is educated but without resources prevents him from anticipating a steady job for at least ten years. He tries to become a schoolteacher, but he is turned down because he is not married. He claims to be awkward and shy; in short, he lacks not only fortune but also familiarity with the social codes and graces that would allow him to make a marriage within the middle-class realm to which he aspires. He is a kind of incompetent Rastignac. He makes do by hanging out like an idiot in the evenings outside the expensive house of the father of the young lady he covets:

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

197

During the hours of darkness, I walk back and forth, unnoticed, in front of that house where she lives, where she breathes, where she speaks, where she laughs, where she does her needlework ... Is that not paradise? Sometimes from the parlour I hear the sound of the piano or the accents of an angelic voice, a voice I can only believe to be that of my beautiful unknown one. Picture this – the other evening, as I cast my gaze toward a window in the house, the two little interior shutters suddenly opened and I saw ... you’ve guessed? ... my unknown beauty there in body and soul, bending to look outside! You may well believe that my heart leapt in my chest. I was so alarmed that I took flight like a madman, hardly knowing where I was going, and I have not been back since.24

Later on, Charmenil at last meets his young lady at a charity bazaar (one of the prime venues for middle-class female social activity), and despite his clumsiness – he reveals his inability to supply the social password, a witty remark – he is asked to a ball at her parents’ house. Of course, he does not know how to dance and is incapable of taking part in conversations he deems frivolous because he does not understand what is at stake. Eventually, Mademoiselle du Moulin wanders away from this suitor, who is far too serious to be considered, and into the arms of a young lawyer, who dances her off. Subsequently, Charmenil will spend some years as an “admirer of youthful beauty,” in short, as a flirt, years in which he will view the question of marriage less romantically than at the time of his first experience. He is looking for a wife, but remember that because he lives in the city (and the city is expensive because of the luxury in which one is required to live) and because he is an eternal student, he does not have the means to start a family. Later Charmenil will meet another girl, Antonine, who is a kind of walking paradox – the daughter of a good middle-class family, she nevertheless possesses the qualities that Antoine Gérin-Lajoie attributes to the farm girl: she is modest, thrifty, hard-working, simple, and cheerful. (Jean Rivard contains, as well, a very detailed portrayal of women, especially young women.) Despite these qualities, which in Gérin-Lajoie’s view represent the foundations for a good marriage, Charmenil cannot marry her. If this time around he has learned the cultural codes that will permit him to charm her, he still does not have the money. The novel ends without the reader’s knowing whether Charmenil will finally achieve social and personal success, a degree of accomplishment that can only come about through marriage and fatherhood. He is past thirty. Jean Rivard, of course, is the example of what it takes to succeed; he marries young and rapidly becomes the head of a household. Indeed,

198

Ollivier Hubert

from almost the moment the novel opens, it is possible to say that Rivard, even before he gets married, is the head of a household. He is the eldest of twelve children, and his father dies when he is still in school. By the time he is nineteen, he is the head of a family composed of his eleven brothers and sisters and his mother. Several passages make clear this abrupt transformation from the status of son to that of father even within his own biological family. As Rivard leaves for his homestead, Gérin-Lajoie remarks that: “the poor mother, already used to seeing Jean as the head of the house, could not grasp the idea of being without him.”25 That mother and the son constitute a couple within the Rivard family could not be more clearly expressed. As for the brothers and sisters, they initially greet their brother’s plans with some sarcasm, in a kind of fraternal equality, but they become progressively more admiring and submissive to his authority, thereby enshrining his change in status, by which he acquires the attributes of fatherhood – he becomes morally assured, worthy of respect, serious, sensible, levelheaded, and emotionally imperturbable. That Jean Rivard is a classic patriarchal novel is beyond question. This son, head of his biological family at the age of nineteen, rapidly founds his own nuclear family. He leaves school and goes to the Eastern Townships to clear some land and start a farm. Thanks to an uncanny sense of entrepreneurship (this is, after all, a utopian novel), Rivard finds himself after a few years the proprietor of a farm well on its way to prosperity. He can then marry Louise Routier, obviously a cheerful, thrifty, simple, hard-working girl. Louise is the daughter of a neighbour of the Rivards in their native village. Gérard Bouchard, among others, has pointed out the freedom that women on the farm had to choose a mate.26 It all depends, of course, on what is implied by “liberty”; there are any number of kinds of constraint, of being under restraint, of restraining oneself. In Gérin-Lajoie’s novel, in any case, Louise cannot choose anyone she takes a fancy to. When she is distracted for a moment by the vision of a handsome, well-dressed stranger who knows how to dance (something that starts village tongues wagging right away), Louise’s parents quickly set her back on a safe course to an appropriate choice. That choice is Jean Rivard, that determined, sensible, hard-working, sober, and plain young man of promise, possessor of every “cultural” virtue known to socio-demographic analysis. Louise certainly loves Jean. Gérin-Lajoie was a man of his times, at once romantic and practical, so in his novelistic universe, by great good fortune, appropriate marriages are also love matches. In the Jean-Louise pair, Louise is in a position of subordination from the outset. While before his marriage, Jean is already an adult – he has a career, he has control over his emotions, and he is by

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

199

now head of his own biological family – Louise writes to her fiancé that she is “a little girl.”27 This theme of woman as child is central to the entire novel. Later on, Jean builds a new home for his future bride, one where she will reign supreme, and armed with this trump card, he asks Louise’s father for her hand. A simple, good-natured, and happy down-home country wedding follows. At the end of the first volume, the couple depart for their new home, and at the beginning of the second volume, a child has made its appearance. The different paths followed by Rivard and Charmenil clearly contrast their two directions. All is proclaimed in chapter two of the first volume, titled “Choosing a Career”: “he had ... to choose his future course, a step so serious that a young man can only approach it with fear and trembling, since on it depends the happiness or misfortune of his entire life.”28 Charmenil chooses the city and a profession – he will not be able to marry and thus will achieve neither fatherhood, the basis of all power, nor happiness, as marital bliss and social prestige go hand in hand. Rivard chooses the countryside and the role of entrepreneurial farmer, and he will succeed. This city-country dichotomy is deceptive, since it leads us falsely to situate the novel somewhere outside the modern. On the one hand, the status of the city is ambiguous in the novel, but that is a different question. In short, it could be said that Gérin-Lajoie associates the city with an aristocratic mode of life, one in which social interaction is founded on appearances. Thus the city is locked in the past. The country, on the other hand, is a utopian site of free enterprise where middle-class liberal values, notably the patriarchy, are triumphant. Jean Rivard is, in a way, a classic example of the middle-class American novel. The fundamental questions it clearly addresses are genuinely modern – the profound connections between career choice, civil position, domestic happiness, and social power. Their presence corresponds to a reconfiguration of values within an upper agricultural class that is achieving lower-middle-class status, the birth of a middle class that is constructing itself, I would submit, within a new privileging of fatherhood.

th e bach elo r d i al o g u e In the second volume of the novel, Rivard and Charmenil hold a striking debate on the question of bachelorhood. Charmenil’s dilemma is this: he would like to marry a daughter of the middle class in order to rise in the social scale, but he lacks the wherewithal, since such a woman costs a great deal to support. At first sight, this appears to be a simple problem – his is a classic case of the ambitious man humbled by a fortune insufficient to his dreams. But Charmenil’s problem is

200

Ollivier Hubert

really cultural. He covets a bourgeois status but retains peasant values. He wants children and is shocked when the young ladies he sees do not: “How can a woman not love children?”29 he writes. He is seriousminded, thrifty, rational. He views as useless expenditures on ostentatious display and as futile any conversation that lacks political purpose; he does not understand the rules of the elite social game. Finally, and here, perhaps, he most strongly displays this transposition from the peasant ideal (“freedom” of choice) to the democratic, liberal notion of the couple, he is sentimental. He wants both a love match and a marriage of convenience. Freed from the farm but lacking a fortune, Charmenil teeters precariously on the divide that separates the temptations of the bohemian life from the fantasy of domestic bliss. He writes, speaking of bachelorhood: Just today I was talking about marriage with one of my other friends, the father of four. He had a hangdog look and was prone to a deep melancholy. You have no idea, he told me, what it costs to raise a family – there’s never enough money to meet expenses, and I anticipate with horror the approach of the time when I will have to set my children up in life. Before you abandon your happy single state, save up some money, shield yourself from poverty; you will be saving yourself endless future torment. Every time I hear this kind of thing, I ask myself, really, am I not mad to be thinking of marriage? Would I not be much better off saving up a little nest egg, than taking a trip, seeing the world, studying the customs and institutions of the different nations, and then, free of care and anxiety, coming home to my own country to devote myself to politics or business, to hold public office and make myself useful to my fellow citizens? But this dream lasts no longer than does any dream. For there is always the heart that speaks up. Everything tells me that without the pleasures of the heart, there will always be a void in my existence. Tell me, my dear Jean, what you think of all this? You’re already an old married man, the head of a family; you know the pros and cons of everything related to the home; you know what you’re talking about.30

Rivard answers: The only thing I have to say, my dear friend, is that I would not return to the bachelor life for anything in the world. It will soon be five years since I made this irrevocable contract, and it seems to me to have been only yesterday. If only you knew how quickly time passes when you share the road with another. We may not always be as merry as we were on our wedding night, but we are just as happy, maybe happier. The affection we feel for one another grows deeper every day, and when, after a few years of marriage, we see about us two or three children, tokens of our love and happiness, we know we could never separate without losing a part of ourselves.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

201

I would say to you then, my dear Gustave, that as far as I am concerned, marriage tends to improve a man, by developing the best aspects of his nature, and that it should suffice make happiness more complete. The woman’s role is perhaps less easy – her nervous, impressionable nature makes her susceptible to painful emotions and exaggerated fears. Her children’s health especially never ceases to distress her, but on the other hand, she experiences the ineffable joys of motherhood. Taking everything into consideration, a mother would never change her situation for that of an old maid or a childless wife. Therefore get married, Gustave, as soon as you can afford to. You have a warm heart, you love a quiet and peaceful life, and you will make, I am sure, a splendid husband and an excellent father.31

Here, then, we have fatherhood as a source of prosperity, happiness, and social legitimacy, according to Antoine Gérin-Lajoie. This is the familial model of the middle class that shaped it, whether rural or urban. Jean Rivard may thus be classed both as a source document in the construction of patriarchal representation of the Quebec family and as an attempt to perpetuate the disqualification of the unmarried, who were already traditionally being marginalized in rural areas by public gossip and the procedures of ritual normalization. It is, of course, too early to declare the question completely defined. I only wish to suggest a few approaches. In any event, an unresolved problem appears to have been emerging in Quebec in the middle of the nineteenth century, that of the bachelor. A previously unconsidered figure appears – the boy, the young male adult, waiting to get married. What Jean Rivard, as a moral tale, contemplates is the new (and inevitably illusory) possibility of a happy masculine life outside the family and the church. It is necessary to work out the demographic and socio-economic structure of this emergent category. The Quebec tramp studied by Marcela Aranguiz,32 perhaps the casual worker, the upperclass dandy, but also the lower-middle-class student fresh out of high school and from a rural background – all these figures embody the idea. So many trails to follow. On the symbolic level, another is the folk-tale figure of the young Quebec coureur de bois superimposed on the image of the peasant endorsed by the novelists of the soil. French works concerning this new social category have illustrated the ambiguity linked to it – suspicion, first of all, but a fascination with the bohemian life as well.33 The bachelorhood of youth is also a time full of experiences that are potentially risky yet enriching and playful. What really matters is that the bachelor ultimately settles down, and this is indeed Antoine Gérin-Lajoie’s message in the novel (not merely are Charmenil’s and Rivard’s fates traced but also those of several boys of a similar condition, who end up in various ways). Thus the novel

202

Ollivier Hubert

can be read not only as an agricultural sciences manual but even more as a moral tale that offers a guide to the transition to adulthood. Basically, it addresses that crucial point at which one leaves the world of childhood, the nuclear family, for another, which one must “settle,” like the country itself. Parents and the moralizing voices of the elite view this phase as a period replete with dangers. Youth is a condition that fundamentally questions the status quo. It is then that the reproduction of the nuclear-family model is ever at stake, hence the multiple ritual and discursive structures aimed at reducing the possibility of other models coming into being and the romantic privileging of the young couple – a marriage is a formidable cultural message legitimating the nuclear family.34 Historically, Jean Rivard more precisely evokes the reconfiguration of the rules of transition to adulthood for a portion of the masculine cohort – young men from the country moving, by reason of their education, into the lower middle classes. More generally, it is one of the first novels that formally articulates the contours of a Quebec middle-class culture, based on an overvaluing of matrimony, a trait typical of American society, as Alexis de Tocqueville had already observed in the 1830s.35 In order to reconstruct the cultural, and therefore social, characteristics of this normative patriarchal condition of matrimony which came into being in the nineteenth century, we would have at the same time to consider the elements that were inherited from a constrictive communal peasant culture and the structural modifications that the transition to modernity gave rise to. In premodern society, being on the margins of the family appeared unimaginable, save for a single legitimate form of existence, that of the religious celibate. It was constructed on a taboo (no children outside marriage) that engendered social contempt and feelings of shame in the transgressors. Such a model of control presumes a heavily structured community, one capable of effectively exercising a collective supervision over private affairs. In the nineteenth century, however, this structure of community constraint was, if not disappearing, at least beginning to crumble, largely because of the spatial and social mobility consequent on the transition to industrial capitalism and by the restrictions imposed by a rapid access to the establishment. The emergent discourse on the family, as produced by different authorities, particularly the church and middle-class intellectuals with rural roots, must be placed in this context. It effected an increased prestige for the paternal figure intended to transport the norm of the historically dominant nuclear family into a modern context. Since the mechanisms of taboo operated less well within the framework of a civil society quietly shifting in the direction of relative anonymity, a nor-

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

203

malizing meta-discourse had to be developed that served to render marginality undesirable. The terms of this discourse, as well as the social mechanisms that were meant to set them up, remain largely to be determined. We can, however, suggest certain routes to follow: •

•

•

•

an increased value placed on the joys of fatherhood and a sentimentalization of the paternal role, able to counteract the obvious attractions of the bachelor life; an increased value placed on the political status of the father: in first place was his domestic power, with a guaranteed natural authority over his wife and children, then his social power; fatherhood automatically carried the presumption of competence to wield power in general – in short, political proficiency; an increased value placed on masculinity by reason of fatherhood: as a father, a man could express his virility, even a degree of physical violence, perfectly legitimately; an increased social value: as the surrounding community was transforming itself through an expanded public opinion, the external signs of respectability that governed access to sources of power and exchange became critical; among these, fatherhood was perhaps the most decisive.

Simultaneously, the nineteenth century witnessed a progressive disappearance of those ritual procedures of inclusion/exclusion/rehabilitation that I touched on at the beginning of this essay and a further consolidation of a clerical ritualism that, because it was more comprehensive, had less of an effect on the level of control. Thus we notice a weakening of the public ritual–punitive systems. There was a reduction in the number of ecclesiastical censures, primarily excommunication36 and interdiction,37 which had been applied to the “notorious sinner,” that is, one whose sin had come to public attention. As well, there was a diminution in ritual procedures for the reintegration of deviants, and thus of the reparation and normalization of extramarital sexual situations, through the use of community sanctions. We witness especially the progressive abandoning of public penances, which actually deprived the community of a way to repair a scandal. Once very complex, the procedure for expiation diminished: around 1820 public penance was transformed into a simple recognition of sin (the priest publicly read a request for pardon on the part of the transgressors while they remained kneeling at their pews) until it became virtually invisible (it became enough to discharge one’s punishment by kneeling through a high mass at the back of the

204

Ollivier Hubert

church, without any public notice being made by the priest) and it finally disappeared altogether after 1840.38 All the same, mariages à la gaumine (marriages by mutual consent, witnessed by the congregation but concluded without the blessing of a priest), which invested the community with a semi-autonomous legitimating power as the presence of the group validated the act, came more and more obviously into conflict with the rise in private patriarchal power, and in the nineteenth century they had disappeared. In addition, a thorough change occurred in confessional practices which accompanied the rise of ultramontane culture. The harshness and semi-public nature of the pre-ultramontane39 confession was replaced by an ultramontane confessional regime that was at once more frequent, more secret, and less stern.40 It endowed the parish priest with a greatly expanded “power to know” the private life of his congregation, but at the same time it shielded a part of this same private life from community scrutiny. This power to know was also the power to influence, and the priest would henceforth wield it more effectively over men, who heretofore had been inclined to avoid confession, which now became another site for the education of the father. Finally, the power of the father was socially affirmed by his newly required presence in the family pew that he now owned – hence the struggle of the clergy against the male gatherings in the church porch during services – and where he had the opportunity every Sunday to demonstrate his status as the legitimate head of a legitimate family adhering to the legitimate principles of the dominant ideology. Supported by the clerical and liberal elites, these changes all came together in a strengthening of the paternal figure as the exclusive repository of political authority, which evidently militated against public humiliation, secrecy being a necessary condition of its exercise and legitimacy. Here may be observed both a very sophisticated process of disciplining the man (the confessional) and the social promotion of the father (his presence in the family pew) and of ensuring his domestic power (he and the parish priest being the theoretical masters of the internal management of familial deviances). Here we have the deepest meaning of the elite discourse in general – to erect a model of masculine conformity centred on fatherhood in order to counteract the destabilizing effects of modernity. For the old communal power, which was, of course, in part a masculine power but the power of men in groups, of inns and charivaris, based on criteria of virility linked to physical performance (strength, the ability to hold one’s liquor, etc.), it meant to substitute the power, not of men, but of the father. The father, a new guarantor of the norm and of social conformity, was able to move beyond social division and the reconfiguration of the rules of social

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

205

interaction prompted by the transition to capitalism and to employ the institutional implements of control now established in place of the traditional forms of restraint.

no tes 1 See Christian Dessureault, “Parenté et stratification sociale dans une paroisse rurale de la vallée du Saint-Laurent au milieu du xixe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 54 (hiver 2001): 411–47. 2 See, in particular, Louise Dechêne, Habitants et marchands de Montréal au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Pilon, 1974); Gérard Bouchard, Quelques arpents d’Amérique: Population, économie, famille au Saguenay, 1838–1971 (Montreal: Boréal, 1996); John Irvine Little, Crofters and Habitants: Settler Society, Economy and Culture in a Quebec Township, 1848–1881 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991); Diane Gervais, “Succession et cycle familial dans le comté de Verchères, 1870–1950,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 50 (été 1996): 69–94. The nineteenth century would even be a time of reinforcement of the nuclear model, as much in rural as in urban or semi-urban environments; see Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender, and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993); Peter Gossage, Families in Transition: Industry and Population in Nineteenth-Century SaintHyacinthe (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999). 3 In connection with the construction of a stable mode of sexuality in Quebec, see, in particular, Serge Gagnon, Plaisir d’amour et crainte de Dieu: Sexualité et confession au Bas-Canada (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1990), and the ethnographic data given in Gérard Bouchard, “La sexualité comme pratique et rapport social chez les couples paysans du Saguenay (1860–1930),” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 54 (automne 2000)”: 183–217. 4 Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Jean Rivard le défricheur: Récit de la vie réelle (Montréal: J.B. Rolland et fils, 1874 [1862]), et Jean Rivard économiste: Pour faire suite à Jean Rivard le défricheur (Montreal: J.B. Rolland et fils, 1876 [1864]). 5 Ollivier Hubert, “Ritual Performance and Parish Sociability. FrenchCanadian Catholic Families at Mass from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2002), 37–76. 6 For a Canadian comparison, see Lynne Marks, “Railing, Tattling, and

206

7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19

Ollivier Hubert

General Rumour: Gossip, Gender, and Church Regulation in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Review 81 (Sept. 2000): 380–402. On the charivari, see René Hardy, “Le charivari dans l’espace québécois,” in Serge Courville and Normand Séguin, eds., Espace et culture/Space and Culture (Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1995), 175–86 ; Allan Greer, Habitants et Patriotes: La Rébellion de 1837 dans les campagnes du Bas-Canada (Montréal: Éditions du Boréal, 1997); Jack I. Little, State and Society in Transition: The Politics of Institutional Reform in the Eastern Townships, 1838–1852 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997). This is the anthropological definition of the family as formulated by Claude Lévi-Strauss, in particular; see Claude Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1949). Mgr de Saint-Vallier, “Ordonnance pour le règlement du diocèse,” 8 oct. 1700, in Mandements, lettres pastorales et circulaires des évêques de Québec (MEQ), 1 (Québec: Côté, 1887): 414. Lucien Lemieux, Histoire du catholicisme québécois, 2, 1, Les années difficiles (1760–1839) (Montréal: Boréal, 1989): 135. However, at the first council of the ecclesiastical Province of Quebec in 1851, no one was sure to have yet had a firm regulation on this subject. The council again took the forty-years-completed rule. See Archives de la chancellerie de l’archevêché de Montréal (acam), 272.101, 851.4, Turgeon to Bourget, 26 jan. 1851. This age limit well indicates that the priority was to avoid public scandal. acam, 355.103, 792.1 (Saints-Anges-de-Lachine), Keller, curé, to Plessis, 23 feb. 1792. acam, 355.118, 791.4 (Sainte-Rose), Desjardins, syndic, to Hubert, July 1791. Allan Greer, Peasant, Lord, and Merchant: Rural Society in Three Quebec Parishes (1740–1840) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 58. Constance B. Backhouse, “Desperate Women and Compassionate Courts: Infanticide in 19th Century Canada,” University of Toronto Law Journal 34 (autumn 1984): 447–78. Gagnon, Plaisir d’amour, 60–72. René Hardy, “Les conceptions prénuptiales à Trois-Rivières comme indice de fidélité religieuse, 1850–1945,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 54 (hiver 2001): 531–55. acam, 355.117.792.1 (Saint-Vincent-de-Paul), Chenet, curé, to Hubert, 13 Feb. 1792. Ibid. acam, 355.117.792.2 (Saint-Vincent-de-Paul), Chenet, curé, to Hubert, 1 March 1792. It seems that the bishop remained intractable, in spite of the extreme sadness of the case, and that the social and material condition of

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34

207

this family suffered heavily as a result; see acam, 355.117.795.3 (SaintVincent-de-Paul), Chenet, curé, to Plessis, 30 Nov. 1795. For example, the case of Magdeleine Tardif, of L’Ancienne-Lorette, who had to stand at the door of the church with a candle in her hand during the mass, during which the priest would ask for, on her behalf, the forgiveness of her faults; attend mass and vespers at the door of the church every Sunday until Easter, when she would be admitted to communion; fast every Friday. See Briand, “Lettre pastorale aux habitants de l’Ancienne Lorette au sujet de Magdeleine Tardif,” 15 Nov. 1768, MEQ, 2: 215–16. The priest of L’Assomption asked of a couple who had lived together for four years, but were on the way to rehabilitation, a public statement: “I have forced him as well as his wife to be penitent before God [in ] the presence of the people during the celebration of his marriage for the scandal that they have caused”; see acam 355.114.776.2 (L’Assomption), Degeay, curé, to Briand, 25 Nov. 1766. See also Lemieux, Histoire du catholicisme québécoise, 1, 2: 268; Gagnon, Plaisir d’amour, 60; Ollivier Hubert, Sur la terre comme au Ciel: La gestion des rites par l’Église catholique du Québec (fin XVIIe–mi XIXe siècle) (Sainte-Foy: Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 2000), chapter 8. Hubert, “Ritual Performance and Parish Sociability.” Robert Major, Jean Rivard ou l’art de réussir: Idéologies et utopie dans l’œuvre d’Antoine Gérin-Lajoie (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1991). Ibid. Gérin-Lajoie, Jean Rivard le défricheur, 77. Ibid. Bouchard, Quelques arpents d’Amérique, 258. Gérin-Lajoie, Jean Rivard le défricheur, 158. Ibid. Gérin-Lajoie, Jean Rivard économiste, 63. Ibid. Ibid. Marcela Aranguiz, Vagabonds et sans abris à Montréal: Perception et prise en charge de l’errance (1840 à 1925) (Montréal: rchtq, 2000). See, for example,: Marylène Delbourg-Delphis, Masculin singulier: Le dandysme et son histoire (Paris: Hachette, 1985); Roger Kempf, Dandies: Baudelaire et Cie (Paris: Seuil/Points, 1984); Jerrold Siegel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930 (New York: Viking Press, 1986); James Eli Adams, Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Manhood (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995). Martine Tremblay, “Les rituels du mariage dans la vallée du Haut-

208

35 36

37 38

39

40

Ollivier Hubert

Richelieu: Comparaison ville/campagne au xxe siècle,” Revue d’histoire de l’Amérique française 54 (hiver 2001): 385–410. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1991 [1840]), chapter 11. According to Lucien Lemieux, Briand was the last bishop to use excommunication with a certain liberality: between 1766 and 1784 he pronounced it ten times. See Lemieux, Histoire du catholicisme québécoise, 265. Rituel du diocese de Quebec, publié par l’ordre de Monseigneur l’Evêque de Quebec (Paris: Simon Langlois, 1703), 139–68. Lemieux, Histoire du catholicisme québécoise, 267–68. This shift was linked to a general privatization of punishments. In the cities, earlier than in the country, public penitence was less and less well accepted, and the priest who imposed it risked being sued for defamation. The confessionals were rudimentary and did not guarantee secrecy of confessions, and the priests often refused absolution and thus communion, an eminently public act. Confession was thus a source of rumour, which in its turn was likely to start the process of community standardization. Christine Hudon, “Le renouveau québécois au xixe siècle : Éléments pour une réinterprétation,” Studies in Religion/Études religieuses 24 (1995): 467–89.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

209

6 The Peddler’s Tale Radical Religion and Family Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry, 1804–1863 j.i . li ttle Gender historians, such as Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall in England and Nancy Cott in New England, have associated the rise of the “cult” of domesticity in the early nineteenth century with evangelical religion. Cott argues, for example, that this emerging middle-class ideal tacitly acknowledged the capacity of the modern world to desecrate the human spirit.1 While that world was slow to impinge directly on the economically isolated Eastern Townships of Lower Canada, most of the published diaries and personal correspondence from the region during the first half of the nineteenth century do reveal a strong preoccupation with the family. This characteristic should, perhaps, not be surprising, given that their middle-class authors maintained ties with their communities of origin in Britain or New England. But these authors also tended to be religious moderates, and most were members of the Church of England.2 The Scots-born James Reid, who was a local Anglican minister, not only kept a many-volumed diary largely concerned with his offspring: he also published an extensive series on the “fireside kingdom” in which he stressed the nurturing role of parents as the key to a stable Christian society. From Reid’s perspective, it was the more radical evangelicalism, with its emphasis on spiritual rebirth and adult baptism, which would detract from early childhood indoctrination.3 Reid would not have been surprised to learn that domesticity was not a central theme in the unpublished diary of his contemporary, Ralph Merry, who was deeply influenced by the revivalist religious climate of the New England hill country to the south. The tone of

210

J.I. Little

Merry’s writing would obviously have been different had he married younger and fathered children, but it was the intensity of his religious beliefs that led him to focus on his relationship with God rather than establishing a family. Furthermore, he makes more references to his broader spiritual family than to his own relatives, who, for the most part, did not share his religious enthusiasm.4 Radical religious groups were not so much formal organizations as they were extended families in which sacred values were substituted for blood ties.5 While historians of the family may associate the cult of domesticity with evangelicalism, they have also found that revivals could undermine paternal authority because women and youths were more inclined than men to respond to such initiatives.6 As Neil Semple has observed, conversion to Methodism was often frowned upon by the family; although the church “usually opposed rebellion against parental authority, such kinship breaks were acceptable, and they became part of the ‘heroic’ tradition of sacrifice in Methodist lore.”7 But economic survival generally required mutual family assistance. While adhering to radical religious ideas and practices, Ralph Merry remained too dependent economically, and too imbued with a traditional sense of family duty, to rebel openly against his father’s authority. Since he was a mature single man in poor health with an uncertain income, however, his status within the family was a somewhat marginalized one. Even after Merry finally married at the advanced age of forty-three, he failed to establish a “normal” nuclear family. He was absent from home for long periods of time working as a peddler in southern New England, there were no children, and he and his wife consequently became dependent on economic arrangements made with a succession of younger couples to care for them in their old age. The life story that emerges from Ralph Merry’s diary, which is largely concerned with keeping an account of his religious experiences, may not have been “typical” of his time and place. Certainly, the world that he describes is quite foreign to the standard historical depiction of a secularizing and modernizing nineteenth-century society. But religious revivals and radical sectarianism were an intrinsic part of North American society during Merry’s era, he was a working member of that society, he moved within an extensive network of similar-minded people, and despite the time he spent on the road, he always remained a member of a family-based household. He lived most of his life on the margins of the family, and his religious commitment may have been extreme even by the standards of his time and place, but he was far from being a social outcast, and his life story sheds light on the historically neglected activities and culture of a “common” man in the early industrial era.8

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

211

sicknes s and c o nvers i o n : yo u t h Ralph Merry’s journal began in 1809, when he was twenty-three years old, and ended with his death in 1863, though there were interruptions from 1809 to 1817, and the volumes for 1824–1834 and the 1840s are unfortunately missing. Merry was the third son in a family of six sons and three daughters.9 When he was twelve years old, his father, the entrepreneurial Ralph Merry iii, left St Johnsbury, Vermont, to become the first settler at the Outlet of Lake Memphremagog, later known as the town of Magog. Here he operated a grist mill and sawmill, and in 1802 he purchased a large tract of land in the same township from his absentee proprietor brother, Jonathan.10 In the preface to his journal, Ralph Merry iv wrote that there were no religious meetings in the Outlet area when he was young, “and I joined with others in wickedness and when angry used profane language.” He added, “I had been taught by my parents to be honest, civil and moral, and to respect the aged and never to ridicule the deformed, the lame or the unfortunate, but I went forward in rebellion against God the Author of all the blessings that I enjoyed and frequently felt dreadful condemnation and fears of damnation and it is a wonder of mercy that he spared me so long while sinning against the light which had been given.”11 Merry’s life changed forever in 1804, when he was eighteen. According to his diary, he “sprained” his stomach while piling logs and never was healthy again for the rest of his life. Several months later, he was “seized with a violent attack of the billious fever,” which confined him to the house for eighty-nine days. Near death at times, he was even too weak to concentrate on prayer. During the following five years, he was “doctored by a variety of physicians and used many means recommended by them and by others for the recovery of my health but all was in vain.” On one painful occasion a Native doctor operated on his back with a lance “as a man would on a millstone while pecking it till he had cut probably about 400 gashes.” He then washed the wounds with a previously prepared liquid, but the result was that Merry barely had the strength to ride the seven miles from the encampment back to his father’s house.12 The following year, in 1805, Merry’s “kind and affectionate father” took him to Boston, where several aunts and uncles lived, hoping that a visit to the seashore and a change of climate and food would be beneficial. The trip had no effect on his health, “but it afforded an opportunity to see considerable of the grandeur, curiosities, and sin and vanity of the world and to learn something about the nature of men and things.” Merry was not entirely incapacitated, for he worked as the Lake Memphremagog area’s first mail carrier in 1807, delivering

212

J.I. Little

newspapers that he picked up in nearby Derby, Vermont. There is one stray journal entry from 14 December 1807 declaring: “Have sought for pardon by fasting and prayer since yesterday morning.” Merry later wrote that during these years he went so many times to pray at a spot in the woods a few rods east of the bridge over the Magog River that he wore a path there.13 But the journal does not properly begin until two years later, when Merry had a profound religious experience on the day that he remembered each year thereafter as his spiritual birthday. He wrote that after being overcome with a sense of sin and discussing this with his sister, who had “experienced religion when she was young,” he lay down and began “looking at the sky through a hole in the roof of the log house in which I was, where the smoke of the fire passed out.” A light “as large as the blaze of a candle” then entered the house through this hole “and came directly to me and appeared to enter the centre of my breast, or heart.” As a result, Merry “immediately felt an internal motion and a joy commenced such as I had never experienced before and I felt to love God and all mankind.” His fear of hell then evaporated, for it did not appear logical that God would “send me to perdition if I should die then when I had such love for him.”14 Dramatic as it was, such an experience was not uncommon in postrevolutionary American revivalism, which, according to Jon Butler, “had a tendency to involve dreams, visions, apparitions, and physical manifestations of divine intervention.”15 Merry’s obsession with damnation was clearly a product of his New England religious background, for Puritan autobiographers had consistently claimed that they were granted a vision of God only in the moment of their greatest despair and self-surrender.16 It seems likely that Merry was concerned that his physical weakness signified that he was not one of the elect (certainly, he saw it as God’s punishment for a careless life) and that he had been seeking a sign from God to contradict this fear. But sanctification remained a protracted process in the early nineteenth century, and Merry reported that his happiness only lasted about fifteen minutes before doubts began to creep into his mind again. He once more “fell into a gloomy state of mind,” yet he had lost the sense of condemnation that he had previously been burdened with. Finally, three weeks later, Merry convinced himself that the experience had brought about his regeneration, at which point he had another vision. He saw “2 long broad bows, like rainbows, of a redish colour nearly over my head, which again witnessed to me that the Saviour’s blood was shed for the remission of sin.” He then felt assured that “[t]he way to peace and pardon” was easy and free and that a “full attonement had been made for all.” Merry failed to convince

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

213

his neighbours to “see these things as I did,” but added that his inner foes had been subdued, and “I went on my way believing and rejoicing and declaring to others what great things God had done for my soul.”17 The Baptists were the most active missionaries in the Outlet area at this time, and Merry began to attend their quarterly meetings, testifying publicly for the first time on 1 October 1809. But he rejected the doctrine of election, recording on 5 October that he shared the New Light belief that “every person is a free agent” to accept “pardon on the terms held forth in the Gospel, and after conversion to lose his religion and perish everlastingly.” While Merry’s conversion experience may have ended his concern about not being one of the elect, his compulsive need for what he called streams of divine love running to his heart reflected an ongoing need for reassurance about his spiritual salvation. Soon after his second vision, Merry became concerned with the influence of his family upon his own religious well-being. On 15 September 1809 he wrote as follows: “have a long talk with my father, he appears to see the vanity of seeking happiness in worldly pursuits and expresses a desire to have an interest in Christ, thinks it probable that his sins were forgiven about 30 years ago. – I begin to find that I must fight if I would win the prize of eternal life and that sin is not entirely subdued though its power is broken.” Ralph Merry senior was then preoccupied with establishing his ill-fated iron foundry, and the rather easy confidence he expressed about his state of grace clearly did not sit well with his son. The following Sunday, Ralph junior lamented that several visitors had come to the Outlet to visit, hunt, and fish, and he felt “resolved to reprove them if they continue to come here to break the Lord’s day” (17 September 1809). Three days later he complained that “it is not my lot to live with a family where the worship of God is thought of more importance than it is here. I should not then have so many temptations before me; but on the contrary should have others to encourage me, but God is able to sucour those that are tempted.” As Semple has observed of the Methodists, the struggles for personal salvation were difficult even when family and friends shared the same heritage “and offered comfort and encouragement, but they were much more difficult for those without such support.”18 Merry’s diary entries for 1809 list an ongoing litany of physical problems – a stomach too weak to allow him to sing, eyes too weak to read, aching bones, and dizziness – though none of this prevented him from fasting “to humble myself.”19 His main problem appears to have been his back, which often prevented him from riding to religious services in nearby communities, though he did have his good days, as on

214

J.I. Little

15 October: “God shines uppon me today with his reconciled countenance; feel to rejoice in the God of my salvation.” On 25 November Merry was again “filled with the love of God” after being prostrated by “bilious fever” for over two weeks. But on 1 December he was confined to his bed for a remarkable four years and eight months, during which time he made no journal entries. He later wrote: “I was universally debilitated but the greatest cause of the confinement was weakness in the back.” In the later months, he also had severe eye pain, which was relieved only by keeping them permanently closed: “The natural motion of my eyes caused such pain that I frequently held my fingers on one eye and my thumb on the other to keep them entirely still and often could not get to sleep without confining them in this way” (1 December 1809). Such prostration must have severely tested Merry’s assurance of having been spiritually saved, but he did his best to convince himself that his faith was simply being tested. When he began his journal entries again on 16 November 1813, he wrote that he could not have patiently borne his sufferings “without immediate assistance from the living God, who hath never foresaken me since I put my trust in him.” By April 1814 Merry was able to go to his nurse’s house, where he remained until August, when he returned home to his mother’s death bed. His journal has little to say about his mother, remaining focused on his own physical and spiritual well-being. Several weeks later, while praying for his eyes to be strengthened, Merry experienced what he called a miracle: “am alone in the house and in bed, and feel a suden shock run through my frame from head to feet as sensably as a man does when in a shower bath and a pail of cold water descends upon him.” He found that he could again keep his eyes open without experiencing pain and that his back was strengthened, causing him to “rejoice and praise a loud.” The miraculous “cure” lasted only nine days, but rather than being resentful, Merry (in hindsight at least) thanked God for displaying his power and showing him “how easiely he could have restored me to perfect health instantly ... but it was in accordance with his wise designs for me to be disciplined in the furnace of affliction down to old age.” In the fall, Merry turned to a more tangible treatment again by going with his “kind and aging father” to Saratoga Springs and the springs at Ballston, New York, for over two months.20 Though he disapproved of his father’s religious laxity, even at the age of twenty-eight Merry’s health left him little choice but to rely upon his father for economic support. Any resentment the younger Merry may have felt as a somewhat helpless dependant was carefully suppressed by the sense of duty and gratitude inculcated as part of his religious values.

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

215

toward s i nd epend ence: m at u r i t y The journal then skips two years without explanation, though Merry may have been too preoccupied with composing hymns to keep a diary. By June 1817 he had recovered his health enough to take what may have been the first extended trip on his own by riding a horse to distant Montpelier, Vermont, in order to have his hymns printed. On the journey Merry’s spirits generally remained high because of the revivals he attended, and after three weeks on the road he wrote: “I am surprised at the disinterested benevolence of strangers, surely the hand of God is in it; once more I have cast myself on the providence of the Almighty and have found that his mercies fail not” (26 June 1817). After a religious meeting in Duxbury, Vermont, Merry began “meditating on the nearness of my fellow creatures to me; we all sprang from one man and are of one family, it naturally follows that they are my brethren and sisters and as it were my flesh and my blood” (29 June 1817). He was clearly referring largely to those who shared his religious commitment, and his diary would reflect a closer affinity with this spiritual family as tensions within his parental family increased. By 3 July Merry’s rejection by several printers had left him feeling “crossed, disappointed and perplexed in my business, sick and sorowful, far from relatives or acquaintance,” but the clouds suddenly dispersed when a printer agreed to produce 1,050 copies of his hymn book. Having reached the age of thirty-one, Merry finally felt able to leave the fold of his family by peddling his hymn books in Vermont for 11¢ each. This would hardly be a major source of income, but at least he was beginning at an auspicious time because of the religious enthusiasm that was sweeping New England. On 7 July Merry recorded that a hundred people had recently been converted in Boston, and five days later he was at a meeting in Moretown, where he testified about his conversion experience. He was then baptized by immersion, which he claimed immediately improved his health, and that night he lodged with a young convert who described “the late glorious outporing of the Spirit of God in this place.” Merry added: “my soul is ravished with sacred ecstacy” (12 July 1817). Making his long way home, he continued to testify at religious meetings, selling several copies of his hymn book each day, leaving larger numbers for others to dispose of, and staying with like-minded people rather than at inns. In this cash-poor economy it was inevitable that he would have to accept some payment in kind, and even before his more expanded peddling career began, he was selling goods that he had taken in exchange for his hymn books (21 July 1817). After returning home with renewed confidence in his ability to speak in public meetings and find an audience for his hymns, Merry again

216

J.I. Little

turned his attention to his immediate family members. In August he wrote: “Last night and the night before I prayed in my Father’s family, these were the first times I ever prayed with them more than to ask a blessing at meals. I have thought my infirmities a sufficient excuse in time past but now it appears to be my duty to take up my cross in this respect at suitable times, when the disorder in my head or some other difficulty does not prevent.” Shortly after his wife’s death, Ralph senior had remarried to a poor widow with four dependent children, which resulted in a family of eight at the same time as he was running into business problems. Aside from the failure of the iron foundry, the title deeds to much of his land were of uncertain validity as a result of government officials’ abuse of the land-granting system, and debts led to 2,300 acres being sold by the sheriff in 1816.21 The elder Merry’s business problems were exacerbated by mental instability, for his son’s diary revealed in 1819 that he had “had turns of being light headed or delirious for about 10 years; they have lasted 3 to 4 or 5 months at a time” (15 November 1819). During these “high turns,” Merry would “travel a great deal and try to do great business and to make many trades which was verry trying to the family” (25 January 1823). As a result, Ralph Merry junior wrote, “the burden of providing for the family devolved upon me in my peculiar state of weakness and infirmities.”22 With his manic-depressive father marginalized within his own family by being declared unfit for business in 1818, the younger Merry felt obliged to borrow $21 in order to give his recently widowed sister-inlaw the money she needed to prevent her home from being sold. The older son, John, was apparently now operating the family business, though his uncle Jonathan Merry from Boston was still involved as well.23 By 28 March the elder Ralph and his son John were in open conflict. As for Ralph junior, he claimed that he wanted nothing to do with this treatment of his father, and he prayed “that my Father may be delivered from his instability of mind, and from the snares of those who would injure him” (23 March 1818). In this troubled state of affairs, the younger Ralph Merry had begun to seek guidance from God by consulting randomly opened pages of his Bible or hymn book. Concerned about how he would pay his $25 debt, particularly when he often gave away his hymn books for nothing,24 Merry arranged to teach the community’s first school in his father’s house, even though he clearly had little formal education himself, and his eyes were so weak that others occasionally had to do the writing in his diary.25 Whenever he became overly concerned that his physical ailments would make teaching impossible, he would be reassured by one of his religious experiences, recording on one occasion that “while thinking on teaching school, God shines into my soul 3 times, thus I am encouraged” (30 December 1817).

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

217

Somewhat miraculously, during his first five weeks of teaching, Merry missed only half a day. His back improved enough to engage in physical labour, and he survived the eight-week term with confidence that “the few children, who have been under my care have improved in learning, to the satisfaction of their Parrents” (13 March 1818). Though no closer to paying off the $25 loan contracted for his sisterin-law, Merry continued to trust that God would come to the rescue, writing that “when I thought on the affair sacred peace has flowed to my soul, and something seemed to testify that it would turn in my favour” (16 March 1818). That something may have been the hope that his sister-in-law would remarry, for that is what she did only two days later, though he recorded the event as a surprise. Increasingly confident that God was answering his prayers, Merry now began to “look to him for temporal things,” such as a suit of clothes that he could not afford to buy, though he admitted that he ought “with much more earnestness to desire Spiritual blessings, which are far better” (24 March 1818). In May he considered trading land with his father, thinking that he might in the future wish to establish a farm, and he prayed to God to guide him with a passage from the Bible which would be revealed by opening it with a pin. Striking between the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth verses of Matthew, chapter 6, he read, “‘which of you by taking can add’ etc. – On which glorious streams of divine love flow to my soul.” As a result, Merry decided that it was “my duty to give up my pleasing scheme, which is so agreeable to flesh and to nature, because I am satisfyed it is not the will of him, who often brings real blessings out of seeming evils” (12 May 1818). Despite Merry’s self-sacrifice, tension continued in the family. At the end of May, he mentioned for the first time an outburst of anger from his father, who was “comonly quite kind and affectionate to me” but “whose mind is quite broken by age and trouble” (23 May 1818). A year later he was doing his best to placate two of his father’s creditors in Stanstead and attempting to sell land to raise money to pay off another debt (10 June 1819). By August 1819 the family was borrowing grain for bread until their crop had ripened, and in October the elder Merry (who is generally referred to as “Sir” in the diary) finally acquiesced to the power of attorney that his Boston brother had sent Ralph junior a year earlier (7 October 1819). The elder Ralph Merry had created further problems by agreeing to sell 1,600 acres to a John Jones esquire of Montreal, but he later declared that it was not in his power to do so.26 The younger Ralph’s religious enthusiasm may also have contributed to the family tensions at this time, for neither financial or health concerns could prevent him from embarking on a seventy-mile ride to St Alban’s, Vermont, in order to attend his first camp meeting. The

218

J.I. Little

experience was clearly a cathartic one, for the diary records: “Some call these noisey prayer meetings, confusion, enthusiasm, etc. but this one has been glorious to me and my soul was made verry happy. I joined in short petitions, loud praises, etc.” (31 August 1819). During the fall Ralph senior’s mental health deteriorated again for a time. An entry for November describes washing his head in “dissolved camphire” and giving him “a pill of good opium as large as a common pea” in order to induce sleep (15 November 1819). The following May, Merry wrote that his father had awakened “feeling low and gloomy – thus we find his high turn is over which has lasted 5 months or verry near that time” (15 May 1820). While helpless to do much for his father, he was evidently gaining a reputation for spiritual powers, for the previous January his younger brother’s wife asked him to charm her head, which “has been quite disordered of late.” This he refused to do, but he prayed for her in secret, claiming that the Lord answered and gave her relief (25 January 1820). Six months later his other sisterin-law asked for his prayers to cure a chronic illness (8 July 1820). But the family’s financial worries persisted, and Merry began to teach school again in January 1820, though he had only six students. The following spring he was able to do farm work for the first time in many years, and on 22 June he wrote that he had bought 1¾ bushels of corn by peddling: “feel truly thankful to the Lord for having blessed my endeavours to get bread in this time of need.” The family also set a gill net, and Merry was able to participate in the haying during the summer. But business dealings could be handicapped by religious scruples; while he was in the French-Canadian village of Yamaska in late August, Merry traded a mare with foal for a thirteen-year-old “french” horse, paying $1.35 in exchange. Feeling that this was not enough, the next morning Merry cast lots to determine how much more he should pay, “and it turned out that I should let the man have the remainder of my cotton cloth which cost $1.80” (25 August 1820). Fortunately, the family’s financial situation had finally begun to improve with Merry’s health and the economy in general. The forge implements were sold, the grist mill repaired, and a carding mill built for operation beginning in the spring of 1821 (1 September, 21 November 1820, 8 March, 25 April 1821). During the same summer and fall, newcomers to the settlement built a blacksmith shop, a potash works, and a tannery, allowing the Merrys to sell lots for the first time and to move into a new house (29 June, 7 July, 21 July, 27 October 1821, 8 March 1822). A sawmill and another grist mill were built the following summer (22 August 1822), and a year later the Outlet received its first mail service, though there were still only nine families in the village (2 April, 18 June 1823).

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

219

Just as the years of anxiety appeared to be coming to a close, Merry recorded in his diary on 21 November 1821 that his father had beaten him with a large stick. Though the rest of the page has been cut out, the following September he wrote that his father had struck him with a cane several times, “so that it appeared that necesity and wisdom dictated that I should hold him, which I did – it is a severe trial and mortification to me to have to contend with and lay hands on my parent but I aim to do by him as I think is right in his sight to whom I must give an account” (11 September 1822). Soon afterward, the family transferred a quarter ownership of the Outlet (six full lots and seventyfive acres of a seventh lot, with buildings) to Jonathan Merry of Boston for only £15 15s. He was planning to open a local cotton mill (1 January 1823) and agreed to pay $100 a year to maintain his brother and sister-in-law,27 though Ralph junior made it clear that he did not feel bound to live with the violent old man “any longer than while duty requires it” (4 November 1822). Indeed, he had already taken a step towards independence the previous month by paying his entrepreneurial uncle and brother £25 cash for a half-acre village lot with house.28 Merry may have begun to contribute to the family economy, but the marginal role he was assigned by the new arrangement reflects how, during the nineteenth century, unwed males continued to be considered youths, without the respect and authority of married men of their age.29 While foundations for financial wealth were being laid by his uncle and his brother John, who received the remainder of his father’s interest in the landed property (9 November 1822), Ralph junior had to hold a bee in January in order to accumulate sufficient firewood for the remainder of the winter (9, 10, 25 January, 1 February 1823). The following spring he was disappointed by his visiting uncle’s failure to pay him the promised annuity (23 May 1823). With his improved physical strength and increased responsibilities, Merry’s spirituality declined somewhat. He had been keeping a careful record of his religious experiences, and on 18 November 1820 had written that he had received “Divine love” every day since 16 August 1818, “excepting the 12 of last Sept, but I felt pretty confident after the day was past that I had felt it that day also, but having workmen on our house and being much hurried forgot to set it down.” Three years later, however, he recorded that from 1 March 1822 to 10 May 1823 “there were 147 days, according to my minutes, that I did not receive divine love; every other day I thought I felt sacred consolation” (9 September 1823). Mid-June frosts and a late September snowfall destroyed all but two bushels of Merry’s grain crop in 1823, and by late fall he had become so depressed by his debts and infirmities that he found it difficult to do

220

J.I. Little

the work needed to prepare for winter. But he continued to find courage in the randomly chosen Bible passages he interpreted as messages from God. In January 1824 he went a step further by casting lots (after prayer and fasting) to determine God’s will concerning his family responsibilities. The result was that he transferred to his younger brother, Benjamin, the house and all of its half-acre lot except thirtythree feet square in return for £100 (no material consideration is mentioned in the diary), the latter assuming the care of his father and stepmother (no such obligation is mentioned in the deed of sale).30 Merry was allowed to remain in the house for a month to six weeks at a time, provided that he find “raw materials for as much provision as I eat,” and he was promised the feather bed and bedding of whichever parent died first, though he anticipated that they might both outlive him (21 February 1824). The following day he wrote that the family burden had been “a great clog to prevent my serving God as I wanted to do ... but religion has been the main and great business in preference to all other considerations.” While he had received less property than he felt was his due, he found reassurance in a randomly opened Bible passage that led him to feel “D. love” (22 February 1824). In order to earn enough for his food, Merry once again taught a winter school term, this time with a larger class of twenty-one students, who would pay him somewhat more than $11.50 in grain for two months of education (10–16 February, 9 April 1824). He also leased a clergy-reserve lot, noting that no rent would be due for a year (8 March 1824), but was left alone in the Outlet house when brother Benjamin and the extended family moved to “the mountain” (nearby Mount Orford), leaving Ralph to muse on “how verry uncertain are all worldly things” (20 March 1824). Merry remained depressed throughout the spring, when he planted seed during what was once again an inclement season and was pursued by creditors. In June he sold his land for $80 and began to learn the tailor’s trade, as well as continuing to trap eels throughout the summer.31

m arri age a nd li fe o n t h e roa d : mi d d le age The journals for the following ten years have been lost, but Merry later noted that he had lived in Duxbury (whether Vermont or Massachusetts is not clear) at some point (13 September 1840) and in Malden, Massachusetts, around 1828, and it is likely that he was working as a peddler during at least some of this period. In 1829 he was married at last to a slightly older woman, Ruth Whitcombe, who had inherited a small amount of money,32 and by 1834 he had returned to Lower

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

221

Canada with her to live on a farm adjacent to that of his brother Benjamin (30 September 1835). Ralph and Ruth were apparently less interested in farming than in using the property to ensure their security, for in December 1834 they attempted to transfer the property to a married couple living in Franconia, New Hampshire, in return for a maintenance contract (28 December 1834, 4 March 1835). They had not even met this couple, and Merry was only forty-eight years old, but physical infirmities, including piles, were making it difficult for him to haul his winter’s supply of wood. Nothing appears to have come of the retirement scheme, and Merry recorded in April that he was setting off to sell tinware for Esquire Yale in South Reading, Massachusetts. While Brian Osborne associates peddling in Upper Canada with the servicing of a relatively undeveloped frontier market,33 itinerants actually travelled in the more settled parts of New England because a mounting number of commodities were produced in a decentralized system of production. Tinsmiths had pioneered the use of peddlers to create mass demand, and tinware remained, for a century and a half, the number one item carried by Yankee peddlers. It has been estimated that five men working in a tin plant could manufacture enough ware to keep twenty-five itinerants supplied.34 Merry complained occasionally about having to spend the night at taverns with profane people, though he generally stayed with acquaintances along his route, and he was careful to note for future reference the places that were hospitable. In exchange for tinware, he collected rags, brass, and pewter, as well as cash. The rags were used to make paper, and the brass and pewter were clearly utensils his customers replaced by the more practical tinware.35 Merry wrote that his back had been very weak during the first two trips, but he had prayed for strength and was much stronger during the third circuit (29 May 1836). By the time it ended, he was able to send $15 to his wife and to set off on a fourth tour in June (11 June 1836). He was certainly not earning a fortune, but in Salem he had grown concerned that he was becoming “too anxious about being prospered in my present business.” He had subsequently retired to a cemetery, where he had “made a solemn covenant to serve God” (5 May 1836). Merry returned to peddling in Massachusetts the following spring, taking “$9 in cash and 34 Canada hames” with him. These curved pieces of wood, designed to be fastened to the collars of draft horses, were probably produced in a factory since he had sent another ninetyfour ahead with a friend, having paid 5¢ each, except for “one I bought of J. Spinney for 25 cents.”36 On this sojourn the merchandise Merry contracted to sell was expanded to include a few miscellaneous

222

J.I. Little

items such as clocks and spectacles, with payment still largely in rags and cash. While he “was treated well and respectfully” by the Vinton family, who kept “a sort of pedlars tavern” in Bridgewater, taking payment in tinware (28, 30 May 1837), Merry met with abuse on other occasions. For example, when he asked to drive his leaky old wagon into a barn during a rainstorm “to prevent the tin receiving great injury,” the owner became “quite angry, swears considerable, damns the tin pedlars and asks me why I did not stay in Canada” (22 May 1837).37 Merry also commented frequently on the economic crisis then unfolding, with people predicting famine and even civil war. At one point he heard the rumour that his former employer, Yale, had lost $25,000 through the money-lending business (5 June 1837). By the end of his third circuit on 2 June, Merry had brought in slightly over $80, of which $17 was in cash, the rest consisting of ninety-seven pounds of “pewter, brass, copper, etc.,” fifteen pounds of lead, and 820 pounds of rags, “a greater proportion of them white than is usual.” During his fourth, sixth, and seventh tours that year, Merry’s business improved, for he collected an additional $59, $56, and $72, respectively (14, 20 July, 10 August 1837). He kept on working despite failing health, beginning his tenth and final tour in late September. Merry had earned for himself only $124 in six and a half months, but was obviously considered a successful peddler, for he was offered employment the following year by three different merchants (12 June 1837). During the previous six months, Merry had not been completely divorced from contact with his wife, Ruth, for he occasionally sent her money and received four letters in turn (16 June, 10 August 1837). But he rarely mentioned her in his diary, and even at the end of his tenth circuit he did not hurry home but went to Boston, where he purchased “various articles and books” (22–23 October 1837), the latter obviously of a religious nature. Once home, Merry finally reached a maintenance agreement whereby he and Ruth would keep their house and a half acre of land containing the garden, a mare and two colts (until they could be sold), six sheep, and two cows (24 November 1837). This contract brought a temporary end to his peddling career, and he now turned his attention more exclusively to spiritual matters. Merry had written in February 1836 that he had been passing through four months of the most “dreadful and lasting” temptations he had ever experienced. He later claimed (24 October 1837) that he had fallen from his state of grace after 1828, and his diary rarely mentioned his spiritual experiences any longer. His religious enthusiasm nevertheless remained strong, and he commented that “speaking of the things of religion” made him “exceeding happy,” relieving his “pain

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

223

and weakness,” so that “my soul seems as if lifted on wings of lavished love.” He probably also made himself somewhat of a nuisance to his less enthusiastic relatives. On the way home from the Stanstead dinner honouring Patriote leaders Louis-Joseph Papineau and Edmund O’Callaghan in early 1835, for example, he had stopped at his brother John’s house, where “undauntedly I shout and praise aloud and speak plainly and pointedly to diverse of the family respecting their duty and condition” (1 February 1835). By this time Merry had established close ties with the Freewill Baptists,38 and he later published an article in that denomination’s American newspaper condemning the wearing of fur hats as an “extravagant, foolish, and proud practice,” as well as contributing $16 to its foreign mission (1st Sunday, April, 8 December 1838, 10 February 1839). But these gestures simply reflected his persistent independence, for he became a member of the radical Methodist Protestant Connection, which organized its first local class meeting at the Outlet in April 1838. This was an American-based sect founded by Vermonters in 1814, but which did not formally split from the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1830, when the membership was approximately three thousand. The Protestant Methodists nicely suited Merry’s philosophy, for they rejected the episcopacy as being contrary to Scripture (replacing the bishop with a president elected each year), looked forward to the imminent Second Coming of Jesus, and practised faith healing.39 With his commitment to religion restored, Merry returned to peddling in 1839, this time during the winter and in the immediate area for a local merchant. He was to receive a monthly salary of $16, plus half the profits over that amount of sales (7 October 1839).40 When this engagement ended in March 1840, he set out for Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, to peddle wooden ware, his object being “to obtain money to spend in the cause of God for the good of souls” (13 March 1840). Upon arrival, Merry was disappointed that the principal dealer had already engaged his full complement of fifteen peddlers for the year, so he set off for Boston to buy his own stock, borrowing $60 to do so while en route (20–25 March 1840). He had difficulty selling his cartloads of wooden articles, writing on 20 April, “the times hard and cash verry scarce.” But he subsequently found that corn brooms were “a profitable article,” and by mid-August he estimated that he had earned approximately $50.41 He kept working into October, when he was finally able to pay off most of the initial $60 loan. With part of his profits he purchased “8 memoirs of Carvoso, 8 D. food, 1 hymn book, 18 personal efforts, a large testament, Finney’s lectures and a quantity of Christian Almanacks and tracts and various articles in Boston” (20 October, 5 November 1840).

224

J.I. Little

Merry had been absent from home for eight months, but he clearly had come to enjoy living on the road. For him, peddling in New England was an educational experience as well as a business enterprise. His diary mentions sites such as the arsenal at Springfield, with its “90,000 guns staked up in handsome order” (9 April 1840), the male profile on the mountain at Franconia Notch (31 October 1840), and hearing Daniel Webster deliver an address in Lynn (18 September 1840). Aside from folk cures of all kinds, Merry’s “world of wonders” included technological innovations such as “an improvement in harrow teeth” which prevented them from moving up or down (17 May 1840), a steam printer, which he characterized as “an astonishing piece of injenuity” (1 June 1840), and a “baloon in the air which has Mr. Lawryett attached to it” (17 June 1840). Above all, perhaps, Merry enjoyed meeting like-minded people and attending the religious meetings of various evangelical denominations. In this sense he was a type of pilgrim, and rather than being embarrassed about his lowly status as a peddler, he seemed to take pride in the one occupation he had succeeded in. While Jaffee argues that peddlers were agents of modernity because they contributed to the “the self-fashioning of new identities through the exchange of goods that facilitated the democratization of gentility,”42 Merry would not have seen the peddling of tinware and brooms in the same light. As a downwardly mobile member of an entrepreneurial family, he valued peddling in no small part because it ensured that he would not become too attached to the pursuit of wealth and status, for he took the Christian teaching about the need to be humble and penitent quite literally. Looking back on the summer of 1840, Merry wrote, “I have, while absent, learned verry profitable lessons of deep prostration of soul and practical humility and practical faith” (6 November 1840).

a nti c i pati ng th e e n d : o ld age Shortly after it was established, the Outlet’s Protestant Methodist class meeting made a covenant “to live to God during the five years previous to the Millenium” (25 June 1838). The members’ millenarian belief reflected the influence of New York State’s William Miller, who had begun preaching in the local area while visiting his sister and brother-in-law during the summer of 1835 (27 June, July 1835). Though he was still relatively unknown at this point, Miller’s message that the Apocalypse would take place before the end of 1843 would eventually launch a major religious movement in the northeastern United States, as well as having a dramatic impact on the Eastern

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

225

Townships.43 Two years later, the deteriorating economic conditions led Merry once again “to reflect on Miller’s doctrine” while peddling in Massachusetts (28 May 1837). He took a copy of Miller’s lectures to his friends and relatives in Lynn and told them that they would not likely meet again until the judgment day (26 September, 30 September 1837). When Miller returned to the Outlet in June 1838, Merry noted that “he appears sincere, and says he fully believes his doctrine” (10–11 June 1838). It is very unfortunate, then, that Merry’s journals for the next decade have been lost, leaving us in the dark about the experiences he went through as Millerism reached a fever pitch in the early 1840s. Merry clearly did become a Millerite, for the next surviving volume of his diary, which begins in 1850, reveals that he now identified most strongly with the Adventist Church, established following the “Great Disappointment” of 1844.44 But the fact that he also subscribed to the Freewill Baptist Morning Star and attended Methodist and Freewill Baptist quarterly meetings (for example, 7–8 October 1854, 29 September 1856) reveals that he did not feel tightly tied to any denomination. While he submitted articles to the Adventist World’s Crisis, which published his wife’s obituary, he also asked the Morning Star to copy it (18 May 1854).45 Merry paid some attention to the ongoing Adventist debate about whether or not the date of the Apocalypse could still be predicted, but doctrinal matters did not interest him very much. Nor did age dampen his enthusiasm, for in 1850 he noted of a prayer meeting, “I talk considerably and have a shouting time” (Sunday, November 1850). He was clearly now less troubled by doubts and temptations than in his younger years. He wrote on 2 January 1851: “Have a long and unusual visitation of rapturous peace and holy power early this morning and open to hymn 365 for myself read and rejoice.” The following spring he commented, “Last winter was the happyest one that I ever had except in the one in which I experienced sanctification. I rose early mornings begin to sing something souitable look up by faith and divine joy flowed to my heart” (23 April 1851). Two years later, during a religious revival that was converting a number of youths in particular, Merry hosted several “noisy and powerful” prayer meetings in his own house. In addition to temperance poems and religious articles (5 July 1851, 9 January, 18 March 1852),46 he wrote and distributed a religious tract “to be given away to professors who have experienced the new birth” (2 September 1854). While Merry and his wife had obviously achieved a level of financial security, the agreement they had made for their maintenance in 1837 had not endured. A relative named D. Merry (possibly Benjamin’s son,

226

J.I. Little

Daniel) had somehow obtained control of the farm, but in October 1850 he unexpectedly gave up the deed so that Ralph could sign a maintenance agreement with the young man, named Thomas Rexford, who had married his niece.47 Rexford proved not to be a good choice, for in March 1852 he reportedly lost the $157 from the sale of his previous farm (a claim Merry was inclined not to believe), in October his only horse died, and a year later he built a separate house for his family, which Merry felt was too far away.48 Finally, in 1856 Rexford sold his claim to the farm, which was then united with that of Merry’s brother Benjamin, with whom he lived until Benjamin moved west in 1860. The aging Ralph Merry, who was now a widower, therefore found himself under the care of a third couple within a ten-year period. A day after the new agreement was reached, Rexford (who had remarried soon after his first wife died) absconded with a $1,260 debt, of which $264 was owed to Ralph Merry (25 March, 13 May 1856, 24–25 March 1860). But Merry was too pleased with the new living arrangement to comment further on the loss, for his new caretakers were both “devoted to God.” Now, “insted of cursing and swearing and vain and vulgar talk we have reading of the scripture & family prayer night & morning. Thank God for this overturn and great deliverance” (29 March 1860).49 Merry’s diary provides little insight into his relationship with his wife, Ruth, who was clearly less religious than he was. Only when she appeared to be near death in 1853, did she take centre stage in the journal. Merry then recorded singing hymns and reading passages to her from the Bible, as well as joining in prayer with others by her bedside. On 25 May he wrote that “my wife is verry sick in the night and thinks she shall die soon and says thus to me ‘God has supported me through life and it seems to me he will not forsake me in death.[’] Began to plant patatoes in the field yesterday.” Rather than cold indifference, the last sentence reflects what Marilyn Ferris Motz would characterize as the typical rural diarist’s attitude toward death, work, and community: “Death is present visually, on the page, as it is understood conceptually, as an integral part of life and of the community experience.”50 A week later, with his wife continuing to express doubts about her soul, Merry reassured her that the hymn book would not have opened to the page it did “if she were as vile as she views herself to be still; there is mercy for the penitent through the merits and intercession of Christ” (4 June 1853). The dramatically increased interest Merry’s diary pays to his wife at this point is not a reflection of romantic love, even though he hinted that he had been directed to her through a divine vision (3 December 1855). Rather, death took on ritual significance as the culmination of

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

227

the lifelong struggle for spiritual salvation.51 After Ruth Merry finally died a year later, in 1854, Ralph wrote that while he had felt lonely during the first week, “I had such divine support and pleasing reflections about her triumphant death and happy state in another world that I rejoiced much more than I mourned and I felt reconciled to my heavenly Fathers will in this affair; and I still feel resigned” (April 1854). He did not forget her, however, for three years later he composed a poem about their relationship in which he declared that “God did unite and bless us here,” and soon “We shall immortal raptures share” (29 July 1857). Meanwhile, the summer of 1852 had found Merry on a short tour peddling maps and other articles in the neighbouring townships (22–25 June 1852). Three years later, when he was a sixty-nine-yearold widower, he set out on a two-week tour by stage and on foot with “22 pounds to carry, mostly books and tracts to raise the ungodly from the sleep of sin” (8 June 1855). On 14 June 1855 he wrote that he had walked ten and a half miles that day “and am verry sore tired and lame,” but the following day he walked another ten miles in the rain without complaint. Several days after returning home, he fainted from his chair and struck his head on the floor, but the following month found him distributing tracts once again (27 June, 23 July 1855). While he kept expecting death at any time, four years later Merry was still peddling religious literature (3 July, 14 September 1857; first Saturday, October 1859). His “spiritual birthday” on 22 August 1857 found the old man receiving “a long and powerful visitation of divine joy” and giving vent to his feelings “in shouts of praise.” Finally, six years later, Merry welcomed his approaching death with the words: “holy joy flows to my heart like a flood ... and I shout and praise God aloud” (13 January 1863). His last entry was “Think thus Glory to God that I shall meet my dear father and mother in glory and quickly holy joy is given” (2 May 1863).

c o nclus i o n Ralph Merry kept a diary essentially for his own reference and edification, though late in life he crudely edited it for publication, pasting in new passages and cutting out or obliterating others. The resulting product is an interesting hybrid between a rural or “folk” diary and a spiritual journal. While it reveals his relationship to the community and the natural environment by recording local events and weather, its introspective entries represent an attempt to differentiate the self from society and thereby reflect an emerging modernist discourse.52 Most of the material that Merry excised concerned his family, and it

228

J.I. Little

is fortunate that the publication venture failed or the original might have been destroyed completely. The journal remains much as he wrote it initially, with a good deal of the censoring/editing simply being lines through certain passages. Merry’s diary suggests that for him, as for the seventeenth-century New Englanders described by David Hall, “religion was embedded in the fabric of everyday life. It colored how you thought about your children and your parents. It entered into perceptions of community, and of the world that lay beyond.”53 But the rise of sectarian enthusiasm in the early nineteenth century could be a divisive force as far as family relations were concerned, and Merry was clearly torn between a sense of duty to his parental family (and perhaps even the woman he married later in life) and a desire to pursue his religious passions. His moral support came largely from outside his family and within his widespread religious network. While community-based religious conformity had been central to the American Puritan world, Merry’s community was less a localized geographical space than it was “a network of social relations marked by mutuality and emotional bonds.”54 But kinship relations remained important throughout his life, clearly explaining why he returned to Magog in later years and challenging what one historian has recently described as “the myth of the autonomous nuclear family.”55 The Eastern Townships was located in a British colony where radical evangelical religion was somewhat muted, in comparison with neighbouring American standards, as a result of a conservative political system and the efforts of British-funded Anglican and Wesleyan missionaries. Merry therefore identified more strongly with New England, where the greater population density made it possible for his community of the road to be largely confined to those who shared his basic religious outlook. Even in his era of rudimentary transportation networks and communications facilities, distance was not a major deterrent as far as Merry’s southward-oriented personal links were concerned, but his range within the Eastern Townships was surprisingly limited. Despite the fact that Magog (the Outlet) lies only a few miles west of the regional metropolis of Sherbrooke, he wrote on 19 June 1855 that he had taken the train from Lennoxville to Sherbrooke and “am surprised at the fine appearance and great growth of the place. [H]ave not seen it before for about 24 years.” In short, Merry was a Sam Slick in reverse – a colonial peddling in New England. While Thomas Chandler Haliburton’s fictional character delights in mocking the extravagance and impracticality of his bluenose clients,56 however, Merry was clearly attracted by the more dynamic religious and economic climate to the south. He certainly did not find “the mobile

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

229

rural marketplace more attractive than the meetinghouse,” as Jaffee suggests was generally true of young farm boys who took up peddling.57 His choice of occupation did, nevertheless, represent a weakening of traditional social structures, for it distanced him from his family and residential community for long periods of time. Merry’s religion was another destabilizing force, for Michael Kenny argues that “acute psychological tensions” were an intrinsic part of the American religious culture, predicated as it was “on an essential antimony – the dialectic of sin and redemption – which gave rise to habitual soul-searching and ecstatic transformation experiences.”58 From this perspective, Merry’s emotional dependence on regular religious experiences was a product of his cultural environment, not simply a personal eccentricity. He may have been an eccentric even by the standards of his time and place, but his social marginality was also a reflection of his role as a peddler and his subordinate family status prior to his belated marriage. Even after marriage, the childless Merry and his wife eventually had to depend upon extended kin and outsiders in exchange for their landed property, which would otherwise have normally gone to an inheriting son or son-in-law. Merry’s family status may have been a product of his uncertain health as much as his religious commitment, for many fervent revivalists certainly married young and produced numerous offspring. But his earlier diaries never express an interest in courtship and marriage, focused as they are on the state of his own soul. Celibacy was not exclusively associated with ordination as a Catholic priest, for Methodist circuit riders were expected to remain single as long as possible, and Merry’s choice of livelihood suggests that he identified with the Protestant pilgrim tradition. While extreme caution is required in making generalizations about society based on one individual’s life, the cult of domesticity was clearly not the product of the type of evangelicalism adhered to by Merry. His journal therefore illustrates how the radical revivalism that erupted in the early nineteenth century could serve as a destabilizing social force by subverting the father’s traditional patriarchal role while also resisting the modernizing trend toward the rise of the inward-looking domestic family.

no tes 1 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Nancy Cott, The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 64–7, 97.

230

J.I. Little

2 Donald C. Masters and Marjorie W. Masters, Ten Rings on the Oak, 1847–1856: Mountain-Nicolls Family Story (Lennoxville: Bishop’s University, 1987); Jane Vansittart, ed., Lifelines: The Stacey Letters, 1836–1858 (London: Peter Davies, 1976); Françoise Noël, “‘My Dear Eliza’: The Letters of Robert Hoyle (1831–1844),” Histoire sociale/Social History 26 (1993): 115–30; J.I. Little, ed., The Child Letters: Public and Private Life in a Canadian Merchant-Politician’s Family, 1841–1845 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995): M.E. Reisner, ed., The Diary of a Country Clergyman, 1848–1851 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000); J.I. Little, ed., Love Strong as Death: Lucy Peel’s Canadian Journal, 1833–1836 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2001). 3 See J.I. Little, “The Fireside Kingdom: A Mid-Nineteenth-Century Anglican Perspective on Marriage and Parenthood,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 4 The seven volumes are in the archives of the Stanstead Historical Society, where there is also a 235-page typescript, “A Memoir of Ralph Merry iv, 1786–1863,” prepared by Dorothy Somers Sanborn in 1968. In quoting from the diaries, I have altered the punctuation sparingly to facilitate reading. 5 See Julia Werner Stewart, The Primitive Methodist Connection: Its Background and Early History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Pres,s 1984), 158. 6 See, for example, Mary P. Ryan, The Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 13, 77–80; Curtis D. Johnson, Islands of Holiness: Rural Religion in Upstate New York, 1790–1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 9, 55–60, 77–84, 112, 148–55, 160–3, 168–9; Nancy Grey Osterud, Bonds of Community: The Lives of Farm Women in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), chapter 1; and William McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 132–3. On the prominent role played by youths and women in Nova Scotia’s “Second Great Awakening” from the late 1790s to approximately 1810, see G.A. Rawlyk, Ravished by the Spirit: Religious Revivals, Baptists, and Henry Alline (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 120–32. 7 Neil Semple, The Lord’s Dominion: The History of Canadian Methodism (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 57. 8 Merry’s religious experiences and ideas are examined in more detail in

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26

27 28 29

231

J.I. Little, “The Mental World of Ralph Merry: A Case Study of Popular Religion in the Lower Canadian – New England Borderland, 1798–1863,” Canadian Historical Review 83 (2002): 338–63. A genealogy can be found with the memoir. Marie-Paule LaBrèque, “Merry, Ralph,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 6: 501; Lorne MacPherson, “Magog and District: 1867,” Stanstead County Historical Society, Centennial Journal 2 (1967): 6. A union church was finally built at the Outlet in 1830; see MacPherson, “Magog and District,” 9. “A Memoir,” introduction, 4. Ibid., book 1: 1. Ibid., book 1: 2. Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 222. Michael S. Kenny, The Passion of Ansel Bourne: Multiple Personality in American Culture (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986), 7. “A Memoir,” book 1: 3. Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 57. “A Memoir,” 20–21 Sept., 27 Oct. 1809. By 1817 Merry was fasting on a weekly basis: 16 Sept. 1817. This entry was begun on 27 August 1814, but consists largely of two pages that were inserted later. LaBrèque, “Merry, Ralph,” 501. “A Memoir,” 28 April 1821. Ralph junior had apparently received some land as part of his inheritance, for he had sold 100 acres for $150 on the same day in 1816 that he and two siblings had renounced further claims to the estate for a payment of £25 each. See Société d’histoire de Sherbrooke (hereafter shs), Greffe Léon Lalanne, n.p., deed of sale, Ralph Merry Jr to Amherst Hoyt, 4 July 1816; agreement, John S., Ralph the younger, and Lucy Merry with Ralph Merry. “A Memoir,” 28 Nov. – 4 Dec. 1817. John had been in partnership with his father since 1808; see LaBrèque, “Merry, Ralph,” 501. “A Memoir,” 21 Feb. 1818, book 1: 26. MacPherson, “Magog and District,” 8. Jones was still attempting to acquire the land in 1825. See shs, Greffe Léon Lalanne, n.p., protest, John Jones vs Ralph Merry, 30 June 1822; Greffe William Ritchie, n.p. , protest, John Jones vs Ralph Merry, 25 July 1825. shs, Greffe William Ritchie, n.p., sale, heirs of Sally Sylvester to Jonathan Merry, 9 Nov. 1822. shs, Greffe William Ritchie, n.p., sale, John S. Merry and Jonathan Merry to Ralph Merry Jr, 12 Oct. 1822. See Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in

232

30

31 32

33

34

35 36

37

J.I. Little

Manhood from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books 1996), chapter 3; and John Tosh, “What Should Historians Do with Masculinity? Reflections on Nineteenth-Century Britain,” History Workshop Journal 38 (1994): 185. Ralph was having second thoughts by 19 Feb., when he reported again casting lots to determine how much of the property he should give up if he could not bring Ben to better terms, but the deal was sealed on those terms two days later, though not notarized until 8 Oct. of the same year, when the transfer from Ralph junior to Benjamin went through Jonathan junior for £100. See shs, Greffe Daniel Thomas, n.p., deeds of sale, Ralph Merry Jr to Jonathan Merry Jr, 8 Oct. 1824; Jonathan Merry Jr to Benjamin Merry, 8 Oct. 1824. shs, Greffe Daniel Thomas, n.p., deed of sale, Ralph Merry Jr. to Amherst Hoyt, 8 Oct. 1824. Ruth Whitcombe’s age is deduced from the fact that Merry wrote that she was seventy years old in 1854. As an heir of Major Whitcombe, she was apparently entitled to $240 a year from his military pension by 1851, but this had been “swindled” out of her (see 18 May and 27 Oct. entries). However, she did make a couple of loans of several hundred dollars around this time; see “A Memoir,” 16 Feb. 1850, 11 Feb. 1851. Brian S. Osborne, “Trading on a Frontier: The Function of Peddlers, Markets, and Fairs in Nineteenth-Century Ontario,” Canadian Papers in Rural History 2 (1980): 61–9. Vermont peddlers were also less active in the state’s newly settled frontier counties; see William J. Gilmore, “Peddlers and the Dissemination of Printed Material in Northern New England, 1780–1840,” in Peter Benes and Jane Montague Benes, eds, Itinerancy in New England and New York (Boston: Boston University, 1986), 84, 87. By 1860 the 1,648 peddlers in Massachusetts accounted for 5 percent of the state’s total commercial population. See J.R. Dolan, The Yankee Peddlers in Early America (New York: C.N. Potter, 1964), 141, 147; David Jaffee, “Peddlers of Progress and the Transformation of the Rural North, 1760–1860,” Journal of American History 77 (1991): 512, 517, 522–3. On the bartering system, see Margaret Coffin, American Country Tinware, 1700–1900 (New York: Galahad Books, 1968), 92–8. “A Memoir,” 21 March 1837. Given that peddlers usually carried a quantity of inexpensive goods that would be exchangeable at inns (Dolan, Yankee Peddlers, 103), perhaps these hames were used for that purpose. On the negative image of the Yankee peddler, see Priscilla Carrington Kline, “New Light on the Yankee Peddler,” New England Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1939): 85, 91–4. To judge from the lore about peddlers, it was a dangerous occupation because they represented an easy target for thieves and murderers; see Coffin, American Country Tinware, 192–200.

Religion and Marginality in the Journal of Ralph Merry

233

38 During the fall of 1835 Merry attended several sermons given by William Warner, who was Eaton Township’s Freewill Baptist preacher. Warner is identified in University of Vermont, Bailey-Howe Library, Stanstead Free Will Baptist Quarterly Meeting, First Record Book, 1828–47 (no pagination). 39 Donal Ward, “Religious Enthusiasm in Vermont, 1761–1847” (PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1980), 70, 110; Semple, Lord’s Dominion, 111. 40 Merry recorded that his employer, H.G. Eaton, had opened a store at the Outlet in Oct. 1838. 41 Corn brooms were first produced in 1798, and Dolan (Yankee Peddlers, 181–2) writes that bundles of brooms “became the trademark of the peddler along with the jingling of tinware.” 42 Jaffee, “Peddlers of Progress,” 513. 43 There are many good studies on Millerism in the United States. One of the best is David L. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 1800–1850 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985). On the Eastern Townships, see Denis Fortin, “‘The World Turned Upside Down’: Millerism in the Eastern Townships, 1834–1845,” Journal of Eastern Townships Studies 11 (fall 1997): 39–59; and J.I. Little, “Millennial Invasion: Millerism in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada,” forthcoming. 44 While no Adventist church was organized in the Outlet area before 1863, most of the preachers whom Merry mentions during the coming years were of this denomination. The names of the region’s Adventist preachers and churches can be found in Denis Fortin, “L’Adventisme dans les Cantons de l’Est du Québec: Implantation et institutionalisation au xixe siècle” (PhD dissertation, Université Laval, 1996), appendix L. 45 The obituary appears in “A Memoir,” book 11: 15. 46 One temperance poem can be found in “A Memoir,” book 11: 39. 47 Rexford and his wife, Ruth, moved in with the Merrys on 20 March 1851 and received the deed to the farm in June, on condition that it not be sold while either Ralph or his wife was still alive. The kin tie is revealed when Merry records Ruth Rexford’s death on 4 Sept. 1857. My thanks to John Scott for the information about Daniel Merry. 48 Merry later added in the margin that “it was for the best for we had that small house to move into when mine was burned” (27 Oct. 1853). 49 Though relations with his brother Ben had clearly been strained, when the latter moved to the far west in 1863, Ralph wrote that it was “a very gloomy circumstance to me for I never expect to see him again in this life” (25 Dec. 1863). 50 Marilyn Ferris Motz, “Folk Expression of Time and Place: 19th-Century Midwestern Rural Diaries,” Journal of American Folklore 100, no. 396 (1987): 137.

234

J.I. Little

51 David Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (New York: Knopf 1989), 166–7, 197. 52 Motz, “Folk Expression,” 136. On the latter theme, see Rodger Payne, The Self and the Sacred: Conversion and Autobiography in Early American Protestantism (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1998). 53 Hall, Worlds of Wonder, 3. 54 Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press 1978), 5, 7. See also John C. Walsh and Steven High, “Rethinking the Concept of Community,” Histoire sociale/Social History 32 (1999): 259–62. 55 Barry Reay, “Kinship and the Neighbourhood in Nineteenth-Century Rural England: The Myth of the Autonomous Nuclear Family,” Journal of Family History 21 (1986): 87–104. 56 Fred Cogswell, “Haliburton,” in Literary History of Canada: Canadian Literature in English, 2d ed., vol. 1 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1965): 112. 57 Jaffee, “Peddlers of Progress,” 524. 58 Michael S. Kenny, The Perfect Law of Liberty: Elias Smith and the Providential History of America (Washington: Smithsonan Institution Press, 1994), 258–9. On the clinical criteria for cyclothymia, as defined by the American Psychiatric Association, see Kay Redfield Jamison, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: The Free Press, 1993), 263–4.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

235

7 “Old Maidism Itself” Spinsterhood in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Literary and LifeWriting Texts from Maritime Canada gwend o ly n davi e s Early in the anonymously written letters of Patty Pry, published in the Acadian Recorder in 1826, the vivacious young Patty recoils with shock at a newspaper poem advising young men to beware of the slavery of love. “My eye balls were stretched,” she announces in mock horror, “as this is the article in which we deal and by which we hope to make our bread.”1 Her market-economy response to the poem cuts to the heart of the fictional letters. Determined to avoid the fate of her “withered, skinny old maid”2 Aunt Tabitha and sensitive to her father’s dictate that “a life of celibacy” is a life of “disappointment,”3 Patty conceals an intelligence informed by a reading of Shakespeare, Dr Johnson, and The Spectator behind a facade of “dress, dancing, and parties.”4 Yet her flippant pragmatism in the letters is tempered by her growing awareness that the aunt who endures her teenage raillery, ruins her eyesight in family sewing, and lives off the largesse of Patty’s father is more than a pitiable spinster figure. As Patty artfully sits on her father’s lap, lets him ruffle her hair, and coaxes the story of Tabitha’s past from him, she begins to read behind her aunt’s marginalized state into the patriarchal pride and rigid class lines that have ruined Tabby’s life in eighteenth-century Ireland. The result is a sympathetic understanding of the process whereby her aunt has lost authority in society, although the realization does little to change the stereotype of Tabitha as a nervous family dogsbody by the time that the sketches take place. The Patty Pry letters strike an interesting note in early nineteenthcentury Maritime literature, given the plethora of spinster and marriage

236

Gwendolyn Davies

sketches that appeared in Maritime newspapers in the post-1800 period. Written at a time when the cult of domesticity was in flower and when the novels of Jane Austen had deliciously exposed the ironies of the marriage market, the letters create a synchronous line between the worlds of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century marriage literature in the Maritime provinces. As Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller has pointed out in her study of single women in the United States from 1780 to 1840, the role of spinsters in this time period has been little explored.5 During the eighteenth century, the very era in which Tabitha was unwillingly thrust into spinsterhood, to be unmarried, notes Chambers-Schiller, was a reproach to society. Satirical literature of the period “belittled the old maid as an odd maid, a woman with peculiar personality defects and particular character foibles,” 6 much in the way that Tabitha is depicted at the beginning of the Patty Pry letters. Better educated than her aunt and better attuned to the politics of matrimony, Patty nonetheless knows from her interactions with her father that the locus of power has not shifted considerably over the span of two generations. Her flagrant employment of feminine wiles to gain his attention and her hyperbolic tone at the beginning of the letters with the mysterious editor “G——,” point to her recognition, while still in her teens, that role-playing is both a political norm and a strategy for women in her social circle. Hers is a spirit of subversion. It recognizes the odds, but nonetheless stabs the tapestry of marriage-making with a few sharp jabs of the needle. While the subversiveness of the Patty Pry letters give them a unique place in the newspaper sketch literature of the 1820s, it is nonetheless interesting to look at the antecedents of the spinster image in the region. Much of the impetus for personal and public writing in the Maritime provinces began with the influx of over thirty thousand Loyalist refugees into the area at the cessation of the American Revolution in 1783. Bringing with them the social and educational expectations that they had experienced in the pre-war American colonies, the Loyalists often turned in their new environment to the writing of poetry, letters, diaries, and sketches as a way of addressing their domestic and social realities. Among the group was a significant body of women who had faced not only upheaval from their homes, relatives, and established social positions but also the loss of a generation of men in battle. In a town such as Salem, Massachusetts, in 1785, notes Elaine Forman Crane, there were 148 young women to every 100 men in the sixteen-to-thirty-year-old white population. In the same period, there were twice as many women as men in the white fifty-to-seventy age group.7 Years of loss to disease, the Louisbourg Expedition of 1745, the Seven Years War, and the American Revolution had contributed to

Spinsterhood in Texts from Maritime Canada

237

an overall depletion of a marriageable white male population. These ratios, substantiated in other towns such as Boston, Newport, and Portsmouth in Crane’s Ebb Tide in New England,8 suggest that the marriage pool for Loyalist women moving from such communities into the often frontier conditions of the Maritimes in 1783 may have been very similar. Thus, in her marriage poem written to her friend Mehetible Caleff in Saint John, New Brunswick, in 1786, Loyalist Anne Hecht says nothing about the age difference between the eighteen-year-old bride and her thirty-eight-year-old fiancé, Captain David Mowat. Rather, in a poem that reads like a conduct book, she outlines for her friend what sacrificing her single state will mean. “Heaven gave to man unquestioned sway,” notes Hecht. “Then Heaven and man at once obey.”9 And obeying in her society meant maintaining what Deborah Kaplan has called “socially determined distances”10 between the public role played by the husband in the conjugal contract and the private, procreative role played by the wife. Thus Anne Hecht feels compelled to advise the new bride: “Abroad for happiness ne’er roam / True happiness resides at home”(lines 58–9). The domestic milieu now becomes both a legal obligation and a socially constructed space for Mehetible. Moreover, there is in Anne Hecht’s address a recognition that her friend has crossed a social threshold, leaving Anne standing on the other side. Thus she, “who never was herself a wife” (line 90), sees herself as suddenly intruding “on time that‘s not your own” (line 92). No wonder, then, that Anne addresses the poem in her title not to Mehetible Caleff, the spinster, but “to Mrs. Mowat,” the wife. Furthermore, she opens the poem with a formal recognition that the abandonment of “the single state”(line 1), spinsterhood, to marry Captain Mowat has been Mehetible’s choice as much as her destiny. There is no hint, as there is in the Patty Pry letters a generation later, of the role of financial positioning in underscoring Mehetible’s decision to marry. Rather, the poem stresses that, in marrying, Mehetible fulfills a social ideal. She will create a stable home, “properly spend and spare” (line 17), and “train the tender infant’s mind”(line 20) for the betterment of society as a whole. Yet subtle and restrained as it may be, Anne Hecht’s marriage poem for Mehetible Caleff also attempts to assert a voice of female self-identity. Beneath the tone of Anne Hecht’s sage advice and playful teasing lie hints that Hecht herself is not always convinced that the sacrifice of personal freedom is worth the social positioning gained by marriage. She expresses the hope that her friend has decided to forsake single life only after a process of “mature reflection” (line 9), and there is more than a hint of irony in her observation “To make her husband bless the

238

Gwendolyn Davies

day / He gave his liberty away”(line 18–19). Moreover, embedded in the text of this conduct poem is an ironic dimension that decentres the very stability it purports to celebrate. Although Hecht delivers a seemingly conformist argument when she urges, “Then shun, O shun that hated self / Still think him wiser than yourself,” she nonetheless subtly subverts this conventionality by adding: “And if you otherwise believe / Ne’er let him such a thought perceive” (lines 78–81). Encoded in these lines, then, is her signal to Mehetible Caleff that even though now subservient to matrimonial culture, she can still, as Deborah Kaplan has argued of Jane Austen’s world, use “irony to invest women’s experience with more significance than men’s.”11 In this sense, Hecht’s poem is a forerunner of the Patty Pry letters with their breezy communication that male structures may be manipulated if not controlled. For at least two potential readers of Anne Hecht’s marriage poem in 1786, the ironic dimension probably meant little. The surviving 1769–70 diary of Mercy Seccombe, daughter of the Reverend John Seccombe of Chester, Nova Scotia, and the few letters of Griselda Eliza Cottnam for the years 1786 to 1816 reveal much about the everyday lives of spinster women in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Maritime circles. Both women had been born in Massachusetts into the declining marriage base of the New England communities described by Elaine Forman Crane in Ebb Tide in New England. Their removal to the Maritimes, which may also have affected their opportunities to marry, resulted from the exigencies of their parents’ lives. The Reverend John Seccombe, a Yale graduate and the owner of the grandest house in Harvard, Massachusetts, during his incumbency there as Congregational minister, fell from grace over an alleged dalliance with a maid servant. Moving his family to the frontier ocean community of Chester, Nova Scotia, in the early 1760s, Seccombe gradually rebuilt a reputation as an open, kindly, and eloquent clergyman. However, whereas his diary for 1759–61 records his duties to parishioners, his travels to Halifax, and, in great detail, his daily diet, his daughter’s journal for 1769–70 is much more gender-inflected. Her diary serves as an aide-mémoire and a cryptic repository for veiled emotion.12 What we know of Mercy’s life from her 1769–70 diary is that she is a twenty-seven-year-old spinster, devout but not ridden by Puritan guilt, with a fluidly defined role in the domestic functioning of her parents’ home at Pleasant Point on Mahone Bay, some seven miles from Chester. She makes soap,13 cuts her brother’s hair (11), washes clothes (12), sews her mother’s shift and makes pocket “handkercheifs” (14), writes letters for her father (16), brews medicinal tea (5), and makes wine (16). For recreation she enjoys reading the Book of Martyrs (15), joins others in singing psalms (4, 13), paints butterflies

Spinsterhood in Texts from Maritime Canada

239

(15), and socializes with the families and women of the community. This being said, Mercy’s diary does little to define who she is except in two distinct ways. Fixed in time in the narrow geographical sphere of Pleasant Point, she seems preoccupied with the state of wind and weather. Perhaps because she is often ill, she reacts adjectively to winds sweeping over the point as “terrible” (6), “shocking” (7), keeping her awake “cheif of the night” (16 October), or “The shockenest, highest & distresingest East winds ... that was ever known in these Parts ... ; it blew down a vast many trees on the Point we all expected to be destroyed” (7). She is also overwhelmed at times, such as on 2 January 1770, by “the terrible roaring of the sea,” as if this house, which would be left to her in her father’s 1779 will as long as she remained unmarried, would be swept out on the waves. Never expanding her geographical horizons farther than nearby Chester, Mercy nonetheless seems to have stood on the Point in the darkness of the night expanding her knowledge of the physical universe. On 18 January 1770 she describes “A Surprizeing Stream of bright red light in the Heavens reaching from the N-West to the East in the Evening from which Essued many bright Streams of a red, white, & yellow Coullor” (9), and on 29 June 1770 she notes in detail: “A Strange Blur as large as a Gallon Bason appeard. round a Star for ... Some Nights; it first appeard in the milky way towards the S east; it Seemed to go down toward the North & N. East and then return back again towards the South S-East; one or two night[s] it moved from the S.East; so as to appear but an hour high in the North at 9 or 10 Oclock. then returned gradually back; so that it apeard by 2 Oclock in the morning to be E-South East this was the last night I saw it for after this it disappeard” (12–13). The detail of this observation and the fact that Mercy could read and write suggest that, given a more propitious environment than rural Nova Scotia in the 1770s, she might well have had opportunities to expand the borders of her life as a teacher or active community participant. But Mercy Seccombe’s diary captures her at a threshold in her life, at a time, seemingly, when a crisis or an illness causes her to physically sicken with headaches (12, 14), broken sleep (14), fits (16), ulcers (16), vomiting (11), sweats (12, 14), and depression. Her last entry in her diary on 23 December 1770 reads: “very Ill at night I thought I had been adying” (18). Three years later, on 28 May 1773, in writing to the Reverend Bruin Comingo, her father conveys a sense of her ongoing frailty when he adds: “As to my Family we are in general, in a Usual State & Measure of health; Mercy, I think, no worse, Unless with regard to a Violent toothach with which She is greivously afflicted pretty often.”14 Certainly, the litany of ailments embedded in Mercy Seccombe’s

240

Gwendolyn Davies

1769–70 diary plays into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary and stage stereotyping of spinsters as self-absorbed hypochondriacs. But there is much encoded in the lines of her diary to suggest that throughout the 1769–70 period she was under tremendous emotional pressure. How can one explain the entries in the diary to the comings and goings of Eben Fitch, the man whom her sister, Hannah, eventually marries? Beginning on 6 February 1769, Mercy records Eben’s being hurt by the fall of a tree, the arrival of his mother to nurse him, his departure 24 April from the Seccombes’, his return on 1 May, and on 14 May his coming “to live with us again” (4). By June, Mercy is beginning to confide in her diary such comments as “A Sorrowful Secret Revealed” (16 June) or “A sad day” (29 June). She continues to document Eben’s activities throughout the summer and fall until, on 25 October 1769, she and Hannah “moved our bed down below” after a storm and “Spent part of the Night in conversation & Plainly Saw mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted had lifted up his heel against me” (7). What, we ask, has Hannah confided to her sister that she dare not write into the silences in her journal? All the reader knows is that Mercy concludes the year 1769 with the entry: “the most awful & Melancholy year I ever felt” (8). Over the next months, she makes such entries as “very awful & unexpected news” (4 April 1770) and “heart Brakeing News” (14 April 1770). On 28 October 1770, after Eben Fitch has returned from a journey to New England, Mercy records in her diary: “Eben Fitch Publiced to H——h Seccombe.” Why does she not write out her sister’s name? Two weeks later, on 18 November, is a single entry: “Sund. in the Evening Eben Fitch was married to Hannah Seccombe; I was very Ill” (17). On the 20th there is the line: “Eben Fitch & wife visited Mrs. Houghton; fair warm day” (17). How does one reconstruct this year in the life of an eighteenthcentury spinster in between the silences, the illnesses, and the ellipses in her diary? Always conscious of the obligation not to read into a text, one is nonetheless tempted to intuit in the silences in Mercy Seccombe’s journal the possibilities of her personal sense of loss and pain. Certainly, as she stands on one side of the threshold when her sister married Eben Fitch, she is like Anne Hecht in her recognition of Mehetible Caleff’s difference once she enters the socially sanctioned state of marriage. However, whereas Anne Hecht questioned the salubriousness of her friend’s action, Mercy Seccombe remains silent on her sister’s change of status. For herself, there is no evidence that she had any cultural structures other than her religious and parental ones to which to retreat. This was not the case with Griselda Eliza Cottnam, daughter of

Spinsterhood in Texts from Maritime Canada

241

Captain Samuel Cottnam of the 40th Regiment and Deborah (How) Cottnam, teacher, poet, and much-respected Loyalist gentlewoman in Salem, Halifax, and Saint John. Growing up in a large house in Salem, occupant of the third most expensive pew in St Peter’s Episcopal Church, and living near her mother’s “fishocracy” relatives in Marblehead, Griselda Cottnam was catapulted into a very different lifestyle when the American Revolution drove her family back to her mother’s native Nova Scotia in 1780 to escape persecution as Tories. Like Jane Austen heroines, who “have a dreadful propensity to be poor,”15 Griselda and her mother lived on the edge of genteel poverty as they established schools for girls, first in Halifax and then in Saint John. Teaching writing and spelling “with correctness,” reading “with propriety,” French “grammatically,” and the rudiments of mathematics, the Cottnam mother and daughter also stressed the “health, morals and manners”16 of the young ladies in their care. While her mother wrote verses for the girls’ samplers, Griselda in all likelihood taught the skills of basic stitching and fine “work on muslin, silk, bark, etc.” Her use of French in a 12 October 1791 letter to her uncle, Alexander Burgoyne How, suggests that it may have been she who tutored in that subject. Although the curriculum was conservative, given the rapid changes in women’s education that were occurring in the American republic once the revolution had ceased, Griselda and her mother nonetheless enjoyed the confidence of a range of middle-class government and Loyalist families such as the DesBarreses, the Streets, the Coffins, and the Jarvises, who sent their daughters to them as both day students and boarders. Nonetheless, Griselda’s 1791 letter to her uncle in St Vincent’s provides insight into the economic precariousness faced by a widow and a spinster trying to establish a business without capital and, had it not been for the excellent family social connections that the Cottnams enjoyed on both sides of the Atlantic, they might have lacked the sustained support that enabled them to survive teaching into the 1790s. That being said, Griselda gives insight into the taxing pace of teaching on her sixty-three-year-old mother when she writes to her uncle: “hard indeed [has] been her lot, to be reduced at her years to the dreadful necessity of earning a scanty subsistence by employing those talents which would grace the most conspicuous [salon] in keeping a school, & with difficulty gaining a sufficiency to live with decency [———] tis here I feel the prob with anguish.”17 That fear of losing her mother informs these sentiments is clear elsewhere in the letter when she notes,” She is my all without her – I am nothing – an indigent Friendless little mortal, but the thought is distraction I never dare to dwell upon it.” Eighteen years later, when she

242

Gwendolyn Davies

was living in Windsor, Nova Scotia, with her widowed sister, Martha Cottnam Tonge, Griselda again wrote to Alexander Burgoyne How of her mother. Deborah How Cottnam had now been dead for three years, and the loss is still palpable for Griselda: “While my animated mother lived she was to us a bright sun always chearfull. We rallied round her & basked beneath her rays. I sicken at the void.”18 Yet for all Griselda’s seeming self-absorption in being a mere moon to her mother’s sun, there is much about her in her surviving letters to reveal the spiritedness, practicality, and lack of self-pity with which she faced both “old maidism” (as she put it ) and an increasingly restricted lifestyle. Writing to her uncle in 1791 when she was a forty-two-yearold spinster, she argued that, although “time has stolen the Roses from my cheek,” it has also “added to my virtues & strengthened my understanding. I have mixed more with the world & I have neither let events or characters pass me unmarked; I have gleaned from the good, and taken warning from the bad.” Elsewhere in her letter, she adds that “not even the chilling hand of poverty, or what is often more destructive, old maidism itself, have destroyed my natural chearfulness; I can still smile in the gay circle; and what is of infinitely more consequence I can enliven our humble dwelling.” Determined to keep open her social avenues and connections, she argues, she has “adopted Sterne’s advice to our sex: ‘Reverence Thy Self.’”19 Griselda Cottnam sustained this remarkably positive attitude to her marginalized state by cultivating, as she pointed out to her uncle, a wide range of connections. Hers was a far-flung family, with most of the uncles, nephews, and cousins stationed in government and military posts from Prince Edward Island to the West Indies. Thus, like many women in her circumstances, Griselda fell back on a culture of women for practical, social, and intellectual support. From Boston to Saint John, she kept up an avid correspondence with wives and daughters in the Almon, Jarvis, Byles, and Coffin families, finding in women’s culture a sustaining emotional resource. She maintained contact with old students such as Nancy Street and Mrs Peters of Saint John, and in 1816 she enjoyed, with her sister, entertaining the children from Miss Cunningham’s school in Windsor at term’s end.20 She discussed new books by letter, ordered new boots through her friend Mrs Boyd in Saint John (“I am too well acquainted with you to apologize for the trouble I may give”), and commented merrily on Windsor weddings (“To have two Brides to visit at Windsor in one week was rather extraordinary”).21 Known for its small but genteel upper-middle-class circle, its University of King’s College encaenias, its wealthy summer residents from Halifax, and its rural beauty, the Windsor of Griselda Cottnam’s

Spinsterhood in Texts from Maritime Canada

243

declining years was a close-knit one where, in the words of an 1827 visitor, Windsorians “measure rank to a hair’s breadth, and a shopkeeper’s daughter would toss her head over a tailor’s niece.”22 Walking, sleighing, skating, reading, riding, party-going, visiting, and cardplaying characterized the predictability of Windsor’s social life to the point where a young lawyer such as Harry King exploded with boredom: “here is all one dull round & ‘one day telleth another.’”23 He also chafed against the gossipiness of Windsor, where ladies “cannot spend an evening at home without a dish of scandal.”24 But for all of Windsor’s microscopic intensity, Griselda Cottnam and her widowed sister, Martha Cottnam Tonge, managed to sustain their place in the community, although old age and their financial inability to maintain a horse meant, as she wrote to her uncle, a narrowing of their world throughout the winter: “I never expereinced a duller one – it has been intensely cold so severe a season has not been for 17 years – There has been exceeding good sleighing but for the want of one of those machines which move on the snow as a Belle from England styles our sleighs – we have been almost entirely confined to the house. I begin to feel that I want air exercise and chearful society more than our own fireside affords.”25 Yet for all Griselda Cottnam’s chafing here, she is anything but the “Miss Snarl,” the “hateful old maid” of crutches and cantankerous spinsterhood that regional satirist “Samuel Slyboots” developed in the Prince Edward Island Register on 23 August 1823, a year after Griselda Eliza Cottnam’s death. Nor is she the lank-locked, shrivel-cheeked maiden aunt, Miss Tabitha, of Patty Pry’s satiric 1826 sketches. Nothing in the complex “lived lives” of real spinsters such as Mercy Seccombe or Griselda Eliza Cottnam illustrates such simplicity or deserves such trivializing. Meagre as is the surviving evidence of their lives – a year’s diary in Seccombe’s case and a few letters in Cottnam’s – they emerge from these narratives as having clearly defined interests, personalities, disappointments, friendships, and opinions. They also remain, in many respects, products of their time, where women outside the economic and social unit of marriage had little option but dependency. Although Griselda Cottnam could challenge expectations for young women while she had the inspiration of her more gregarious mother to assist her in establishing a school, she would have been left indigent after her mother’s death had not powerful friends intervened to assure the continuance of a hundred-pound-per-year pension honouring her grandfather’s services to the Crown. Her sister, Martha Cottnam Tonge, was land-rich and cash-poor. Widow and spinster, both living on the margins of society, eked out a life of genteel poverty in Windsor, sustained only by family reputation, rigid frugality, and their own indomitability.

244

Gwendolyn Davies

As the nineteenth century progressed, notes Lee Virginia ChambersSchiller in Liberty, a Better Husband, women’s literature began to express the view “that it was better to remain single than to suffer the miseries of a bad marriage or to compromise one’s integrity in order to gain a husband or a competency.” From 1800 to 1860, she adds, “this attitude found widespread currency in newspapers, periodicals, fiction, and advice books.”26 Also reinforcing this shift was an increasing conviction that singlehood could be regarded as an expression of “self-reverence.”27 Griselda Cottnam had in fact echoed just such a sentiment when she wrote to her uncle that, in her “old maidism,” she was following Sterne’s adage to her sex: “Reverence Thy Self.” This development, which emerged later in Maritime literature than in American literature, found one of its most poignant articulations in Mary Eliza Herbert’s 1859 novel Belinda Dalton; or, Scenes in the Life of a Halifax Belle. Presenting an Austenesque exploration of courtship and loss in Victorian Halifax, Herbert opened the novel with a visual image of the aging Belinda as marginalized spinster. Thin, clad in rusty black, careworn, and “unknown and unnoticed”28 in the rush of the city as she gazes longingly in a store window, Belinda nonetheless emerges as a moral force in the novel because of her unrelenting dedication to the ideals and the love that have informed her youth. She reverences her convictions and her dead fiancé too much to escape poverty by marrying for convenience. Duped by an unscrupulous lawyer who takes advantage of her business inexperience by seizing her inherited property, she is shown at the end of the novel to be a courageous victim of all of the forces that degrade and marginalize spinsters. Herbert develops the social activism of this novel by directly charging the “Reader” at the conclusion that “should any who have perused these scenes, and who thoughtlessly have been accustomed to speak in a somewhat contemptuous tone, of that often unjustly despised class, old maids, be led from it, to pause and reflect on what, perchance, might be the admirable traits in the character they contemn, and thus arrive at the charitable conclusion that virtue is not incompatible with poverty, and that the friendless are those who should most fully share in the sympathies of the youthful heart, our labor will not have been in vain.”29 Unlike the situation of Mercy Seccombe, Griselda Cottnam, or Patty’s Aunt Tabitha, Belinda Dalton has the support of neither family nor female friends at the end of her life. Herbert has, at the conclusion of her novel, developed the modern spinster’s plight. Isolated in an increasingly industrial and business-conscious world, Belinda sits, like thousands of urban old women in twentieth-century fiction, “solitary in her little apartment day by day.”30 Family and friends are dead. Others have forgotten her and pass her in the streets. Only by doing

Spinsterhood in Texts from Maritime Canada

245

good deeds does she have any human contact. Only in religion does she have any solace. And in this sense, she marks the Victorian embellishment to the evolving spinster figure in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Maritime literature. Whereas the devoutness of Caleff, Seccombe, Cottnam, and Tabitha may never have been in question, it is the mid-Victorian spinster who begins to assume moral and spiritual meaning as an exemplar to society. She abides, notes Herbert, “in the dwelling of poverty, in the sick chamber, and over the death-bed of the beloved.”.31 The words resonate with the spirit of those carved over the grave of nineteenth-century American feminist and spinster Emily Howland: “I strove to realize myself and serve.”32 In lieu of those words, Mary Eliza Herbert has developed Belinda as a public symbol who brings a hundred years of evolving spinster images in Maritime personal and public texts to a social-advocacy end.

no tes 1 David Arnason, “The Letters of Patty Pry,” in Nineteenth Century Canadian Stories (Toronto: MacMillan, 1976), 35. 2 Ibid., 39. 3 Ibid., 36. 4 Ibid. 5 Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: The Generations of 1780–1840 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), 1. 6 Ibid., 11. 7 Elaine Forman Crane, Ebb Tide in New England: Women, Seaports, and Social Change, 1630–1800 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 11–12. 8 Ibid., 13–14. 9 Carole Gerson and Gwendolyn Davies, eds. Canadian Poetry from the Beginnings through the First World War (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 42. 10 Deborah Caplan, Jane Austen among Women (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 73. 11 Ibid., 75. 12 For further information on the Seccombe family, see Gwendolyn Davies, “Poet to Pulpit to Planter: The Peregrinations of the Reverend John Seccombe,” in Margaret Conrad, ed., Making Adjustments: Change and Continuity in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Fredericton: Acadiensis, 1991), 189–97; and Gwendolyn Davies, “Gendered Responses: The Seccombe Diaries,” in Margaret Conrad, ed., Intimate Relations: Family and

246

Gwendolyn Davies

Community in Planter Nova Scotia, 1759–1800 (Fredericton: Acadiensis Press, 1995), 132–40. 13 Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (nsarm), mg 1, vol. 797c, no. 2.7, Family papers: Seccombe, Memoranda of leading events by a member of the Seccombe family, Harvard and Chester, Nova Scotia, 1755 to 1770, no. 78, by Miss Seccombe daughter of Rev. John Seccombe. 14 nsarm mg 100, vol. 219, #9d, John Seccombe to “Revd. & dear Sir,” Chester, 28 May 1773. 15 Margaret Wente, “Visiting Jane Austen’s World,” Globe and Mail, 20 Jan. 1996, d6. The phrase is ascribed to Jane Austen. 16 ”Education for Young Ladies. Mrs. Cottnam,” Nova Scotia Gazette and Weekly Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1789. 17 nsarm, mg1, vol. 474, Edward How Papers, no. 120. Eliza Cottnam to Alexander Burgoyne How. 12 October 1791. 18 Ibid., no. 121. Eliza Cottnam to “Sandy,” 5 March 1809. 19 Ibid., Eliza Cottnam to Alexander Burgoyne How, 12 Oct. 1791. 20 New Brunswick Museum Archives, Jarvis Family Papers, shelf 86, f 11–4, Eliza Cottnam to Mrs Boyd, 2 Sept. 1816. 21 Ibid. 22”A Ride from Halifax to Windsor, Novascotian, 1 Nov. 1827. 23 Harry King, “Harry King’s Courtship Letters, 1829–1831,” ed. Alice Terry Marion (ma dissertation, Acadia University, 1986), 90. 24 Ibid., 175. 25 nsarm, mg 1, vol. 474, no. 121, Eliza Cottnam to “Sandy,” 5 March 1809. 26 Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband, 17. 27 Ibid., 12. 28 Mary E. Herbert, Belinda Dalton; or, Scenes in the Life of a Halifax Belle (Halifax: Mary E. Herbert, 1859), 5. 29 Ibid., 60. 30 Ibid., 59. 31 Ibid., 6. 32 Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband, 213.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

247

8 Matthews and Marillas Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881 mi ch ele sta i rs

Spinsters and bachelors feature prominently in main and supporting roles in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s widely read Anne of Green Gables and her other stories. While literary scholars have scrutinized the representation of these unmarried men and women of late nineteenthcentury and early twentieth-century Prince Edward Island, Canadian historians have paid little attention to the lives of people who did not marry.1 In this chapter I analyze the census of 1881 to determine what can be seen of the lives of bachelors and spinsters in Prince Edward Island at the time Montgomery was writing. Her Matthews and Marillas, I argue, were neither isolated cases nor rareties in this island society. Rather, she quite clearly followed the advice to “write what she knew.” Spinsters and bachelors ran farms, headed households, and saw to domestic labour in the immediate vicinity of her home, as they did across the Island. Indeed, rates of lifelong celibacy were particularly high in Prince Edward Island as in the other Maritime provinces, especially for women. These bachelors’ and spinsters’ lives appear to bear little relationship to those described in much of the literature on the history of single men and women, which tends to focus on highly educated spinsters and often on cities. Few lived alone. There are hints in wills that some of the men may have had same-sex lifelong partners, but there is no hard evidence of female same-sex relationships of the kind that literary scholars have sought in the relationship between Anne and her “kindred spirit,” Diana. Most lived, not on the margins of society, but at the heart of families and households on the Island. Montgomery’s writings suggest the multiple reasons behind remaining

248

Michele Stairs

single. The census offers a glimpse at just how widespread singlehood was in late nineteenth-century Prince Edward Island. In what follows I move from an examination of the extent of non-marriage to study the individual characteristics and living situations of these single men and women. The census information suggests that Island residents who remained single throughout their lives existed much closer to the centre of family than its margins. Indeed, their marginalization appears to be far more a result of the failure of academics to appreciate their role than as a consequence of familial relations. Although the types of questions asked in the census set the parameters for my research, they permit a consideration of some elements of family and household composition. The information that census enumerators gathered about the households of Prince Edward Island in 1881 suggests that roughly one in seven, or over 15 per cent, of all households included at least one never-married adult. Nearly 18 per cent of the women and 17 per cent of the men aged thirty-five and older were identified by enumerators as having never married.2 Unmarried adults were more concentrated in some of the Island’s lots than in others. On some lots, over 27 per cent of households included at least one spinster; on others, nearly 20 per cent included a bachelor. At the other end of the scale, some lots had never married men and women in only about 3 per cent of the households.3 Even in those areas where the never-married were relatively rare, it seems clear that many Islanders lived in homes with an unmarried man or women and that many more would have either known or been related to a household containing one. Singlehood was clearly widespread in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s home province.

th e never-marrie d i n pr i nce edward i s l a n d Matthew and Marilla permanently inhabit the category of bachelor and spinster in Montgomery’s fiction. It is difficult to imagine that the competent, tough Marilla or the painfully shy Matthew would ever choose to marry and leave their singlehood behind. For historians interested in studying singlehood, especially from quantitative sources, the question of who was a bachelor or a spinster is not so simple. There is no problem measuring the numbers of people listed as unmarried in a census or in other records. But at what age does being unmarried indicate permanent singlehood? The age at which people tended to marry varied both historically and culturally. In Prince Edward Island the average age of first marriage during this time period was twentyseven years for women and thirty years for men.4 I have therefore

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

249

decided, where possible, to follow the precedent set by Susan Cott Watkins by considering the never-married as individuals aged thirtyfive years and older. This relatively late age serves to eliminate as many people who might marry late as possible.5 Unfortunately, published censuses do not always make it possible to use this age in comparative figures. Thus when comparing Island rates with national ones, I am forced to use the age categories reported in the published census. In the detailed analyses of the spinsters and bachelors of Prince Edward Island, I focus on those aged thirty-five and over. To find them, I located all the never-married individuals aged thirty-five and over in the 1881 census returns and recorded details of their age, birthplace, ethnicity, religion, whom they lived with, and their occupation. In addition, I draw selectively here on the wills that some of these individuals wrote. The published Canadian census data suggest that singlehood was part of the experience of a significant number of Canadians in the late nineteenth century, but the proportions varied across the country (see table 8.1). Spinsters were more common in the Maritimes in 1881 than anywhere else in the country, with 17 to 19 per cent of all women over the age of thirty-one in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia reported as never married when the census was taken. Men were also less likely to be married in the Maritimes than in other parts of Canada except the west, where bachelorhood was widespread, but few women remained single, though rates on the Island were much lower than for the two other Maritime provinces. The published census of 1881 reported that out of a total male population of 16,234 aged thirty-one and over, some 2,435, or 12.7 per cent, were bachelors. Rates of spinsterhood were much higher, with 2,999 women aged thirty-one or over out of a total of 16,780 women recorded as single. Ten years later, during the peak of out-migration, the proportions remain similar. The female population had dropped to 16,198. Of these, 16.7 per cent, or 2,699, were single. Of the 15,820 men, 2,049, or 13.0 per cent, were single men. The 5 per cent sample of the 1901 census made by the Canadian Families Project suggests that the proportion of spinsters was similar at the turn of the century, while that of bachelors had declined slightly. Spinsterhood, then, remained a reality for over one in six Island women and about one in eight men between 1881 and 1901. Rates of spinsterhood remained higher in Prince Edward Island and the other Maritime provinces than in the rest of the country throughout these two decades. Bachelorhood, in contrast, was consistently lower than in the west, yet higher than the Canadian average until 1901 and then somewhat lower. The experience of permanent singlehood for women and men was clearly

250

Michele Stairs

Table 8.1 Percentages of unmarried adults in Canada

1881 aggregate census 31+ canada Men Women prince edward island Men Women new brunswick Men Women nova scotia Men Women quebec Men Women ontario Men Women manitoba Men Women north-west territories1 Men Women british columbia Men Women

1891 aggregate census 35+

1901 sample from Canadian Families Project 35+

14.7 14.4

9.8 9.4

15.2 12.7

12.7 17.9

13.0 16.7

12.4 17.3

17.5 17.1

11.1 10.6

12.5 11.7

17.1 19.8

11.3 13.4

13.4 13.5

13.7 18.2

8.3 12.7

9.0 12.9

13.9 13.9

10.5 9.3

14.7 13.5

19.8 1.4

9.6 0.6

13.8 7.4

(bad data) (bad data)

(bad data) (bad data)

44.2 16.2

41.2 4.9

36.0 6.7

35.6 4.4

1 The 1881–91 data from the North-West Territories does not provide age categories or marital status for most individuals.

familiar to both to residents of Prince Edward Island and their fellow Canadians.6 While the aggregate census data reveal the extent of non-marriage within Island society, the manuscript census returns demonstrate strong links between these bachelors and spinsters and their families. These men and women were not single women and men “adrift,” living in homo-social work environments prior to marriage or taking advantage of the work and leisure opportunities that growing cities offered women seeking fun and, eventually, a husband.7 They seem to

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

251

have elicited no widespread panic about same-sex relationships. In contrast to British Columbia, there was no large aboriginal population, so native women did not attract bachelors into transgression of racial boundaries.8 Rather, most of these men and women had enduring connections to their families and communities. Their lives appear to differ significantly from that depicted in most literature on singlehood in North America. These lives were lived out largely in a rural setting where they attracted neither the controversy directed toward young working girls observed in North American cities nor the concerns about redundancy and “surplus women” that were so widespread concerning British spinsters.9 Both the census data and Montgomery’s writings suggest that the majority of single individuals lived a comparatively mundane existence, working and residing with their families. Who were these unmarried Islanders, and how can we understand something of their lives? Bachelors and spinsters should not be studied in isolation. I believe that in order to understand the way that gender shapes the experience of singlehood and familial relations, it is necessary to approach their experiences from a common vantage point. The information available in the census schedules offers such a perspective. It is possible to limit the discussion to men and women who had not married by age thirty-five. Using the census, we can analyze the ways they reported their ethnic origins and locate them in specific parts of the Island. Indeed, it is possible to identify real bachelors and spinsters who lived near to Lucy Maud Montgomery and to assess the relative frequency of household arrangements like that of Matthew and Marilla. Were many of them brothers and sisters? Did many take in orphaned or other children? It is to these questions the chapter now turns. Men and women of Scottish heritage were especially likely not to marry (see tables 8.2 and 8.3). Scottish women were overrepresented by 40 per cent, and Scottish men at nearly the same rate. More than three-fifths of spinsters and bachelors claimed to be Scottish, compared with only two-fifths of the total population. Scottish women and men were almost twice as likely as their English counterparts to remain unwed. Furthermore, Scottish spinsters outnumbered Scottish bachelors more dramatically than in any other ethnic group. Had all the bachelors of Scottish origin married Scottish spinsters, there still would have been nearly four hundred spinsters of Scottish origin on the Island in 1881. Irish, English, and French Islanders were much less likely to remain single. Clearly, there were powerful subcultures within Island society. However, the reasons for this behaviour are difficult to ascertain. Scottish national evidence on singlehood does not exist prior to the mid-nineteenth century, so a historical trend from Scotland to

252

Michele Stairs

Table 8.2 Spinsters and ethnicity

Ethnicity

No. of spinsters

% spinsters

No. of general population

% general population

Scottish Irish English French German African Dutch Mi’kmaq Unknown

1,367 395 233 131 27 7 4 3 2

63 18.2 10.7 6 1.2 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.1

48,933 25,415 21,404 10,751 1,076 15 292 281 192

44.9 23.3 19.7 9.9 1 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.7

Total

2,169

99.8

108,499

99.6

Prince Edward Island is difficult to trace. Researchers examining Scotland’s high celibacy rates have linked them to the remoteness and low populations of the rural areas, as well as to the effects of large-scale emigration and the resultant gender imbalance.10 We know that the Scottish population experienced the slowest rate of growth as a result, in part, of periods of near-famine and serious epidemics, which helped to create “a demographic regime in the eighteenth century something like that of France, and during the classic ‘industrial revolution’ period, a quite different demographic transition from that experienced by England and Wales.”11 Perhaps this “demographic regime” radically altered the Scottish mentalité in a manner that encouraged permanent singlehood. In any case, the high Scottish rates of spinsterhood seem to bear a closer resemblance to France than to the remainder of Great Britain.12 And Scottish Islanders appear to have retained this cultural feature. Island Acadians, in contrast, appear much less likely than their counterparts in France to remain single. An explanatory factor might be the timing of their departure from France; their arrival in Canada before 1700 possibly predated a formative demographic experience that affected French marriage patterns. A further cultural explanation for their high marriage rates might be as a partial response to their smaller share of the total population, reflecting a desire to maintain, and perhaps to strengthen, their numbers. Muriel K. Roy refers to the “revenge of the cradle” when she notes that the Acadian population on Prince Edward Island increased twelvefold during the first seventy years of the nineteenth century.13 In an earlier period, Gisa Hynes

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

253

Table 8.3 Bachelors and ethnicity

Ethnicity Scottish Irish English French German Other Welsh Dutch African Total

No. of bachelors 971 328 181 59 13 31 2 1 1 1,559

% bachelors

No. of general population

% general population

62.3 21 11.6 3.8 0.8 0.2 0.1 0.06 0.06

48,933 25,415 21,404 10,751 1,076 40 164 292 151

44.9 23.3 19.7 9.9 1 0.04 0.2 0.3 0.1

99.9

108,226

99.4

1 All three gave American as their ethnicity.

insists that “the penchant for matrimony prevailed over class differences when no husband or wife of equal rank could be found.”14 Historians used to link the increase in rates of non-marriage among the Irish to the Famine and the discouraging effects of poor economic conditions.15 Timothy Guinnane suggests that cultural patterns also contributed to the high rates of non-marriage in Ireland. He argues that it becomes easier to remain single in a society where one-quarter of the adults never marry and that “patterns of socialization, of care for the aged, of farm transfers from the childless – all would arise from and become regularized out of the practices of earlier generations.”16 Interestingly, Ireland’s high proportions of bachelors and spinsters do not seem to have translated into higher rates of Irish non-marriage on Prince Edward Island. This failure to replicate Irish marital patterns may relate to the timing of emigration, as the Irish Islanders emigrated prior to Ireland’s peak celibacy rates in the late nineteenth century,17 when the rates increased from 10–12 per cent remaining single in 1851 to 28–40 per cent remaining single by 1911.18 The apparent disinclination on the part of the English Islanders to remain single may, to some extent, have represented a response to the heated debate in the British newspapers and magazines about “redundant women.” Certainly, some Islanders would have been aware of the debate, as the local papers regularly announced the arrival of new reading materials from England. Yet, despite the debate raging in the British press over “redundant women,” the Island press remained silent on the issue of spinsterhood.

254

Michele Stairs

Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, easily the best-known bachelor and spinster in Canadian literature, were of Scottish origin, like Montgomery herself. The editors of The Annotated Anne of Green Gables suggest that Montgomery preferred as central characters Scots such as “Matthew and Marilla [who] represent the hardheaded practicality and clannishness that are arguably part of the Scottish national character.”19 Yet in many ways, Montgomery’s depiction of these unmarried siblings shows the classic literary form of the unlovable spinster and the gentle, but spineless bachelor.20 In Anne of Green Gables, she begins with Matthew, providing a sense of the man rather than a visual depiction: “Matthew so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Matthew, dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn’t happen too often.”21 Marilla receives a more physical description, which is used equally to convey a sense of her character: “Marilla was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she was; but there was a slight saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humour.”22 Obviously, a quantitative historian lacking photographs or journals written by her subjects must remain silent with respect to their appearance and personalities. However, there are other descriptions that do invite comment and comparison. Were Matthew and Marilla substitutes for the spinster aunts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm as has been suggested? My sense is no. Montgomery’s writing engaged the commonly cited prescription for authors: write about what you know. She personally knew households composed of bachelor brothers and spinster sisters. According to census returns, at least four such households could be found in the immediate vicinity of her home. Furthermore, adopting an orphan, while not familiar to all of these households, was known in her community. Montgomery even identifies the Pierce MacNeill family as providing the germ of inspiration for Anne,23 a household that contained a spinster sister, a latemarrying brother, and an adopted child. Were such household arrangements common only on Montgomery’s home lot or representative of the Island more generally?24 The census data suggests that in 1881 nearly 20 per cent of spinsters and 22.4 per cent of bachelors lived together in a household with a brother or sister as a sibling pair (see table 8.4).25 Guinnane found similar household

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

255

Table 8.4 Household structure Household Bachelor brother Spinster sister Parents Sibling family Niece/nephew Alone Institution Employer Children Unknown Total

No. of spinsters

% spinsters

No. of bachelors

% bachelors

423 58 692 447 150 49 17 102 26 205

19.5 2.7 31.9 20.6 7.0 2.3 0.8 4.7 1.2 10

59 349 489 198 96 118 20 61 10 159

3.7 22.4 31.4 12.7 6.2 7.6 1.3 3.9 0.6 10.1

2,169

100.0

1,559

100.0

note: The data contained in this table are taken from the 1881 manuscript census and include individuals aged thirty-five and older.

structures in his study of rural Ireland. There, approximately 33 per cent of never-married men resided with a never-married sister.26 An Irish priest observed, “Frequently, it is the man in possession of all the normal comforts of life who emerges into confirmed bachelorhood. He does not require a wife to cook his meals or to keep his home in order. He can pay a maid, or he may have a loyal unmarried sister. In his eyes marriage is more of a disability than a blessing.” 27 Interestingly, pei folk history suggests that there was an Irish tradition in place on the Island whereby a daughter would remain unmarried in order to care for her bachelor brothers.28 Anne, the orphan adopted by siblings, was not simply a creation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s imagination. Around one-third of the bachelor and spinster siblings who lived together were raising a child when the 1881 census was taken.29 Raising children offered these households of never-marrieds a number of advantages: a source of labour, potential caregivers in old age, companions, and heirs. Some were adopted officially, some were home children, and some were relatives. Information from the 1881–1901 census returns combined with Mary Roberts’s will shows that John and Mary Roberts’s nephew, George Roberts, resided with them for at least twenty-nine years prior to her death and his inheritance of her farm.30 Montgomery’s other stories describe a variety of household situations. Many of her spinsters resided alone, some barely made ends meet, others lived comfortably, and a few women were undeniably

256

Michele Stairs

wealthy. Those not on their own or with their unmarried brothers lived with aged parents, unmarried sisters, or married siblings and their families. A few boarded out, fewer still lived with extended kin or strangers, and none lived in houses of industry. Interestingly, Montgomery’s bachelors tended to live most frequently in shared households; few resided alone. Again, her writing reflects the general pattern of my census households. While some spinsters lived alone, they were few in number, representing only 2.3 per cent of living situations. More bachelors lived singly, at 7.6 per cent. However, most unmarried Islanders shared their lives with other family members, 74.7 per cent of spinsters and 70.2 per cent of bachelors resided with parents, siblings, or nieces and nephews. There were no houses of industry, but a few individuals were accommodated in the insane asylum, and a similar number in the Island hospitals. They represented a total of only 1 percent. For most of these Islanders, not marrying did not mean living alone. Nor were they more likely to live alone as they aged. Aging spinsters and bachelors usually continued to live with their families. Solitude does not appear to be the “pull factor”’ behind many of these men’s and women’s rationales for remaining unmarried. Montgomery implies rather than states the reason behind the Cuthberts’ unmarried state. Matthew appears far too shy to court a woman, and his sister capably runs the farm household, successfully eliminating the need to marry for survival. On the other hand, Marilla seems too sour and unpleasant to ever hope to entice a husband. Interestingly, Montgomery does not continue this static depiction of spinsters in later works, yet her bachelors do remain rather one-dimensional. Bachelors, readers discover in “The Girl at the Gate,” remain single out of true devotion to a love lost to death: “Finally, he told me of Margaret. I knew a little about her ... that she had been his sweetheart and had died very young. Mr. Lawrence had remained true to her memory ever since, but I had never heard him speak of her before.”31 Or they remain single because the need for a partner at home had not yet driven them to seek out a wife. Or they had never thought about marriage. When Montgomery decides that some of these bachelors should wed, their proposals are telling. In “The Gossip of Valleyview” Thomas Everett acknowledges the inspiration from gossip when he proposes to Adelia Williams: “The story set me to thinking about you, and from that I got to wishing it was true ... I couldn’t get you out of my head, and at last I didn’t want to. It just seemed to me that you were the very woman for me if you’d only take me. Will you Adelia? I’ve got a good farm and house, and I’ll try to make you happy.” Mont-

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

257

gomery observes, “It was not a very romantic wooing, perhaps. But Adelia was forty and had never been a romantic little body even in the heyday of youth. She was a practical woman, and Young Thomas was a fine-looking man of his age with abundance of worldly goods.”32 “Miss Cordelia’s Accomodation” finds Mr Smiles attempting to accomplish two deeds at once when he makes an offer to purchase Nap, Miss Cordelia’s horse, and marry her at the same time: “I want to buy Nap, he said in a sepulchral tone, but that is not the only thing I want. I want you too ma’am. I’m tired of being a cross old bachelor. I think I’d like to be a cross old husband, for a change. Do you think you could put up with me in that capacity, Miss Cordelia, my dear?”33 From Montgomery’s perspective, it seems no man would choose willingly to remain unwed. Bachelorhood might result from lost love, shyness, lack of opportunity, or inaction but certainly not from the appeal of a single life. Her spinsters, in contrast, display a remarkable diversity of rationales for their non-married states. Some spinsters appear to despise men and denigrate the bonds of marriage. In “Aunt Phillipa and the Men,” Aunt Phillipa converses with her love-struck niece, Ursula: “Don’t you know any good husbands, Aunt Phillipa?” I asked desperately. “Oh, yes, lots of ’em – over there,” said Aunt Phillipa sardonically, waving her whip in the direction of a little country graveyard on a distant hill. “Yes, but living – walking about in the flesh?” “Precious few. Now and again you’ll come across a man whose wife won’t put up with any nonsense and he has to be respectable. But the most of ’em are poor bargains – poor bargains.” “And are all the wives saints?” I persisted “Laws, no, but they’re too good for the men,” retorted Aunt Phillipa.34

And from “A Sandshore Wooing” the tale of Marguerite and her Aunt Martha, an interesting comment that clarifies that “man-hating” does not indicate “woman-loving”: I have always lived with Aunt Martha – my parents died when I was a baby. Aunt Martha says I am to be her heiress if I please her – which means – but, oh, you do not know what “pleasing” Aunt Martha means ... Aunt is a determined and inveterate man-hater. She has no particular love for women, indeed, and trusts nobody but Mrs. Saxonby, her maid ... Aunt Martha would be in danger of taking a fit if she ever saw me talking to a man. She watches me jealously, firmly determined to guard me from any possible attack of a roaring and ravening lion in the disguise of nineteenth-century masculine attire.35

258

Michele Stairs

Controlling family members who prevent marriage figure in a few stories. For example, in “The Dissipation of Miss Posonby,” Miss Posonby’s dismissal of her fiancé is explained by the terse “Father disapproved.”36 Additionally, a number of women – and men – chose or were expected to remain at home to help with the family. The influence of religious difference also arises as an obstacle to marriage, though frequently commented upon more by other family members than the individuals involved. It is difficult to assess the role of religion in marriage decisions; the census does indicate the presence of some intermarriage between Protestant faiths, but denominational adherence demonstrates remarkable flexibility from census to census – one year an individual might be a Methodist, another year a Baptist.37 There is less evidence of intermarriage between Protestants and Catholics. The occasional “mixed” marriage indicates only its existence, not the level of community acceptance. Montgomery recognized the diversity of rationales for and against marriage. Her own journals tell the tale of a young woman who falls in love on more than one occasion, but never loses her head to marry the beloved but unsuitable young man. Instead, she chose to marry an individual who failed to inspire the same level of interest but seemed more appropriate. Census rationales appear more subtly. Those who did not marry seem divided primarily between individuals balancing family obligations, those apparently choosing employment opportunities over marriage, poor financial conditions, and the small number of potential spouses, since spinsters made up 58 per cent of the never-marrieds. Most of the spinsters in the census returns appear to have been involved in caring for their aged parents, bachelor brothers, or nieces and nephews. The household structure for nearly 59 per cent of spinsters found in the 1881 census suggests that these women served as a family caregiver. A few cases existed of individuals awaiting the death of a parent before seeking a marriage and household of their own. Montgomery herself postponed her marriage until the death of her grandmother.38 A number of wills written by the parents of aging, unmarried children speak of the potential of marriage for their offspring, suggesting that in this society passing the first bloom of youth was not a sufficient obstable to an eventual marriage. Indeed, last wills and testaments can be very informative about the values held by the testators or testatrix. In order to understand this relationship, I examined inheritance patterns on Prince Edward Island based on all 210 wills written by spinsters and 581 written by bachelors, as well as 307 wills written by their family members between 1850 and 1910. The contents of the wills written by bachelors and

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

259

spinsters suggest the active role they played within their families and wider community. Concern for family and community was perpetuated through the inheritance process. As indicated above, many spinsters were involved in caregiving, but so too were bachelors, if we consider their role in maintaining the family livelihood and supporting their parents and other relatives. Women, in particular, participated actively in local religious and charitable organizations and remembered these organizations in their wills. Certain priorities appear in the inheritance process for both men and women: the older generation would be cared for first, particularly a mother. After a parent, bequests were directed to an unmarried sister and then most commonly to a niece or nephew. Some never-married individuals directed their bequests entirely to a church or other charitable organization. A number of reasons could lie behind their decision: a lack of family or friends, devout religious beliefs, or perhaps they were rebels in a society where family appears paramount. The most popular religious bequests were to the Women’s Foreign Mission Societies, which, according to Wendy Mitchinson, “were among the first national women’s groups to form and as such were part of what was generally referred to at the time as the ‘women’s movement.’”39 Interestingly, the first of these associations was formed in 1825 in Princetown, Prince Edward Island, an area with high levels of non-marriage. Hospitals also received endowments from the unmarried; in some cases, it was evident in their wills or obituaries that they had received in-hospital care shortly before the writing of their wills. Others recognized the needs of the wider community and left bequests such as one to “Mrs. McEachern of Charlottetown, widow of Archibald McEachern, stonecutter, deceased, who has been left with three little children, in very poor circumstances the sum of one hundred dollars.”40 Some women preferred work over marriage. The sister of Robert Harris chose to postpone marriage until her retirement as headmistress at an educational academy for young ladies in Charlottetown; she wed at age fifty-two. In some instances, these career women are lost to the Island census, as it became common for Island women of all socio-economic classes to head to the “Boston States” to find work during this period.41 My own great-great-Aunt Amy Mutch worked as a nurse at a Boston hospital until called home in 1907 to care for her elderly parents.42 Most of these spinsters appear to have been busy attending to their own demanding lives, not pining for the love that might never come. Montgomery presents a number of these capable career spinsters. Bessy Houghton, in “The Wooing of Bessy,” inherited her father’s farm, which she kept “and took the reins of government in her own

260

Michele Stairs

capable hands. She made a success of it too, which was more than many a man in Lynnfield had done.”43 Miss Cordelia had been a schoolteacher who led a quiet and contented life until Mr Smiles’s arrival.44 One of six sisters, Anne Stockard remained the requisite old maid who inherited the family farm, and because she “was a good businesswoman ... the farm continued to be the best in the district.”45 It was not unusual for a spinster daughter to receive all or a significant portion of the family estate. I found that in nearly half the family wills the spinster daughter received all or the largest portion of the family patrimony. Inheritance processes on Prince Edward Island show striking similarities to the process described by Gerard Bouchard and Isabelle de Pourbaix in the Saguenay, where inheritance was viewed as part of a greater family process in which the continuation of the family name was moderated by a desire to secure the well-being of all family members.46 There appears to have been a special role and special consideration for these daughters – perhaps a reflection of the role of spinsters within their families. This would be particularly true if the daughters had remained single as part of a family strategy.47 In such a case, financial recompense and perhaps even farm ownership was as much her right as that of any of her brothers who stayed to work the farm. Twenty-six of the 274 spinsters who listed an occupation, or 9 per cent, appear in the census as farmers (see table 8.5). Admittedly, the vast majority of employed women, 120 or 44 per cent, were employed as servants. But “farmer” shared second place with the more traditional “dressmaker,” followed by “boarding-house owner,” with 21 women. Not surprisingly, those women who resided in Charlottetown were more likely to have an occupation and represented 24.7 per cent of the employed spinsters. Also, not surprisingly in this rural province, the majority of bachelors were farmers (see table 8.6). More interesting is the fact that many of them owned their farms outright or shared ownership with their unwed sisters and brothers: these were not sons awaiting the inheritance of a farm to marry. A small proportion listed occupations as merchants, clerks, or teachers. Again, then, the bachelors of Montgomery’s stories do not differ dramatically from the employment experience of these Island never-marrieds. However, she remains mostly silent about those bachelors who lacked the independence of farm ownership. A significant minority of bachelors held positions as labourers or servants, jobs that offered an income much less able to support a family. Montgomery keeps these sorts of individuals in the margins of her work, their appearances brief and shadowy. Occupational plurality as an economic strategy for individuals appears less commonly in the census; only four bachelors indicate multiple roles, and only one of

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

261

Table 8.5 Occupations of spinsters Occupation

Number

Percentage

Not given Servant Milliner Retired Dressmaker Grocer Housekeeper Farmer Teacher Tailoress Weaver Boarding-house keeper Seamstress Postmistress Shopkeeper Fortune teller Washerwoman Manager Cook Hatmaker Clerk Stewardess Compositor Nurse Umbrella repairer Indecipherable

1,895 120 4 1 26 3 10 26 7 15 21 7 10 1 5 1 4 1 1 1 2 1 2 3 1 1

87.4 5.5 0.2 0.0 1.2 0.1 0.5 1.2 0.3 0.7 1.0 0.3 0.5 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 0.1 0.0 0.0

Total

2,169

100.0

source: papei, 1881 manuscript census.

these, farmer/labourer, suggests a less-successful agricultural enterprise. The census implies that occupational plurality was achieved in some households by individuals taking on different types of employment. The most obvious example appears in the McIsaac household in Lot 41. All five bachelor brothers pursued different occupations: John as a fisherman, Joseph as a farmer, Anthony as a lumberman, George as a seaman, and Vincent as a joiner. Possibly these various occupations were representative of their interests, but one cannot escape noting that it would be unlikely for all five sectors to experience downturns concurrently. Given the restrictions of her genre and the time period of Montgomery’s writing, her depictions of spinsters are remarkably diverse.48

262

Michele Stairs

Table 8.6 Occupations of bachelors Occupation Farmer Not given Labourer Carpenter/joiner Servant Mariner Farm labourer Fisherman Ship carpenter Merchant Shoemaker Teacher Trader Blacksmith Clerk Ship captain Physician Storekeeper Carriage builder Stonemason Painter Illegible Farm servant Bookkeeper Barrister1 Miller Postmaster Truckman Gentleman Accountant Tinsmith Ferryman Saddler Brickmaker Waiter Sailmaker Various (one each)2 Plural occupations3 Total

Number 927 185 75 40 39 30 28 25 19 14 13 12 12 10 9 7 7 7 5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 1 (x39) 4

Percentage 59.5 11.9 4.8 2.6 2.5 1.9 1.8 1.6 1.2 0.9 0.8 0.8 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.4 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.06 (x39) 0.3

1,559

1 One of the barristers also served as a member of the Legislative Council. 2 The thirty-nine occupations that appear only once are: saloon keeper, tobacconist, can maker, keeper of cemetery, fire-engine driver, master assistant in the Royal Navy, banker, porter, boatman, barber, janitor, cook, businessman, head surveyor, tailor, clock repairer, cabinetmaker, druggist, broker, college vice-president, meat preserver, manufacturies, mechanic, machinist, canvassing agent, machine agent, plasterer, dyer, printer, lumberman, boarding-house keeper, chief engineer, bricklayer, collector of customs, gardener, civil engineer, gas engineer, and agent. 3 Only four individuals listed plural occupations: farmer-labourer, farmer-miller, farmer-surveyor, and accountant-farmer.

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

263

Their rationales for remaining single show no strict uniformity, nor do their dispositions. Among spinsters, we see man-haters and the heartbroken, those abandoned and those who spurned, the independent and the obligated. On the other hand, her bachelors conform largely to the characterization of Matthew Cuthbert. Most are gentle, kindly old men who seem to lack the gumption, or sense, necessary to alter their state of bachelorhood if they could. The circumstances of these tales show a strong correlation to the experience noted in the census returns. Family obligations and other personal opportunities appear in the census as the common reasons for non-marriage. To these, Montgomery adds tales of lost love, disinterest or distrust of the opposite sex, lack of acceptable mates – certainly, reasons not beyond the scope of reality. In her writing, as in the census returns and wills, rural singlehood looks different from the situation described by historians of urban centres. Montgomery’s writings promote both marriage and non-marriage as positive options for men and women. Some 17 per cent of adult women and up to 13 per cent of adult men in late nineteenth century Prince Edward Island never married. Significant numbers lived with siblings as did Matthew and Marilla. Some, like them, also chose to raise children. For most of the men and women who never married, singlehood did not mean a rejection of family or life on the margins. Few were disconnected from the bonds of family. What emerges clearly from the census, as from Montgomery’s writings, is the connectedness of these men and women with siblings, parents, and other relatives. Perhaps if urban historians approached singleness through the lens of place and family, rather than the eyes of social reformers, they too, might find that many were rooted in the complex economic and emotional webs of family.

no tes I wish to acknowledge the financial support for my research provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire. And a thank you to Dr Bettina Bradbury for her helpful suggestions. 1 Catherine Renaud, “Une place à soi? Aspects du célibat féminin laïc à Montréal à la fin du 19e siècle” (ma thesis, Université de Montréal, 1993). Bettina Bradbury discusses singlehood briefly in Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1993). 2 In 1881, 1,777 households contained spinsters and 1,371 held bachelors.

264

3

4

5 6

7 8

Michele Stairs

Of these, 395 households included bachelors and spinsters. When 395 is subtracted from each of the first two numbers, the total number of households containing at least one spinster or bachelor is 2,358, or 13.3 per cent of the total number of Island households of 17,685. The lowest proportion for spinsters appears in Lot 11, and the highest proportion in Lot 42. For bachelors, the lowest proportion is found in Lot 2 and the peak in Lot 47. Eileen M. Thomas Gee, “Marriage in 19th Century Canada,” Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 19 (1982): 320. Although these ages appear high, they are close to the age at first marriage for the 1861 cohort in Ireland of 31 for males and 27.5 for females. According to Timothy Guinnane, the Irish were not marrying much later than their European counterparts; see The Vanishing Irish: Households, Migration, and the Rural Economy in Ireland, 1850–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 95. This was an increase from what Ruth B. Dixon noted in Ireland for 1851 when the average age of marriage was 25 for women and 30 for men; see “Late Marriage and Non-Marriage as Demographic Responses: Are They Similar?” Population Studies 32 (1978): 461. Susan Cott Watkins, “Spinsters,” Journal of Family History 9 (winter 1984): 310. For comparison, European patterns of non-marriage for individuals aged 45 and over in 1881 show a rate in England and Wales of 10 per cent for men and 12 per cent for women; in France, 13 per cent for both men and women; in Germany, 8 per cent for men and 11 per cent for women; and in Ireland, 17 per cent for both men and women. See Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 96. Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turnof-the-Century New York (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986). A number of monographs and articles explore single life in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century North America include individuals separated from their spouses. These methodological decisions limit their utility for my work, since they examine singlehood as a temporary stage of life rather than as a permanent feature of people’s lives. For examples of this approach see Cecilia Danysk, “‘A Bachelor’s Paradise’: Homesteaders, Hired Hands and the Construction of Masculinity, 1880–1920,” in Catherine Cavanaugh and Jeremy Mouat, eds., Making Western Canada: Essays on European Colonization and Settlement (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996), 154–185, and Nancy M. Forstell, ‘Bachelors, Boarding Houses, and Blind Pigs: Gender Construction in a Multi-Ethnic Mining Camp, 1909–1920,” in Franca Iacovetta, et al., eds., A Nation of Immigrants: Women, Workers, and Communities in Canadian History, 1840s-1960s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 251–90. The

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

9

10

11 12

13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

265

major differences between singleness and concerns about it in the west and in Prince Edward Island can be deduced from Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849–1871. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001). Joanne J. Meyerowitz utilizes the concept of familial separation in Women Adrift: Independent Wage Earners in Chicago, 1880–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). See also Howard P. Chudacoff, The Age of the Bachelor: Creating An American Subculture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), and R. Marvin McInnis, “Women, Work and Childbearing: Ontario in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” Histoire sociale/Social History 24 (Nov. 1991): 237–62. Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), and Peiss, Cheap Amusements, focus their studies of unmarried women, many of whom later wed, on the experience of singlehood, work, and leisure in the urban environment. Michael Anderson, “The Social Implications of Demographic Change,” in The Cambridge Social History of Britain, vol. 2, People and Their Environment (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 29. Ibid. Olwen Hufton, “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 9 (winter 1984): 355–76. Muriel K. Roy, “Settlement and Population Growth in Acadia,” in Jean Daigle, ed. The Acadians of the Maritimes (Moncton: Centre d’études acadiennes, 1982), 176. Gisa I. Hynes, “Some Aspects of the Demography of Port Royal, 1650–1755,” Acadiensis 3 (autumn 1973): 9. Dixon, “Late Marriage and Non-Marriage,” 461. Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 286. Ibid., 97. Dixon, “Late Marriage and Non-Marriage,” 461. L.M. Montgomery, The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, ed. Wendy E. Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary E. Doody Jones, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 421. Ibid., 4. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables. (Toronto: Tundra Books, 2000), 3. Ibid., 5. L.M. Montgomery, The Selected Journals, vol. 1, 1889–1910, ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985).

266

Michele Stairs

24 Lots, for those unfamiliar with Prince Edward Island’s history, are the sixty-seven divisions, similar to townships, of approximately 60,000 acres, with 100 acres set aside for church use and 30 acres for schools, which were raffled off in a lottery to individuals and groups, mostly resident in Britain. 25 Table 4 indicates the type of household per individual: however, in some cases more than one spinster or bachelor appeared in the same household. 26 Guinnane, The Vanishing Irish, 230. 27 Ibid., 231. 28 Baltic Lot 18 Women’s Institute, History of Baltic Lot 18 (self-published, no date), 60. 29 Public Archives of Prince Edward Island (papei), 1881 Manuscript Census. 30 papei, Last Will and Testament of Mary Roberts, probated 27 March 1900. 31 L.M. Montgomery, “The Girl at the Gate,” in Among the Shadows: Tales from the Darker Side, ed. Rea Wilmshurst (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1990), 81. 32 L.M. Montgomery, “The Gossip of Valleyview,” in At the Altar: Matrimonial Tales, ed. Rea Wilmshurst (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 62. 33 L.M. Montgomery, “Miss Cordelia’s Accomodation,” in At the Altar. 34 L.M. Montgomery, “Aunt Phillipa and the Men,” in At the Altar, 7. 35 L.M. Montgomery, “A Sandshore Wooing,” in Along the Shore: Tales by the Sea, ed. Rea Wilmshurst (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989), 191. 36 L.M. Montgomery, “The Dissipation of Miss Ponsonby,” in At the Altar, 148. 37 Hannah Lane examines the denominational fluidity demonstrated in neighbouring New Brunswick in “Tribalism, Proselytism, and Pluralism: Protestants, Family, and Denominational Identity in Mid-NineteenthCentury St Stephen, New Brunswick,” in Nancy Christie, ed. Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002). 38 Montgomery, The Annotated Anne of Green Gables, 17. 39 Wendy Mitchinson, “Canadian Women and Church Missionary Societies in the Nineteenth Century: A Step towards Independence,” Atlantis 2 (spring 1977): 57–75. 40 papei, Last Will and Testament of Jean Miller Robertson, dated 20 Oct. 1888. 41 Betsy Beattie, Obligation and Opportunity: Single Maritime Women in Boston, 1870–1930 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000).

Bachelors and Spinsters in Prince Edward Island in 1881

267

42 Information obtained from an interview with Beatrice Smith, niece of Amy Mutch. 43 L.M. Montgomery, “The Wooing of Bessy,” in At the Altar, 93. 44 Montgomery, “Miss Cordelia’s Accomodation,” 105–14. 45 L.M. Montgomery, “The Way of the Winning of Anne,” in At the Altar, 164. 46 Gérard Bouchard and Isabelle de Pourbaix, “Individual and Family Life Course in the Saguenay Region, Quebec, 1842–1911,” Journal of Family History 12 (1987): 228–29. 47 Michele Stairs, “‘An Independent and Incomplete Existence’? Spinsters in Late Nineteenth-Century Prince Edward Island” (ma thesis, University of New Brunswick, 1995). 48 Elizabeth Rollins Epperly indicates some of the characteristics of Montgomery’s fiction – “dramatic reversals of fortune, suddenly discovered long-lost relatives, sentimental love scenes, and purple patches of description” – in The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass: L.M. Montgomery’s Heroines and the Pursuit of Romance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 5.

268

Michele Stairs

Introduction

269

institutions and marginality

270

Leonard Kuffert

Reconstructing Canadian Culture

271

Introduction nancy ch ri s tie

The third section of this volume, comprising the essays by James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli, Denyse Baillargeon, Suzanne Morton, and James Struthers, addresses the changing borderlines between family initiatives and the state’s growing assertion of its own conceptualization of the family. These chapters reveal that there was no simple dichotomy between imposition and resistance; for as Moran, Wright, and Savelli and Baillargeon demonstrate, what advocates of the social-control thesis have interpreted as an era in which the whole culture became encompassed within the logic of institutional regulatory practices was largely shaped by family strategies well into the twentieth century. If, as historians of the asylum in Britain have argued, the nineteenth century did not witness the rise of a “therapeutic state” which shouldered aside the rights of families to determine the nature of institutional care,1 their emphasis upon the continued vitality of the grassroots community to shape public ideologies can be applied with even more validity to the Canadian context, where there existed the near-absence of a state infrastructure of welfare relief, a culture of localism, weak professional authority, and late-developing scientific reform movements,2 which have been cited as important constituents of the regulatory imperative and the concomitant expansion of control by the collectivity. In the absence, therefore, of conventional institutional growth, the Canadian family occupied a much larger position on the social landscape. And those charitable concerns that appeared sporadically, such as the Toronto Strangers’ Friend Society, the Ladies’ Protestant Home of Quebec City,

272

Nancy Christie

and the Sheltering Home of Montreal, to name a few, were meant to target only individuals completely bereft of family, on the assumption that the family itself should remain the principal agency of social assistance. Indeed, the notion of the “great confinement”3 has little historiographical viability in an environment where, because of the demand for cheap labour, even the House of Industry was considered but a temporary refuge. This situation frequently rendered the reformatory impulse inoperative. Historians of orphanages, industrial schools, reformatories, and structures of assistance for the poor in Canada have posited a much more dynamic interplay between family strategies and needs and the notion of confinement. As the work of Bettina Bradbury, Tamara Myers, and Sara Posen indicates, working-class families utilized these institutions on a temporary basis in order to satisfy their own needs,4 a perspective that considerably revises the more conventional view that these institutions simply imposed middle-class values on a passive clientele. Further, as Nancy Christie argues in her contribution to this volume, notions of dependency and deservedness were shaped, not by public interests, as has become the standard explanation for notions of entitlement later adopted by the state, but by the disciplinary functions of the family itself. Indeed, as Christie’s analysis of begging letters makes clear, the concepts of subordination and obligation endemic to the patron-client relationship within the welfare nexus were first practised and refined within a hierarchical system defined by inequalities of age, gender, and wealth, within a system of familial obligation. A similar revisionist historiographical trajectory has characterized recent treatments of the rise of the asylum. In this volume James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli conceive the rise of the mental hospital in Canada as not in isolation from the broader society and the family. They demonstrate not only that the asylum did not displace family care but that the asylum itself was adapted to, and shaped by, the very families who sought its medical care. From this perspective, the conventional social-control argument is difficult to sustain, because it was not medical professionals but family members themselves who determined the patterns of confinement and release of patients.5 In their view, then, the family context remained the dominant locus of patient care and rehabilitation. Only in cases where families were either completely absent or totally unable to care because of the extreme nature of the symptoms – it is significant that for the most part, family members were incarcerated only when they became violent or unmanageable – that they resorted to the asylum. As Moran, Wright, and Savelli make clear, it was generally those who were already marginal in terms of family relationships, namely, single immigrant

Institutions and Marginality

273

male labourers and female domestic servants, who appear with greater frequency than other demographic categories. What these findings indicate is that, generally speaking, the vast majority of people conformed to the culture of familialism, with its emphasis upon interdependence and mutual obligation; so much so that even the least useful members of society, the elderly, were not dramatically overrepresented within asylum populations. Although we still do not know enough about the circumstances of the kind of care that took place within the family itself, which may have been more confining than that of the asylum, the work of Moran, Wright, and Savelli suggests that there was a much greater convergence of values and interests between the grassroots community and that of the institution and its professional managers. That the family itself was not marginalized under an assault from an emergent state and its army of social workers and health professionals but retained a cultural pre-eminence well into the middle decades of the twentieth century is the focus of Denyse Baillargeon’s exploration of the ideology of Catholic orphanages in Quebec. Just as promoters of asylums recognized that people continued to conceive of their self-identity primarily in terms of their membership within a family by characterizing the institution as an artificial replication of the nurturing environment of the home, so Catholic defenders of the orphanage system pictured their institutions as superior to the actual family, in fostering both religion and proper work values among their inmates. These advocates of institutional care might appear to have been countenancing a multiplicity of family forms by equating the upbringing of children in an orphanage with that available in the traditional family, through their exaltation of the institution as a “spiritual family.” However, their ideology was really intended to undermine the campaign that was gaining force in Quebec for a system of foster homes, which had been given renewed impetus after World War ii by the introduction of federal family allowances that made it difficult for orphanages to receive these payments. Ironically, Roman Catholic clergy defended the orphanage in terms that conformed with practices which had been established since the late nineteenth century by working-class families, who in times of distress would temporarily deposit young children in the care of religious orders. Thus clergy in the late 1940s argued that by continuing these practices, orphanages were defending the biological family and, indeed, were upholding the authority of fathers to determine the way in which they chose to have their children educated and nurtured. By using the orphanage to preclude the involvement of other kin, notably, aunts, uncles, or grandparents, when the parents, through either illness or poverty were unable to raise

274

Nancy Christie

their children, Catholic priests and religious were upholding a vision of nuclearity and paternal authority that was being similarly reinforced by state welfare initiatives such as unemployment insurance and family allowances. Ultimately, as the essays by Suzanne Morton and James Struthers demonstrate, after World War ii the ideal of familialism was being corroded by more modern notions of individualism, which, along with the concept of a more closed nuclear family form, were promoted by the welfare state. As Morton argues, the system of familial care for single mothers continued until the 1970s because of the insitutionalization of a particularly punitive poor-law system in Nova Scotia, which labelled unmarried mothers as delinquent if they ventured beyond the confines of family to seek public assistance. But as extended, intergenerational family connections began to weaken after World War ii, networks of family support became less viable and more conflictual, thus inducing the state to gradually adjust its policies towards a less stigmatizing form of assistance that would allow unmarried women with children to form their own families in separate households. This new welfare support for unmarried motherhood in turn created a new demand for these state services, which paradoxically contributed to the construction of unmarried motherhood as a social problem.6 However, the long-term effects of such state intervention was to reify the biological family, because it precluded the need for the “artificial” family typified by the orphanage. In a similar fashion, the old-age pension policies pursued by provincial and federal governments during the 1950s made the institutional care of the elderly even more aberrant than it had been in 1900. As James Struthers argues, the legislation that introduced universal postwar pensions was predicated on the work of the male breadwinner, a form of entitlement that continued a long-standing cultural imperative to cast widows as family dependents. Investigative journalism during the 1960s uncovered the existence of endemic poverty among elderly women who lived alone and were believed to be entirely without the financial assistance of family members. Citing the inadequacies of a set of entitlements founded upon male work, social workers campaigned for benefits for elderly women, what later became the Guaranteed Income Supplement, a form of government assistance that gave them entitlement independent of their spouses. Though based upon need, it was not means-tested; the gis thus broke decisively with previous welfare provisions which demanded that the recipient demonstrate complete destitution and total inability to rely upon kin. The gis was designed to enable elderly women to live on their own, beyond both the institution and their families. By attaching welfare entitlements to

Institutions and Marginality

275

individuals who were not household heads, post-war social policies were less familialist in their bias. But by thus highlighting the supposed independence of individual old people, the gis led subtly to the invisibility of private family care, which rationalized the lack of government support for home care initiatives. And although families continued to desire to care for their older parents within complex households, modern state initiatives constructed a definition of the family that was ineluctably nuclear in its form and private in its functions. This individualist turn in welfare policies created an image of the elderly living entirely alone, a perspective that then became integral to contemporary historical demographic paradigms, which read the closed nuclear family back into the remote past, even though these ideological constructs bore little relation to the lived experience of families either in the present or in former times.

no tes 1 For the first assault upon the Foucauldian paradigm, see Roy Porter, Mind-Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness in England from the Restoration to the Regency (London: Athlone Press, 1987), xi, 4, 33. 2 On the very late development of centralized systems of state welfare relief, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000); James Struthers, The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920–1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994); and James Struthers, No Fault of Their Own: Unemployment and the Canadian Welfare State, 1914–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983). Policies such as mother’s allowances began in embryonic form just after World War i, but the first universal program of unemployment insurance was instituted only at the beginning of World War ii. For the weak authority of professions and the social sciences generally, see Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, A Full-Orbed Christianity: The Protestant Churches and Social Welfare in Canada, 1900–1940 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1996). See also R.D. Gidney and W.P.J. Millar, Professional Gentlemen: The Professions in Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), which suggests in particular the extremely late development of the key medical profession. 3 Porter, Mind-Forg’d Manacles, 68. 4 Bettina Bradbury, “The Fragmented Family: Family Strategies in the Face of Death, Illness, and Poverty, Montreal, 1860–1885,” in Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1983), 135–52; Tamara Myers, “Qui t’a Debauchée? Family,

276

Nancy Christie

Adolescent Sexuality and the Juvenile Delinquent’s Court in Early Twentieth-Century Montreal,” in Lori Chambers and Edgar-André Montigny, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1998), 377–94; Sara Posen, “Examining Policing from the ‘Bottom Up’: The Relationship between Parents, Children, and Managers at the Toronto Boys’ Home, 1859–1920,” in Chambers and Montigny, eds., Family Matters, 3–18. For a similar argument in Britain, see Lynn Hollen Lees, The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 281. 5 For a similar argument, see Roy Porter, “Madness and the Family before Freud: the View of the Mad Doctors,” Journal of Family History 23 (1998); D.J. Mellet, The Prerogative of Asylumdom: Social, Cultural and Administrative Aspects of the Institutional Treatment of the Insane in Nineteenth-Century Britain (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1982), 55, who stresses that even among paupers, the family remained of primary importance; W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd, “Introduction,” in The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, vol. 2, Institutions and Society (London and New York: Tavistock, 1985); Charlotte Mackenzie, “Social Factors in the Admission, Discharge, and Continuining Stay of Patients at Ticehurst Asylum, 1845–1917,” in Bynum, Porter, and Shepherd, The Anatomy of Madness, vol. 2, 147–52, 159; James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 103, 116–18; and David Wright, Mental Disability in Victorian England: The Earlswood Asylum, 1847–1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), especially chapter 4. For a different interconnection between the family and the asylum, which shows how family conflict contributed to the perception of madness, see Marjorie Levine-Clark, “Dysfunctional Domesticity: Female Insanity and Family Relationships among the West Riding Poor in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Family History 25 (July 2000): 241–61. 6 For a similar argument in post-war Germany, see Elizabeth D. Heinemann, What Difference Does a Husband Make? Women and Marital Status in Postwar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

Bachelors and Spinsters

277

9 The Lunatic Fringe Families, Madness, and Institutional Confinement in Victorian Ontario james mo r a n, davi d wr i gh t, a n d m at sav e l l i In 1893 Frederick Garvin imagined that he was the “greatest man on earth.” His family, however, disagreed. Frederick, a married twentynine-year-old Canadian farmer, had been thrice admitted to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum for delusions of grandeur that led to violent actions against kith and kin. On previous occasions he had injured his relatives, and after he declared that he “wanted to make a bonfire” of his house, his family petitioned to have him admitted yet again to the regional mental hospital. Two local medical practitioners, Drs Vernon and Edgar, certified that he was “a proper person for the asylum” and that he “abuses relatives” because he “imagines people are trying to do him an injury.” Duly certified, Garvin was admitted to the asylum in August 1893. However, after only three months in the institution, he was deemed “quiet and well-behaved” and was discharged on probation to stay with his father. Two months later his father wrote to the medical superintendent to confirm that Frederick was “quiet” and “recovered” at home. The medical superintendent thus declared Frederick officially discharged on 11 January 1894.1 In a 1985 review article, historian Mark Finnane referred to the asylum as an “arbiter of social and familial conflict.”2 The asylum, he asserted, should be seen “as an institution whose role and function was mapped out by a lengthy process of popular usage and custom as much as by the legal and financial imperatives which the state erected around it.”3 In hindsight, it is clear that these statements, and the article from which they were issued, marked an intellectual watershed in the history of asylums. Finanne’s review forecasted the development

278

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

of a rich literature in the history of medicine that considered how local variations in household structure, lifecycle, poverty, migration, and the productive and caring contributions of family members affected the timing and direction of institutional committal. In essence, he argued, the story of Frederick Garvin can be seen as much as a chapter in the history of the family as a case study in the history of psychiatry. As Finnane’s own work illustrates, there has always been keen interest in the relationship between the family and the asylum. In fact, research into the domestic context of asylum committal dates back to the late 1970s. At that time, Richard Fox, John Walton, and Finnane himself examined the background of patients admitted to the California state, the Lancaster county, and the Omagh county asylums respectively, in order to determine the social and economic factors influencing the transfer of individuals from private domicile to public welfare institution. All three researchers agreed that the process of confinement was more complex than the “social control” theses enumerated by the first “revisionist” wave of asylum historiography.4 Rather, each pointed to stresses on families and communities caused by the onset of industrialization (such as economic migration, and the separation of home and work) as important contributing factors. Fox, for example, identified isolated unmarried and newly arrived immigrants in California as particularly vulnerable to institutional confinement.5 John Walton, by contrast, argued that the dislocating process of urbanization placed strains on the family and kin resources of those who had left the countryside for work in the developing English industrial city of Lancaster.6 For his part, Finnane suggested that the emigration of fit young men and women from Ireland (following the Famine) robbed households of caring resources, thus making families left behind vulnerable to seeking institutional solutions.7 Canadian historians have been central to this re-evaluation of the context of asylum committal. In her analysis of admissions to the Toronto asylum, Wendy Mitchinson argued that the asylum was used by families to deal with those social excesses of insanity that they thought warranted institutionalization.8 Cheryl Warsh identified the isolation of young immigrants as a salient variable among patients admitted to the London, Ontario, asylum.9 Warsh also examined how the changing nature of the middle-class Victorian family affected the definition of insanity, asylum committal practices, and the diagnostic and treatment strategies of the medical directors of the private Homewood Retreat in Guelph.10 Both Warsh and Mitchinson implied that those who were institutionalized had exhibited behaviours that pushed

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

279

them to the margins of their respective households. Accordingly, families negotiated the emerging bureaucratic maze to secure an asylum bed for the melancholic, suicidal, maniacal, and idiotic. In this way, institutionalization was recast as a commentary on the ability and willingness of family members to cope with strange, aberrant, or chronically dependent behaviour. Research into the central role of family members in the institutionalization of the insane has continued to influence asylum historiography in Canada well into the 1990s. Mary-Ellen Kelm’s work on the British Columbia Provincial Hospital for the Insane, for example, extended our understanding of the asylum-family nexus further by detailing the influence of families after the patient had been admitted.11 Geoffrey Reaume has evaluated the stigma and shame that motivated families to commit their relations to the Toronto asylum at the turn of the century.12 Other researchers have focused on particular patient groups. Edgar-André Montigny, for instance, has explored the confinement of the elderly to the Kingston asylum in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Far from being flooded with elderly admissions (as asylum superintendents claimed), the Kingston asylum saw a moderate representation of admissions over the age of sixty. Montigny, like many of the other historians just cited, was struck by the distance that families went to try to accommodate insane individuals within households and the community before turning to the asylum as a last resort.13 The intense concentration on the familial background of future patients has led to a questioning of the centrality of the asylum itself within social responses to mad behaviour. Reflecting the growing interest in the history of care and control of the insane outside the asylum on both sides of the Atlantic, James Moran’s research has highlighted the importance of understanding traditional responses to madness as practised by extramural familial, legal, medical, and social authorities in nineteenth-century Quebec and Ontario.14 Recent research by Thierry Nootens and André Cellard investigates analogous patterns of care and control in the community in nineteenth-century Quebec.15 Their work reflects a slow decentring of the asylum as a focus of historical inquiry. 16 They challenge the axiom that care, social control, medical treatment, and the production of ideas about madness occurred only inside the formal medical or welfare institution. Rather, they suggest a more complex interplay between legal, familial, and administrative centres of social regulation and knowledge production. The social history of madness in the nineteenth century thus has been reconceptualized to consider the family as central to the care, control, identification, and regulation of

280

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

Table 9.1 First and subsequent admissions, expressed as a proportion of all admissions to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Admission

Women

Total

No.

%

No.

%

No.

%

First Second Third +

1,831 188 44

89 9 2

1,874 212 52

88 10 2

3,705 400 96

88 10 2

Total

2,063

2,138

4,201

insanity and to the generation of some of the divisions of classification later codified and promoted by an expansionistic psychiatric profession. The confinement of the insane in purpose-built asylums and the interface between the family and the asylum have thus constituted rich fields in the history of Canadian health and medicine, featuring prominently in monographs and in articles in history journals. This chapter seeks to contribute to this excellent body of scholarship by combining qualitative and quantitative analyses of the familial backgrounds and demographic characteristics of admissions to the Hamilton asylum in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. For the purposes of this study, the admission-register information for all the patients admitted to the Hamilton asylum between 1876 and 1902 (4,201 admissions involving 3,705 separate individuals) were analyzed for socio-demographic characteristics. These results were compared to the research conducted by historians on the other principal asylums in Ontario and elsewhere, as well as grounded in the demographic, social, and economic context of Victorian Ontario. This essay argues in favour of recent research that highlights the dominant influence of family in the identification, certification, and timing of the institutionalization of “fringe” members of their household unit. Further, it agrees that the asylum, far from being a “total institution,” was, as Finnane contended, a social institution shaped by popular usage. Such usage predetermined a plurality of social functions that defy stereotypes often affixed to this controversial institution. The results of the analysis of patients admitted to the Hamilton asylum reveal the remarkably diverse socio-economic characteristics, occupational pursuits, and residential backgrounds of asylum patients.

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

281

Table 9.2 Outcome of all first admissions to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Outcome Died Discharged Transferred Escaped Unknown Total

No. 788 728 176 61 78 1,831

Women

Total

%

No.

%

No.

%

43.0 39.8 9.6 3.3 4.3

721 837 240 4 72

38.5 44.7 12.8 0.2 3.8

1,509 1,565 416 65 150

40.7 42.2 11.2 1.8 4.0

1,874

3,705

Between 1876 and 1902 there were 4,201 admissions to the asylum. Nine-tenths (3,705) of these patients were reported as first admissions to the Hamilton asylum, with patients either spending the remainder of their lives in the asylum (39–43 per cent), being discharged (40–45 per cent), or being transferred to another institution (10–13 per cent). A small number also escaped (see tables 9.1 and 9.2). Few patients were “official” readmissions, though some of the “first admissions” to the asylum may well have resided in another asylum either within or without the province earlier in their lives and before the Hamilton asylum was built.17 In terms of geographical background, five-sixths of all the patients listed one of twelve contiguous provincial counties as their previous place of residence, ranging from the Niagara River through the Waterloo area and on to Lake Huron. The asylum thus had a well-defined catchment area of the Niagara region and midsouthwestern Ontario – that is, between the regions serving the London and Toronto asylums.18 The patterns of movement from familial co-residence to formal institution emerges quickly from the data derived from the admission register. Approximately 31 per cent of men and 22 per cent of women were listed as residing in local jails immediately prior to admission to the asylum.19 The remaining admissions have addresses that imply residence in a domestic unit with kin before direct asylum confinement. This conservative estimate of the proportion of asylum admissions coming directly from households (70–80 per cent of all admissions) conforms to findings of the confinement of the insane in other national contexts and reinforces the importance of the role of the co-residing family during the period of ‘attack’ leading up to institutional confinement. Evidence of testimony from co-residing family members, discussed later in this

282

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

chapter, also attests to the large proportion of the insane as co-residing individuals, rather than vagrants or cast-offs of industrial society. Admissions to the Hamilton asylum reflected the sex ratio of the adult population from whence the patients came. Women constituted 51 per cent (n=2,138) and men 49 per cent (n=2,063) of the population admitted to the institution. Although considerations of gender must have played some role in the conceptualization of insane behaviour and the familial decision to seek (or not to seek) confinement, these results suggest that gender considerations worked towards the confinement of certain groups of women and men, not women instead of men.20 Indeed, when one brings in quantitative work previously published on the London asylum,21 the Toronto asylum (from 1841 to 1874),22 and the British Columbia asylums23 – work that also confirms that women were admitted in numbers either in proportion to their representation in the adult population (or less than their proportion) – the evidence supporting Showalter’s famous claim for the disproportionately high rate of incarceration of women in Victorian asylums becomes very weak, if not non-existent, for Canadian asylums at this time.24 The most accurate assessment of the Victorian asylum would be to characterize it as an institution in transition from one dominated by men to one that was relatively gender-balanced. So why did families increasingly resort to the asylum for their mentally troubled sisters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers, to the extent that the asylum by 1900 saw female admissions in equal numbers to men? It may well be, as Nancy Tomes has argued for nineteenthcentury Pennsylvania, that families became less reluctant to send female patients to state institutions as the asylum slowly distanced itself from its institutional cousin (the poorhouse), as medical superintendents assured middle-class families of strict segregation of the sexes and as the asylum became more “medicalized.”25 Some asylum medical superintendents actively sought to “bourgeoisify” their institutions in order to attract a better clientele and raise their own meagre status within the medical community. These social, cultural, and medical factors may well have had a role to play. So too, however, may underlying demographic factors. Earlier in the century, men frequently immigrated alone to Ontario to establish themselves before bringing over their families. During this initial phase of what would become “stem migration,” men would have had neither the benefit of the family’s stabilizing influence nor access to traditional familial forms of care in the event of a crisis. Under these circumstances, the asylum would no doubt have been considered a ready institutional solution. As women and children joined men in Ontario over the course of the first half of the nineteenth century, the reconstitution of families most likely

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

283

Table 9.3 Age of patients at time of first admission to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Age < 20 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60–69 > 69 n/a

No. 67 438 457 341 257 159 61 51

Women % 4 25 26 19 14 9 3

No. 75 439 477 399 245 145 74 20

Total

1,831

1,874

Median iqr

38 28–50

38 28–50

% 4 24 26 22 13 8 4

decreased male recourse to the asylum, just as the real increase of women in the province augmented the likelihood of female admissions. Another misrepresentation of asylum patients in the Victorian era, one fostered by medical superintendents themselves, was the alleged overabundance of elderly admissions. Families were, it was contended, “dumping” the aged onto public welfare institutions (and thus shirking their familial responsibilities). Evidence for such a generalization seems particularly weak. The Hamilton asylum accepted patients from across the adult age-spectrum (see table 9.3). The inter-quartile age range (the middle 50 per cent of all patients) was identical for women and men – 28 to 50 – as was the median age for all admissions (38). Rather than representing the aged and demographically marginal (as has been found in case studies of houses of industry, which were gradually being created in the province in the late Victorian period),26 the majority of admissions to Ontario lunatic asylums were in their socalled prime of life – in their twenties, thirties and forties.27 Medical superintendents of Ontario asylums complained that their institutions were filling up with the elderly, who were senile but did not constitute the “curable insane.” The aged, however, as Montigny’s research has illustrated for the Kingston (Rockwood) asylum, did not constitute a flood of admissions during this time, though they may have been slightly overrepresented. In total, the aged constituted only 7.4 per cent of the admissions to the Kingston Asylum between 1866 and 1906.28 Comparable figures for Hamilton reveal that 12 per cent of male and

284

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

female admissions were 60 years or older. The elderly constituted between 8.4 per cent and 10.5 per cent of the adult population enumerated in the 1871 Ontario census, depending upon whether one uses everyone over the age of 15 or over 20 as a comparable group for asylum admissions.29 Thus the proportion of elderly at the time of admission was slightly elevated, but hardly dominant. Indeed, considering the social isolation often occasioned by old age, it is surprising that the proportion was not considerably higher. The presence of elderly women and elderly men in the asylum merits further comment for any collection of essays investigating marginal groups in the history of the family. Demographic reconstructions of nineteenth-century Ontario society have suggested that elderly women were commonly kept in extended households, especially if they could contribute to the household economies by childminding. Indeed, they were three times more likely than men to appear in household enumerators’ schedules of families living in their early or mid-life cycle.30 Elderly men, by contrast, were more likely to be boarders and to find themselves in houses of refuge or houses of industry as they were built from the 1860s and 1870s onwards. According to one study, elderly men outnumbered elderly women in these welfare institutions by a ratio of 4 to 1,31 a proportion more notable when one considers the lower life expectancy of adult men during this period. Thus, if there was a generational transformation of care of the elderly from the family to the state, it most likely occurred in the other, new forms of welfare institutions, rather than in the asylum itself. Hamilton and its surrounding region were undergoing rapid economic, social, and demographic change during the period under study.32 The background of patients admitted to the regional asylum reflects this diverse and changing society. Judging from their occupational backgrounds, they represented what can best be described as the “lower half” of Ontario society. However, with fewer than 10 per cent of male patients recording “no occupation” or having no entry in the occupation column of the admission registers, these admissions seem to have reflected the working (rather than the destitute and marginal) poor of southern Ontario society. Male admissions to the asylum may have been marginalized by their disorder, but the vast majority seem, by all evidence, to have been gainfully employed in the period before the onset of their “attack” (see table 9.4). As in Ontario society at the time, by far the largest male occupational group listed in the asylum admission registers was “farmers” (29 per cent of Hamilton asylum male admissions).33 This statistic suggests that the percentage of “farmers” committed to the Hamilton asylum was noticeably lower than that of the Ontario population as a whole,

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

285

Table 9.4 Previous occupation recorded for male patients at first admission to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Occupational group No occupation Labourers Servants/porters Soldiers/sailors Skilled artisans Clerks Small shopkeepers Merchants Professionals Farmers Other n/a Total

No. 58 561 32 15 330 76 84 36 40 515 18 57

% 3 32 2 1 19 4 5 2 2 29 1

1,822

a difference that might be explained by the relatively stable family structure in place among settled (even recently settled34) farmsteads. At the very least, farms would have the physical space and some kinship resources for the care and management of the insane. In more settled agricultural communities, there would also have been traditions of treatment and care that might have forestalled asylum committal somewhat. The distance of some agricultural communities from the regional asylums may also have had an impact, the so-called distance-decay effect, or Jarvis’s Law, whereby the likelihood of institutional confinement declines proportionate to the distance from the welfare institution.35 Without further specification as to the size of their landholdings, the precise socio-economic situations of these farming families remain uncertain.36 One clue to the family’s socio-economic circumstances, however, may be gleaned from the negotiation over their contribution (or not) to the cost of asylum treatment. The Hamilton asylum accepted patients who entered free of charge (known as “Provincial” patients) and paying patients, who were assessed on a graduated scale of $1 per week to $5 per week, according to their ability to pay.37 In 80 per cent of farmer admissions to the asylum, the individual or his family paid nothing towards the cost of confinement. It is difficult to accurately assess the average income of Ontario farmers. Along side the muchnoted poverty and transience of rural existence in Victorian Ontario38 stood the constancy of many “middling” and well-established families,

286

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

suggesting that many could afford the required fees to commit a family member. If advantages in the domestic care and management of the insane led to the under-representation of Ontario’s farming population in the province’s public lunatic asylums, the reverse argument seems to have held true for the second largest group of male admissions – labourers. Listed as 31 per cent of male admissions to the Hamilton institution, labourers (including “farm labourers”) constituted roughly 10.6 per cent of the male workers in Ontario between 1871 and 1901. Male labourers often immigrated to Canada alone and worked long and physically taxing hours on roads, railroad building, and canal construction, hoping to earn enough to support the immigration of other family members or to send needed funds back to the home country. In a manner analogous to Fox’s findings for turn-of-the-century California, this lack of family as a social resource in Ontario may in part account for labourers’ overrepresentation in welfare institutions, particularly in the Hamilton asylum. This similarity is partly confirmed by the fact that only one out of fifty-three labourers paid anything to his upkeep in the asylum (and in this case, it was paid by “friends”). The third most recorded group of occupations was those male admissions whose work can be classed under the general category of skilled or semi-skilled artisans. These patients included men who had worked in one of over forty distinct occupational listings, including carpenters, shoemakers, painters, blacksmiths, cabinetmakers, and machinists, to the relatively rare marble-cutters, broom makers, turners, and saddlers. In comparison to farmers, fewer skilled artisans paid anything at all towards their maintenance (no more than approximately 10 per cent). In contrast to farmers and labourers, the percentage of male skilled workers in the Hamilton asylum appears consistent with that of the provincial population as a whole. They also speak to the degree to which provincial asylums admitted patients with occupations well into the “aristocratic” elements of the working class.39 Although Ontario was predominantly an agricultural province during the second half of the nineteenth century, it was, as mentioned above, experiencing the classic signs of industrialization, including accelerated urbanization, the rise of large-scale factory production, and the emergence of a larger professional and entrepreneurial middle class. To what extent were these middle-class occupations reflected in the profile of patients admitted to the mental hospital? The answer: not a great deal. Only 3 per cent of male admissions to Hamilton were designated as coming from the “lower middle class,” including clerks, schoolteachers, and small shopkeepers, such as grocers, butchers, and

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

287

bakers. Members of the professional middle class among the asylum population were even rarer: only a handful of physicians and barristers ever made their way into the these public institutions, no doubt preferring the seclusion of the private Homewood Asylum in Guelph or possibly a private institution for the insane across the border in New York State or Pennsylvania.40 Women’s occupations, as historians of women and women’s work know too well, were poorly and inconsistently recorded in the nineteenth century. Congruent with prevailing property laws that placed legal rights and responsibilities in the hands of the single woman’s father or the married woman’s spouse, women’s “occupations” in nineteenth-century English and Canadian asylum admission registers (like the contemporaneous decennial censuses) often listed a woman’s position in terms of her relationship to the male head of household. Thus women, who may well have been receiving wages for casual work, were often lumped under the designation “wife of …” or “daughter of …” This practice was less common, however, in instances where women’s work was located outside the domicile, and it was less usually applied to working daughters than working wives. With the extreme difficulty of using reported occupations as an indicator of women’s paid employment kept in mind, table 9.5 lists the “occupations” of women patients admitted to the asylum. The most frequently cited occupation for female asylum admissions was domestic service, which accounted for almost 27 per cent of the patient population (the comparable figure for the London asylum was 32.5 per cent).41 Of those who listed an actual occupation, domestics represented 70 per cent of all listed waged occupations for women. On the basis of Carolyn Strange’s tabulations for Toronto’s female domestics, in her study of urban women at the turn of the century, and of Ian Drummond’s statistics on the percentage of women in service in his economic history of Ontario, domestic service can be estimated at approximately 45 per cent of the waged female labour force in 1881 and 53.5 per cent in 1891.42 It has been argued elsewhere that being an unmarried domestic servant was an occupational risk that made women more vulnerable, ceteris paribus, to being confined during times of emotional or mental crisis. Furthermore, unmarried single female workers may have been disproportionately new immigrants, thus suffering in many cases from a distancing of kin that might otherwise have acted as a protective barrier against institutional committal. The Hamilton admissions seem to validate contemporary perceptions of the extraordinarily high number of female “domestics” incarcerated in public asylums during the Victorian era. These female domestic servants were younger

288

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

Table 9.5 Previous occupation recorded for female patients at first admission to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Listed occupation

No.

%

Housekeeper/housework/domestic duties1 Spinster (n.o.s.) Domestic servant/maid/nurse2 Seamstress/dressmaker/tailoress3 Teacher Milliner Labourer’s w.d.w. Artisan’s w.d.w. Farmer’s w.d.w. Shopkeeper’s or clerk’s w.d.w. Servant’s or porter’s w.d.w. Merchant’s w.d.w. Professional’s w.d.w. “Lady” None/no occupation Other

798 16 262 81 26 5 55 28 142 12 2 4 5 4 146 1

50 1 17 5 2 0 3 2 9 1 0 0 0 0 9 0

n/a Total

118 1,705

n.o.s. = not otherwise specified w.d.w. = wife, daughter, or widow 1 Including housework, home duties, housewife, wife. 2 Including governess, house servant, housemaid, matron, servant (n.o.s.). 3 Including weaver.

(median age of 32) than the average age of female admissions, but not as young as one might suspect. Two-thirds of them were unmarried, swelling the disproportionate number of unmarried patients mentioned below. Almost 90 per cent were paid by the province, a further proxy to their impoverished state or their lack of kin support at the time of admission. One is also struck by the one-third of these predominantly unmarried domestic servants who were born in Ireland and Scotland (a proportion higher than the already-elevated higher rate of nonCanadian-born patients). The ubiquity of domestic servants as patients in the asylum raises the important question of migration and kin resources in an assessment of the vulnerability of different groups to being confined in the lunatic asylum. Researchers working on the confinement of the insane in the industrializing countries of western Europe have tended to downplay the role of migration (of either patients or their families) as a factor in the likelihood of an individual being confined.43 By contrast,

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

289

Table 9.6 Marital status of patients at time of first admission to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Marital status Unmarried Married Widowed n/a Total

No. 990 810 22 9 1,831

Women

Total

%

No.

%

No.

%

54 44 1

799 1,014 58

43 54 3

1,789 1,824 80

48 49 2

3 1,874

12 3,705

researchers working on countries that experienced high rates of immigration have tried to account for higher-than-expected numbers of patients who were not born in the country. They have offered two possible explanations for these phenomena. First, they have contended that new immigrants were more likely to be suspected or labelled mentally ill because of their strange appearance, lack of language skills, and different cultural habits. An incipient racial approach to incarcerating individuals has often been alluded to in the case of the high confinement rate of the Irish.44 Thus legal authorities may have identified and incarcerated “undesirable individuals” as a form of social control, viewing newly arrived single immigrants as part of a potentially troublesome group. Second, other historians have placed greater emphasis on the lack of kin resources.45 Both factors were most likely at play in Victorian Canadian society, accounting for the extraordinarily high rates of Irish and Scottish female domestics in the Hamilton asylum. In the last ten years, analyses of household structure and marital status have also been increasingly emphasized by historians of the asylum. The household is seen not only as a place of confinement, control, and care before and after institutionalization but also as a locus for lunacy identification and certification.46 Certainly, as far as the gross characteristics of patients go, significant variables related to marital status were found among patients. Most notably, there was an overrepresentation of the unmarried and widowed (as compared to the population from whence the patients came). Over one-half of all men admitted to the Hamilton asylum were unmarried, a proportion much higher than the general adult population at the time. The percentage of unmarried women patients was lower than that of men (43 per cent of women as compared to 54 per cent of men), but still elevated com-

290

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

pared to the general adult population (see table 9.6). Historians who have found similar results in patient populations have posited several explanations for the elevated level of the unmarried. First, those individuals suffering from recognizable levels of mental disturbance may well have been less likely to have been married in Victorian society (as today). In terms of the social context of committal, those who were married and even those who were widowed may also have been more integrated into a particular primary household (and thus needed for wages or primary caregiving). Therefore there may have been disincentives to seeking formal institutional committal. This chapter will now turn to the behavioural characteristics of the individuals to see what factors, in conjunction with their status in households, combined to make them candidates for institutional confinement. The laws governing institutional confinement in Victorian Ontario were based on two criteria: “dangerousness” and the “need for treatment.” Under the former provision, individuals who posed a danger to themselves or to others were liable to be detained, in local jails, awaiting medical certification and confinement by warrant in a provincial asylum; under the latter, more general qualification, families could incarcerate individuals who, as a result of mental disorders, were in serious need of medical treatment. This method of incarceration required certification by independent medical practitioners. Nowhere in the Ontario statutes was it required that individuals be dangerous in order to be lawfully confined. Thus both domestic dangerousness and dependence informed the decisions of families and communities to seek institutional options. Moreover, contrary to traditional representations of the Victorian asylum as a “dumping ground” for the fringe elements of society, studies over the last two decades have demonstrated conclusively that the confinement process was not always permanent: a significant proportion of asylum patients (as many as half of all admissions) were discharged, some staying for quite brief periods of time.47 As mentioned above, the Hamilton asylum was no exception to these general findings. Forty per cent of men and 45 per cent of women admissions were eventually discharged from the institution. Of those discharged, over half were released within twelve months of admission, and three-quarters within the first two years. Put another way, over 1,200 of the 3,705 first admissions were discharged from the Hamilton asylum within twelve months. Discharge after the first two years was considerably less common. A comparable proportion of admissions (43 per cent of men and 39 per cent of women) ultimately died in the asylum. Some “expired” soon after admission: 455 patients died within twelve months of becoming an inmate. Others conformed to the historical stereotype

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

291

Table 9.7 Length of stay of first admissions to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Stay (in months) 240 n/a Total Average (in months) Median (in months)

No. 404 286 230 258 178 234 159 82

Women

Total

%

No.

%

No.

%

22.1 15.6 12.6 14.1 9.7 12.8 8.5 4.5

412 306 204 251 186 244 200 71

22.0 16.3 10.9 13.4 9.9 13.0 10.3 3.8

816 592 434 509 364 478 349 153

22.0 16.0 11.7 13.7 9.8 12.9 9.4 4.1

1,831 71.8

1,874 79.5

3,705 75.7

14.5

22.7

25.5

Table 9.8 Duration of attack prior to institutional confinement of first admissions to the Hamilton Lunatic Asylum, 1876–1902 Men Duration (in months) 240 n/a Total

No. 872 148 244 124 90 74 40 239 1,831

Women

Total

%

No.

%

No.

%

48 8 13 7 5 4 2 13

991 192 156 180 94 85 30 146

53 10 8 10 5 5 2 8

1,863 340 400 304 184 159 70 385

50 9 11 8 5 4 2 10

1,874

3,705

of the asylum, remaining institutionalized for many years before succumbing to a pauper grave. Therefore the Hamilton asylum was, like other mental hospitals of this time, a pluralistic institution. These results and the socio-demographic analysis of the previous section illustrate the follies of attempting to overgeneralize the characteristics of the patient population or the purposes and social function

292

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

of institutional confinement; the “insane” came in a number of different guises, from the senile demented to the raving maniac, from the suicidal melancholic to the floridly delusional. These data also reinforce the importance of understanding the asylum as one part of a series of caring and control choices made by families and communities. Table 9.8 illustrates the variable lengths of care and control in the community prior to institutional confinement. Approximately one-half of patients were admitted within six months of exhibiting their strange behaviours. The other half of admissions were described as suffering from insanity for between six months and twenty years. Rather than explore the ways in which the behaviours of these individuals were fsamed through the prism of psychiatric diagnosis, this section will analyze the behaviours based on the challenges they posed to the household environment. The sources for this section are the medical casebook entries for a random sample48 of women and men admitted to the Hamilton Asylum. The medical casebooks consist of transcripts of the community medical certificates (including testimony from family members describing the pre-institutional behaviour of insane kin), institutional medical notes, and information on death, transfer to another asylum, or discharge back to families. The first common and readily identifiable group were the suicidal, who constituted approximately one-fifth to one-quarter of Victorian asylum admissions49 and between 21 per cent of male and 25 per cent of female admissions to the Hamilton institution. Attempted selfmurder had slowly been medicalized over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,50 and the proto-psychiatric profession offered the services of the asylum as a secure alternative to the domestic household. Families and medical practitioners recognized the dangers of pronounced “melancholic” dispositions or of those who exhibited delusions involving thoughts of individual persecution or nihilism. Furthermore, contemporary asylum superintendents realized that suicidality fell into three broad camps: those who had unambiguously attempted self-murder, those who had a plan to commit suicide (but had not done so), and those who expressed a vague “wish to die.” In addition there was a fourth category of those who, though they did not express a wish to die, were engaging in behaviour (usually refusal to eat) that could result in serious physical impairment or death. In all these cases, suicidal behaviour posed serious emotional distress, practical challenges, and economic consequences to families and households. Constant surveillance, physical restraint, and even force-feeding were often considered the only recourses. Consequently, the time between a suicide attempt and institutional confinement was very brief, often only a matter of a few days.

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

293

Suicidal individuals, or at least those reported as being suicidal, number in their hundreds among the admissions to Hamilton. Precise numbers are impossible to identify because Ontario admission registers did not have a separate column for suicidality. A reasonable estimate, however, from qualitative comments in the admission register would be about 900 suicidal admissions among the 3,705 patients. Here, the casebooks provide greater detail on individual patients. Take, for example, the case of Flora Morrison, a fifty-five-year-old married woman and mother of eight children. A Scots Presbyterian of “very little education,” she was suffering from her “second attack” of insanity in the fall of 1887. For about a year she had been alternating between bouts of extreme despondency and episodes of wild, violent, and possibly suicidal behaviour. Her husband and one of her daughters testified that Flora tore her clothes and was delusional, and that she feared she was going to be “left alone to burn alive in her own house.” The precipitating incident for certification and institutionalization appears to have come after Flora threw herself on a railway track, in what was judged by her family to be a suicide attempt. When interviewed by a Dr Henry, she hit him when he tried to take her pulse and bit him on his second attempt. Admitted in December 1887, she continued to “moan and cry” in the Hamilton asylum, claiming she was “lost forever.” For the next three years, she repeatedly struck and was struck by other inmates. She died three years after admission, in August 1890.51 Flora’s behaviour reflected a mixture of delusions and dangerous behaviour. Delusions, most often listed under the column “special propensities and hallucinations,” were commonly reported. Approximately 40–50 per cent of admissions to the Hamilton asylum were listed as suffering from some sort of fixed false belief. These included delusions of grandeur, of property, and, most commonly, of persecution. Persecutory delusions involved thoughts of being poisoned by other family members, having property stolen, or being plotted against. When combined with more elevated states of “excitement,” this potent mix of mood and cognitive impairment initiated familial action. Admission records often recorded a precipitating incident when the patient, brandishing a knife or other weapon, directly threatened or attacked another member of the family. In these dangerous situations, the asylum (or the local jail as an institutional stopover before an asylum bed could be arranged) afforded an option to desperate families eager to find a secure place of restraint for their uncontrollable family member. In this regard, mechanical or chemical restraint (in the form of bromides) in formal institutions often replaced ad hoc physical restraint in the community. Acts of violence sometimes involved the criminal justice system, where decisions of “unfitness to stand trial” or

294

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

of “not guilty by reason of insanity” might lead to incarceration in a provincial institution for the “criminally insane.” A third group, posing quite different challenges to households and social relations, was classified as imbecilic, idiotic, and demented – that is, those whose chronic and often deteriorating mental capacities rendered them increasingly dependent on other members of the household or on non-co-residing kin. Because of the presence of the Orillia asylum, those diagnosed as idiots or imbeciles from birth tended not to be admitted to the general Ontario lunatic asylums.52 Rather, the nonviolent patients most often constituted those who suffered serious cognitive decline as a result of one of the many forms of dementia, including “adolescent”53 and “senile.” Such longer-term declines in the capability to care for oneself had a cumulative effect on familial resources, not only robbing the household of the economic and caring contributions of the person affected but also draining the economic contributions of other household members. Obviously, wealthier families might be able to withstand these economic implications of dependence, hiring domestic help in the form of nursing or attendance. Poorer families, by contrast, had no such options and thus were logically more likely to resort to institutional confinement, particularly if this care could be secured free of charge. This factor largely explains their greater representation (using occupation and ability to pay as proxies) in the socio-demographic characteristics of patients outlined earlier in the chapter. Take, for example, the case of William Scott, a seventy-six-year-old Scottish stonemason who was suffering from some form of progressive dementia. Described as having “active habits” for “an old man,” he had recently engaged in a range of behaviours that reflected, to his family and friends, a deteriorating capacity to care for himself. These behaviours included wandering away from home, pulling up weeds in the belief that he had crops to harvest, and, on occasion, letting the cattle and the horses out unattended. He was also reported to have been increasingly erratic in his memory. In particular, his family was very worried about the fact that he had been found wandering on the local railway tracks. Indeed, Dr Wardlan incorporated testimony from William’s son-in-law stating that, on occasion, “trains have had to be stopped” and William “removed from the track.” Described by Dr Vardan, the second certifying practitioner, as “generally demented,” he was admitted in October 1895. Once he was in the institution, William’s medical needs became apparent. He had a fractured right hand and had great difficulty breathing because of bronchitis. The medical doctor in attendance observed, rather bluntly, that he was “an old man and failing rapidly.”

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

295

One month after admission he was receiving treatment for a fall, which caused excessive swelling in his leg. He was treated with bichloride and a boracic wash. A further dose of quinine and whisky was not enough to halt William’s decline, and the elderly patient died at the end of December.54 William’s admission points to a fourth group of patients who were suffering from ‘psychiatric’ symptoms secondary to medical conditions that were already broadly recognized by the late-Victorian period. The most dominant of these were general paralysis of the insane (known also as general paresis) for men, postpartum psychosis for women, and epilepsy for both sexes. Described by the cultural historian of medicine Sander Gilman as the archetypal Victorian psychiatric classification,55 general paralysis of the insane (gpi) constituted the third and fatal stage of syphilis, resulted in floridly psychotic symptoms and, ultimately, death. In Hamilton, paretics represented approximately 5–10 per cent of all male admissions, few of whom were ever discharged from the asylum. Such was the case of John McGirr, a forty-seven-year-old married carpenter with four children. Born in Albany, New York, John had lived most of his life in Simcoe County, Ontario. His current “attack” had lasted four years before institutional confinement, during which time he became increasingly psychotic, with preoccupations about his wealth (he was worth “millions” and owned “millions of horses, 10,000 railroads and a great many locomotives”) and his belief that he was a leader in putting down the Northwest Rebellion. Admitted on 12 August 1885, John was described as a “very marked case of general paresis.” Despite insisting that he was “in great health,” the patient began to have an unsteady gait and to gradually lose motor reflexes, falling off benches and becoming increasingly psychotic. He experienced more frequent and more severe convulsions as he became, in the unkind words of the medical casebook, “more and more stupid” and “weaker by the day.” He died on 26 April 1889, nine months after admission.56 Puerperal insanity affected as many female admissions as gpi did for men – between 5 and 10 per cent of female admissions. As Hilary Marland has demonstrated, these asylum cases warranted some optimism. Most women suffering from this condition stayed no more than a few weeks in the asylum before being discharged back home.57 There were fewer numbers of epileptics, whom some historians have suggested, quite incorrectly, were not distinguished from the general “lunatic” population. Special wards with night attendants to check on epileptic patients every hour or so would in part prevent death from suffocation following an epileptic fit. There were also patients who, though they were described as mentally unfit, were suffering from recognizable physical ailments, such as Margaret Fitzpatrick, who was

296

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

described as thin, delicate, and coughing up a “thick mucous.” She was “undoubtedly tubercular,” opined the asylum medical officer, and she died within twelve months of her admission.58 These seemingly “medical” cases pose challenging questions for medical historians who desire to see the Victorian asylum as solely either a “psychiatric” or a “custodial” institution. The evidence suggests that some families used the nineteenth-century mental hospital as a convenient place to seek free medical care and nursing for medically ill family members, who may also have had some non-violent form of mental disability. So to what extent did the Victorian asylum constitute the “arbiter of social and familial conflict”? Were families using asylums (and other welfare institutions) in “strategic ways” as a solution to life-cycle poverty or to a household crisis of caring, as a temporary respite from the tribulations of caring for a suicidal daughter or a delusional son, or as free medical and nursing care for a dependent relative? Were families motivated by the affective bonds that tied them together, or were new cultural values, influenced by the rise of a capitalist ethos of industry, productivity, and self-sufficiency, dominant? Did the asylum expand in response to underlying social, economic, and demographic forces, or did the mental hospital, to paraphrase Andrew Scull, merely create the demand for its own services through its own existence, by lowering the willingness of families to cope with deranged and dependent behaviour? Our research confirms recent trends in the historiography of psychiatry that suggest a plurality of usages of the Victorian asylum for long, medium, and short-stay patients. In some situations, the asylum was used in a manner that could be characterized as familial abandonment. In other instances, family requests for the discharge of inmates (even those who were still deemed to be unimproved) testified to the persistence of strong affective relations and the desire for familial reintegration. We reject any narrow “social control” approach that characterizes the asylum as a vehicle for disciplining a particular class, gender, or age group. Yes, the asylum, and the mental health legislation that legitimized it, was directed in part at the regulation of violent and dangerous behaviour in nineteenth-century society. Within this social regulation, we see the family as a unit that was active in the determination of insanity and in decisions concerning institutional confinement. The family, however, was neither homogenous nor all-powerful. Different social groups had varying success in negotiating the legal, cultural, and social mechanisms for securing a mental hospital bed.59 And power within the family, a subject to which inconsiderable attention has been paid, was uneven and fluid, adding another layer of complexity to our understanding of the family and welfare institutions.

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

297

Nevertheless, as this chapter demonstrates, a study of the aggregate socio-demographic characteristics of asylum patients makes it clear that certain individuals, ceteris paribus, were more vulnerable than others to being institutionally confined. Being unmarried, foreign-born, and occupationally isolated made some individuals likely to find themselves within the walls of the asylum, once insanity had taken hold. These variables were themselves relative, rather than absolute, contributors to the social process of confinement. They were directly related to family composition, life-cycle transition, and the socio-economic and migratory dynamics in Victorian Canada. The overwhelmingly dominant variable was the behaviour of the individual, whether this be understood by historians in medicalized terms or thought of in terms of the unfavourable relationship of the individual to familial and cultural norms. Further, our research confirms recent historiographical trends that place the Victorian asylum within a host of institutional and non-institutional alternatives open to families seeking remedies for violence or dependence beyond their ability or willingness to provide. And yet it would be wrong to characterize all “institutionalizing families” as units that had exhausted every means of coping with the demented and deranged, and had thus resorted to the asylum as a final, and possibly shameful, escape from their domestic crisis. The data on discharge, with the co-operation (and sometimes at the behest) of family members, suggests other “strategic” uses of welfare institutions. That is, families seemed willing to try the asylum, as a means either of temporary respite or social control or in the hope of effecting a cure for family members. Other families seemed willing to utilize the asylum as a public, quasi-medical institution, which offered rudimentary medical and nursing care, shelter, clothing, and food, for an ailing relative. Asylum committal also transferred most of the burden, and a great deal of the cost, onto the state. Although the Hamilton asylum catered to poor families in the Niagara region of Ontario, it would be misleading to see the provincial lunatic asylum at this time as a means of disciplining disagreeable elements of the working poor. The utilization of private homes and sanatoria by the wealthier classes suggests that institutionalization during this period was not simply the preserve of poor and disempowered families. The middling and more prosperous residents of Ontario do not appear as a statistically relevant category at the Hamilton asylum, partially reflecting the preference of these families for the more discrete and tailor-made treatment facilities of the private asylum in Guelph and elsewhere. While it was certainly shaped by the class of the patients who were institutionalized, the asylum as a social and medical response to madness was not in itself a class-specific development.

298

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

In conclusion, it might seem, at first glance, axiomatic that the rise of the asylum was coincident with the marginalization of family members deemed to be “insane.” After all, the asylum represented a physical and psychological space erected outside the family and, indeed, of society. Transportation to the institution and the presence of insanity in the family itself, as Geoffrey Reaume has sensitively described, were often painful and shameful experiences for patients and family members alike.60 In their decision to resort to the asylum, many families were endeavouring to conceal the existence of madness from the wider community. On the other hand, there is aggregate evidence to justify a more complex use of the asylum than the “dumping’ of stigmatized or marginalized members. It is easy to exaggerate the novelty of the social and psychological marginalization of institutional committal. Yes, the asylum in all its magnificent and imposing splendour was a nineteenth-century phenomenon. But institutional and community responses to violent or dependent behaviour of the insane date back centuries, and there are no few instances of restraint and isolation in the community during the Victorian era, be it in workhouses, in jails, in boarding out with kin or non-kin, or in the household itself. It is also possible that the alleged stigma of the asylum was a largely middle-class preoccupation that affected few working-class families, which had more pressing concerns than the maintenance of social respectability. In a present-day environment that reveals all too readily the social consequences of ‘care in the community’, historians would do well not to idealize either the pre-asylum era or family alternatives to the asylum during the period of industrialization. As Roy Porter and Michael MacDonald have so eloquently demonstrated for early modern England,61 the marginalization caused by madness has a long and sad history that predates (and now postdates) the era of the asylum. To characterize the mental hospital as the cause, rather than a reflection, of modern society’s changing attitudes to mental disability and dependence would be to exculpate society’s role in the marginalization of the mad.

no tes The authors would like to acknowledge the following agencies for their funding support: Canadian Institutes for Health Research–Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Neurosciences (grant no. mop-43835); the Arts Research Board of McMaster University for a seed grant (grant no. 1999R13094-01); and Associated Medical Services (Hannah Institute for the History of Medi-

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

299

cine), Toronto, and McMaster University for endowment funding. We would also like to thank the following individuals who provided research assistance to the research project: Glen Simm, James Tan, Chris Smith, Nancy Delayan, Erika Dyck, Jessa Chupik, and Geoff Spur. 1 Archives of Ontario, Records of the Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital (hereafter ao/hph); rg 10–20–d-1 (Casebooks), 1876–1906, Notes for Frederick Garvin, Reg. no. 2726. 2 Mark Finnane, “Asylums, Families and the State,” History Workshop Journal 20 (1985): 135. 3 Ibid., 136. 4 For the classic enunciation of the social-control approach to the history of asylums, see David Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston: Little Brown, 1971); and Andrew Scull, Museums of Madness: The Social Organisation of Insanity in Nineteenth-Century England (London: Penguin, 1979). 5 Richard Fox, So Far Disordered in Mind: Insanity in California, 1870–1930 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 6 John Walton, “Lunacy in the Industrial Revolution: A Study of Asylum Admissions in Lancashire, 1848–1850,” Journal of Social History 13 (1979): 1–22. 7 Mark Finnane, Insanity and the Insane in Post-Famine Ireland (London: Croom Helm, 1981), chapter 4. 8 Wendy Mitchinson, “Reasons for Committal to a Mid-NineteenthCentury Ontario Insane Asylum: The Case of Toronto,” in Wendy Mitchinson and Janice Dickin McGinnis, eds., Essays in the History of Canadian Medicine (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1988), 88–109. 9 Cheryl Warsh, “ ‘In Charge of the Loons’: A Portrait of the London, Ontario Asylum for the Insane in the Nineteenth Century,” Ontario History 74 (1982): 138–84. For a substantial study of the London asylum, see S.E.D. Shortt, Victorian Lunacy: Maurice Bucke and the Practice of Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 10 Cheryl Warsh, Moments of Unreason: The Practice of Canadian Psychiatry and the Homewood Retreat (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989). 11 Mary-Ellen Kelm, “Women, Families and the Provincial Hospital for the Insane, British Columbia, 1905–1915,” Journal of Family History 19 (1994): 177–93. 12 Geoffrey Reaume, “Mental Hospital Patients and Family Relations in Southern Ontario, 1880–1930,” in Lori Chambers and Edgar-André Montigny, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998), 271–88;

300

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21 22 23

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past: Patient Life at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1870–1940 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2000). Edgar-André Montigny, “ ‘Foisted Upon the Government’: Institutions and the Impact of Public Policy upon the Aged: The Elderly Patients of Rockwood Asylum, 1866–1906,” Journal of Social History 28 (1995): 819–36. James E. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum: Insanity and Society in Nineteenth-Century Quebec and Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000). Thierry Nootens, “Mainmise familiale sur la folie au xix siècle?” Bulletin d’histoire politique 10 (2002): 58–67; André Cellard, “Folie, internement and érosion des solidarités familiales au Québec: Une analyse quantitative,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 10 (2002): 46–57. See also James E. Moran, “Dangerous to Be At Large? Folie et criminalité au Québec et en Ontario au xix siècle,” Bulletin d’histoire politique 10 (2002): 15–22. See, in particular, chapters in Peregrine Horden and Richard Smith, eds., The Locus of Care: Families, Communities, Institutions and the Provision of Welfare since Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1998); and Peter Bartlett and David Wright, eds., Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community, 1750–2000 (London: Athlone, 1999). Based on the sample of medical case notes used later in this chapter, the proportion of admissions who were reported as having spent time in another asylum prior to admission to the Hamilton asylum (both direct transfers and those who were admitted to another asylum and discharged) seems to have been approximately 10-20 per cent of all “first admissions” to Hamilton. Those Ontario counties were, in order of importance, Wentworth, Wellington, Simcoe, York, Lincoln, Brant, Welland, Waterloo, Grey, Norfolk, Haldimand, and Halton. The figures are 578 out of 1,831 men (31.5 per cent) and 417 out of 1,874 women (22.2 per cent) identified as residing in local jails prior to confinement. For a similar discussion of the role of gender and the absence of a disproportionate confinement of women in Victorian England and Wales, see Joan Busfield, “The Female Malady? Men, Women and Madness in Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Sociology 28 (1994): 259–77; Kerry Davies, “ ‘Sexing the Mind?’ Women, Gender and Madness in Nineteenth Century Welsh Asylums,” Llafur – Journal of Welsh Labour History/Cylchgrawn Hanes Llafur Cymru 7 (1996): 29–40. Warsh, “ ‘In Charge of the Loons,’ ” 155. Mitchinson, “Reasons for Committal,” 92. Mary-Ellen Kelm, “Women, Families and the Provincial Hospital for the Insane, British Columbia, 1905–1915.”

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

301

24 For a more substantial exploration of the relationship between gender, class, and madness, see chapters in J. Andrews and A. Digby, eds., Sex and Seclusion, Class and Custody: Gender, Class and the History of Psychiatry in Britain and Ireland (Amsterdam: Rodolpi, 2004). 25 Nancy Tomes, A Generous Confidence: Thomas Story Kirkbride and the Art of Asylum Keeping, 1840–1883 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), chapters 3 and 5. 26 See Rainer Baehre, “Paupers and Poor Relief in Upper Canada,” Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers, 1981; Sharon Anne Cook, “ ‘A Quiet Place … to Die’: Ottawa’s First Protestant Old Age Homes for Women and Men,” Ontario History 1 (1989): 25–40. 27 Children were largely (if not uniformly) restricted from entering the provincial lunatic asylums; instead, those who were classified as ‘idiots’ were sent to a specialist institution in Orillia, northwest of Toronto. Without a comparison of the behavioural characteristics of adolescents admitted to reformatories and adults sent to lunatic asylums, this area begs further comparative research. It is unclear, for example, where adolescents not identified as “idiots” but exhibiting strange behaviour would have been sent. It is quite possible that many may well have found their way into the juvenile reformatories also being built at this time. Robert Nielsen notes that at the Penetanquishene Reformatory Prison for boys, opened in 1859, “the most common charge was larceny; others had been sent to Reformatory for obstructing a railway, keeping found money, breaking windows, and even lunacy.” See Nielsen, Total Encounters: The Life and Times of the Mental Health Centre, Penetanguishene (Hamilton: McMaster University Press, 2000): 8–9, our italics. See also Paul Bennett, “Taming ‘Bad Boys’ of the ‘Dangerous Class’: Child Rescue and Restraint at the Victoria School 1887–1935,” and Susan Houston, “The ‘Waifs’ and ‘Strays’ of a Late Victorian City: Juvenile Delinquants in Toronto,” in Joy Parr, ed., Childhood and Family in Canadian History (Toronto, McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 129–42. For a history of social policy in the province of Ontario regarding the “mentally retarded” and the establishment of the Orillia asylum, see Harvey Simmons, From Asylum to Welfare (Downsview, Ont.: National Institute of Mental Retardation, 1982). 28 Montigny, “Foisted on the Government,” 821. 29 Calculated from “Table vii – Ages of the People” in Census of Canada, 1870–71 (Ottawa: I.B. Taylor, 1873), 2: 58–61. 30 Michael Katz, The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 231. 31 See Stormie Stewart, “The Elderly Poor in Rural Ontario: Inmates of the Wellington County House of Industry, 1877–1907,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 3 (1992): 224.

302

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

32 Katz, The People of Hamilton; Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 1867–1892 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980); Douglas McCalla, Planting the Province: The Economic History of Upper Canada, 1784–1870 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). 33 These figures can be compared with Ian Drummond’s statistical table of occupations of Ontario’s gainfully employed. We can calculate from Drummond’s figures that approximately 49.2 per cent of males were employed in agriculture (excluding labourers) from 1871 to 1901. See Drummond, Progress without Planning: The Economic History of Ontario from Confederation to the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), table 2.2. 34 Donald Akenson argues that in some Ontario counties, newcomers could form well-established communities rather quickly. See Akenson, The Irish in Ontario: A Study in Rural History (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984). 35 For work on the distance-decay effect as it influences the history of asylums, see Joseph Melling and Robert Turner, “The Road to the Asylum: Institutions, Distance and the Administration of Pauper Lunacy in Devon, 1845–1914,” Journal of Historical Geography 25 (1999): 298–332. 36 Farmers could include a wide range of individuals, from impoverished tenant farmers to large-scale landowners to farm labourers. For a discussion of who could rightly be considered a farmer, see Gordon Darroch, “Scanty Fortunes and Rural Middle-Class Formation in NineteenthCentury Rural Ontario,” Canadian Historical Review 79 (1998): 621–59; and R. Marvin McInnis, Perspectives on Ontario Agriculture, 1815–1930 (Gananoque, Ont.: Langdale Press, 1992). 37 The precise manner in which a family was assessed is not clear from the historical record. Clearly, there was some haggling and no few disputes over the family’s proportion of the upkeep of the patient. Those who paid the higher amounts received better accommodation and a lower patient-staff ratio. They were also excused from certain chores within the institution. For those who did not pay, either the province or the municipality in which the lunatic previously resided paid for the cost of maintenance. See Peter Bartlett, “Structures of Confinement in 19th-Century Asylums: A Comparative Study Using England and Ontario,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 23 (2000): 1–13; Reaume, Remembrance of Patients Past, passim. 38 See, for example, Katz, The People of Hamilton, passim. 39 Drummond, Progress without Planning, table 2.2. 40 There is circumstantial evidence that wealthier patients were sent to private asylums or to private beds in public asylums in contiguous Ameri-

Families, Madness, and Confinement in Victorian Ontario

41 42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

303

can states. For a study of asylums in New York and Pennsylvania, see Ellen Dwyer, Homes for the Mad: Life inside Two Nineteenth Century Asylums (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987); and Tomes, A Generous Confidence, respectively. Warsh, “In Charge of the Loons,” 153. Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City, 1880–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), tables A4 and A6; Drummond, Progress without Planning, table 2.2. See Walton, “Lunacy in the Industrial Revolution”; Richard Adair, Joseph Melling, and Bill Forsythe, “Migration, Family Structure and Pauper Lunacy in Victorian England: Admissions to the Devon County Pauper Lunatic Asylum, 1845–1900,” Continuity and Change 12 (1997): 373–401. For an opposing view, see David Wright, “Family Strategies and the Institutional Committal of ‘Idiot’ Children in Victorian England,” Journal of Family History 23 (1998): 190–208. Mitchinson, “Reasons for Commital,” 93. For a discussion of the incarceration of the Irish abroad, see Elizabeth Malcolm, “‘A Most Miserable Looking Object’: The Irish in English Asylums, 1851–1901: Migration, Poverty and Prejudice,” in J. Belchem and K. Tenfelde, eds., Irish and Polish Migration in Comparative Perspective (Essen, 2003), 115–26. This argument, however, needs to confront the tradition of chain migration, whereby migrants often located in foreign countries where they had some, albeit limited, kin connections. It is possible that in the case of female domestics, chain migration might have helped to establish some of the familial infrastructure necessary to buffer the fallout from a descent into mental distress or disability. Marilyn Barber notes that there are examples “recorded by government officials [that] illustrate the chain migration process” among female domestics and their families. Marilyn Barber, Immigrant Domestic Servants in Canada, Canada’s Ethnic Groups, no. 16 (Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991), 5. For a summary, see D. Wright, “Getting Out of the Asylum: Understanding the Confinement of the Insane in the Nineteenth Century,” Social History of Medicine 8 (1997): 147–74. For a recent collection of essays assessing confinement in different national contexts, see Roy Porter and David Wright, eds., The Confinement of the Insane, 1800–1965: International Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). The random sample of 50 men and women was drawn from all patients from patient number 1500 onwards. Case records for those admitted before this patient number appear to be no longer extant. Olive Anderson, Suicide in Victorian and Edwardian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), esp. chapter 11; Anne Shepherd and David Wright, “Madness, Suicide and the Victorian Asylum: Attempted

304

50

51 52

53

54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61

James Moran, David Wright, and Mat Savelli

Self-Murder in the Age of Non-Restraint,” Medical History 46 (2002): 175–96. Michael MacDonald, “The Secularization of Suicide in England, 1660–1800,” Past and Present 111 (1986): 50–100; see also Michael MacDonald and Terence Murphy, Sleepless Souls: Suicide in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). ao/hph, rg 10–20–d-1 (Casebooks), 1876–1906, Notes for Flora Morrison, Reg. no. 1635. John Radford and Deborah Carter Park, “A Convenient Means of Riddance: Institutionalization of People Diagnosed as Mentally Defective in Ontario, 1876–1934,” Health and Canadian Society, 1 (1993): 369–92. The Victorians understood what we now call schizophrenia as adolescent dementia, emphasising the cognitive decline as being the key feature of this disorder. Modern psychiatry, by contrast, has reconceptualized schizophrenia as a “psychotic” disorder, emphasizing the delusional thinking as key to the condition. ao/hph, rg 10–20–d-1 (Casebooks), 1876–1906, Notes for William Scott, Reg. no. 3127. Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1985), 225. ao/hph, rg 10–20–d-1 (Casebooks), 1876–1906, Notes for John McGirr, Reg. no. 1291. See Hilary Marland, “At Home with Puerperal Mania: The Domestic Treatment of Insanity of Childbirth in the Nineteenth Century,” in Bartlett and Wright, eds., Outside the Walls of the Asylum, 48. ao/hph, rg 10–20–d-1 (Casebooks), 1876–1906, Notes for Margaret Fitzpatrick, Reg. no. 1889. Moran, Committed to the State Asylum, chapter 4. Geoffrey Reaume, “Mental Hospital Patients and Family Relations in Southern Ontario, 1880–1930,” in Chambers and Montigny, eds., Family Matters, 271–88. See Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Roy Porter, Mind Forg’d Manacles: A History of Madness from the Restoration to the Regency (London: Athlone, 1989).

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

305

10 Orphans in Quebec On the Margin of Which Family? d enyse bai llarg e o n

Over the past several years in Quebec, the complaints of the “Duplessis orphans” (les orphelins de Duplessis) have reminded us that in the notso-distant past, a large number of French-speaking Quebec children lived on the margins of the family in institutions run by religious communities.1 In 1996 Marie-Paule Malouin published a study in response to the accusations levelled by this group, headed by the writer Bruno Roy, himself a Duplessis orphan, in which she examined this “universe of children in difficulty,” paying particular attention to the nuns themselves and making connections between the place and status of women in the society, patriarchal Quebec institutions, and the fate that was reserved for these children. Her analysis, which also highlights the “concordat” between the Catholic Church and the Quebec state on matters of social assistance, in place since the nineteenth century, emphasizes how gender relations imposed serious limits on the ability of single mothers (unwed mothers, widows, women abandoned by their husbands) to support their children, so that they were forced to abandon them to the crèches or to place them in orphanages. Here the nuns, who were assumed to be carrying out a typically feminine labour and therefore one without real social value, were expected to take care of the children without charge and without the benefit of adequate financial support.2 Malouin’s study pays only scant attention, however, to an important question – on what grounds did the church justify the orphanage system, the existence of which had been under attack since the end of nineteenth century, principally, it should be said, by AngloProtestant social workers?

306

Denyse Baillargeon

This article will explore the motivations that led the church, or at least its dominant male contingent, to resist the new trend of placing children in family settings, which became established in the period between the wars in both Canada and the rest of North America. Drawing on a body of texts written by the clergy and by lay circles close to the Catholic Church, my analysis will deal not only with the debate over family placement versus the orphanage but also with the church’s conception of the family, childhood, and the education of children. As an hypothesis, I would indeed maintain that, beyond the various reasons that were explicitly invoked by the spokesmen for the ecclesiastical hierarchy in defence of these religious institutions, the church’s bias in favour of orphanages stemmed from a specific notion of childhood and the functions of education, from a profound distrust of the family’s ability to transmit the religious and moral values cherished by the church, and from the conviction that the church itself was a family, perhaps the best family, because it offered the firmest guarantee of preserving souls, which, in its view, constituted the ultimate aim of moulding children. It was toward the end of the nineteenth century in Anglo-Protestant Canada that the reformers, the most well known of whom was probably John Joseph Kelso,3 began their crusade against the institutional placement of children, which led to the founding of children’s aid societies, first in Toronto in 1891 and then in other large Ontario and Canadian centres. Bolstered by the children’s protective legislation adopted in a number of English-speaking provinces between 1893 and 1901, these new organizations sought to take charge of children who had been abandoned or neglected and find new, foster families for them that would be better able than their biological families to ensure their education and welfare. In the minds of the reformers and social workers who had gradually taken control of the protective societies, the orphanage was not capable of assuming so sensitive a task. According to the study of the pro-family placement movement undertaken by Patricia T. Rooke and R.L. Schnell, the new experts in the field of children in difficulty in fact believed that the family represented “the finest product of civilization”4 and that children ought not to be deprived of their family without truly grave cause. In the literature of reform, institutions for orphans or neglected children, which had known their greatest glory in the nineteenth century, were now seen as “monuments of brick and mortar” that swallowed immense sums of money without in any way achieving their goal of protecting and supporting children; in fact, quite the contrary. Indeed, in a period when contagious illnesses could spread with terrifying rapidity, infect-

Orphans in Quebec

307

ing large numbers of victims, these institutions might prove dangerous to children since they constituted virtual hotbeds of infection that threatened the health and even the lives of the children within them. 5 The close quarters in which they lived could prove equally detrimental to their moral health, according to these new “experts,” because children already inclined to vice and crime could easily corrupt the more vulnerable among them. Above all, the partisans of family placement maintained that the orphanages could not provide a “normal” setting for the children’s development and could not hope to prepare them for a “real” social life because, as Charlotte Whitton said, these huge conglomerations could not furnish the children with “warmth, and love, and understanding, and character development.”6 Marshalling large numbers of children in a single place, with a staff insufficient in numbers and inadequate in preparation to take care of them, encouraged a reliance on a military, rigid, and uniform system that paid no attention to individual needs. This education, comprising sermons and punishment, the new specialists believed, led to conformism and encouraged dependency in the inmates, who, once they left the orphanage, would be incapable of taking care of themselves or acting on their own behalf.7 The abandonment of the orphanage system in favour of family placement in English-speaking Canada, even if it turned out to be inconsistent from province to province and frequently yielded disappointing results, was grounded in a new concept of childhood. The orphanages themselves already represented an evolution in this regard – by separating children from other categories of indigents or criminals, by limiting their contact with the larger society, and by rendering them dependent upon and under the control and watchful eyes of adults, with the aim of returning them to society, the founders of these institutions assumed that the youngest were the most easily led astray in the absence of protection and guidance.8 The criticism of these institutions for children that manifested itself toward the end of the nineteenth century indicates the emergence of a new rhetoric of the family, henceforth to be seen as the single appropriate social institution to ensure a “childhood” for children and to guarantee their psychological development, with the goal of their ultimate successful social integration.9 Childhood, considered a particular stage in the development of individuals who were still innocent and in need of the support of attentive adults, attracted an increasing concern the more that industrialized nations appeared to depend upon future generations to adapt to the profound socio-economic transformations that were taking place. Family placement was intended to respond to the structural and cultural transformations that were under way, but it also came to legitimize the position of the social

308

Denyse Baillargeon

worker, a profession whose star was rising in Anglo-Protestant circles at the turn of the twentieth century. Relying on their new knowledge and soon on their new social status, social workers capitalized on the fears evoked by industrialization and urbanization to proffer their own analysis of contemporary “social problems” they had themselves identified (delinquency, vagrancy, child labour, truancy, and the like) and to impose solutions that inevitably reflected a growing dependence on their field of expertise.10 To them, orphanages run by untrained philanthropists smacked of a bygone age – only professionals in possession of “scientific” knowledge should henceforth evaluate the situation of children in difficulty and decide their fate, for their own good and for that of society as a whole. At a time when attention was being more and more directed toward the individual child considered as a kind of pledge to the future, and when “science” was being substituted for charity as a better means of developing human “capital,” the accusations levelled against the orphanages became more and more vicious. Following World War i, in particular, the attacks grew to the point that Abbé Arthur SaintPierre, a social sciences professor at the Université de Montréal, in his report to the Quebec Commission on Social Insurance (the Montpetit Commission) in the early 1930s, felt called upon to address what he termed the “systematic” and “virulent” anti-institutional campaign.11 In view of the fact that, according to Saint-Pierre, “the charitable institutions of the province of Québec shelter three times the number of indigents than those in Ontario,12 of whom a substantial number were orphans, and that the great majority of orphanages were run by religious communities, it is obvious that these complaints could readily be interpreted as blows directed against the Catholic Church and therefore against the French-Canadian nation itself, since this religion was one of its identifying markers. Saint-Pierre, in his work entitled Témoignages sur nos orphelinats, published in 1946, wrote, “These institutions form a part of our moral treasure; they form a singularly precious part of our national patrimony ... Every attack on them is a threat to us; every blow to them wounds us, everything that hinders and restricts their freedom of action impoverishes us.”13 Underlying the debate over foster homes versus orphanages, traditionalist nationalists such as Saint-Pierre had no difficulty discerning an attempt to undermine the very foundations of French-Canadian identity, and if for no other reason, it should come as no surprise that they devoted so much of their energy to singing the praises of the institutional system of caring for abandoned children. But equally important was the matter of their defending their own notion of childhood and the training of children, heart and soul of the Catholic French-

Orphans in Quebec

309

Canadian nation, over which the church had every intention of maintaining its control. The defence of the orphanages, orchestrated by authorities such as Arthur Saint-Pierre and, later, Abbé Charles-Édouard Bourgeois, a leading light in the child-welfare field, made use of two simultaneous and complementary strategies. Part of their argument exploited the weaknesses of the family-placement system proposed by the AngloProtestants; the other emphasized the advantages of the Catholic institutions, which, in their opinion, rendered them infinitely superior. Relying on the statements of a number of anglophone figures, among them Charlotte Whitton and certain American social workers, the two men painstakingly recorded and offered as evidence all the operational failures of the foster-home system revealed even by those who championed them the most. In his report to the Montpetit Commission, SaintPierre, for example, stressed that the anglophone experts deplored the lack of adequate numbers of social workers to ensure the safe placement of children, the insufficient number of “good families able to provide the children entrusted to them with the most favourable atmosphere for their physical, intellectual, and moral development,”14 the fact that many children had to be repeatedly re-placed. He was happy to remark that certain prominent American authorities, such as J. Prentice Murphy, secretary of the Children’s Bureau in Philadelphia, had gone so far as to say that “family placement offers insurmountable difficulties for the greatest number.”15 In fact, according to Saint-Pierre’s report, even an “enthusiastic supporter of family placement admits that institutionalization is necessary for about 90 per cent of children taken into care.”16 Ten years later, in his study Une richesse à sauver, l’enfant sans soutien, based on his doctoral dissertation, Bourgeois, while making frequent references to Saint-Pierre, added more names to the list of anglophone critics, among them H.W. Hopkirk, head of the Child Welfare League of America, Shelby M. Harrison, director of the Russell Sage Foundation, and the representative of the Canadian Social Welfare Council, all of whom acknowledged the usefulness of institutions in certain particular cases, especially for children suffering from physical or mental deficiencies or those with acute behavioural problems.17 In Bourgeois’s opinion, even if these specialists were clearly trying to limit the use of institutions, they nevertheless acknowledged the value of institutional placement when the establishments were well run.18 There was clearly no doubt in the minds of these two men that the orphanages under the direction of the religious communities fell into the category of the well run and well managed. “Institutional aid ... is remarkably developed in Quebec and extraordinarily well-organized,” Saint-Pierre asserted in the early 1930s, “thanks to their superior staffs

310

Denyse Baillargeon

and to the higher purposes that motivate them”; he went on to say that “nowhere is human suffering greeted with greater sympathy than among us, or with equal solace; nowhere else is the eminent dignity of the poor respected as consistently or in as universal a way.”19 Indeed, even the redoubtable Charlotte Whitton did not make a frontal attack on Catholic orphanages,20 though she was a strong supporter of foster homes, something that Saint-Pierre did not fail to emphasize to the Montpetit Commission. As he pointed out, “three-quarters of the value of an undertaking depends on the worth of its personnel. The worth of the personnel in our institutions is not in doubt. Investigators in British Columbia, New Brunswick, and Ontario have all attested to their excellence.21 Before this very Commission, Miss Charlotte Whitton in particular was pleased to pay tribute to our institutions on several occasions.”22 According to Saint-Pierre, the members of religious communities who worked in the orphanages comprised an elite corps of indisputable competence and spotless morality.23 There were, moreover, enough of them to meet the needs of the children while at the same time offering the precious advantage of providing their services at an unbeatable price. By his estimate, the value of the services rendered by the religious communities in all the establishments under their direction (that is, not only the orphanages but also the old-age homes, the hospitals, the insane asylums, and so on) added up to more than $9 million a year, half of which came from the unpaid labour furnished by the some 4,600 members of religious orders attached to different establishments.24 As Saint-Pierre pointed out, in the United States the government had to spend $400 a year for each child in an orphanage, and in Ontario the provincial government provided $1 a day, that is, $365 a year; in Quebec, government grants ranged between $87.40 and $200 a year, depending on the type of institution (orphanage or industrial training school), with the average no more that $125.25 While acknowledging that the amounts were laughably small, that the communities were going from deficit to deficit, and that they ought to have more money to improve their operations and provide a greater level of comfort to their charges, Saint-Pierre was not of the view that the government ought to pay the whole bill for the care of orphans and other institutionalized indigents because such a policy would inevitably result in an unwarranted increase in taxes. In his opinion, it was “in the clear interests of the indigents themselves that their care should not cost too much,”26 so that they might count on the support of the “contributing” elements of the population; too high a cost risked dividing the mass of the people from the social rejects, the jobless, the homeless, and those without family. Social solidarity could clearly not be attained without recourse to unpaid religious personnel, which immediately

Orphans in Quebec

311

ruled out the hiring of lay specialists such as social workers. For SaintPierre and Bourgeois, however, this situation was in no way unfortunate; on the contrary, in their minds, the care of the needy, particularly children, provided by the religious communities in the name of Christian charity far outweighed any sort of supervision that could have been offered by professionals, for unlike these, the religious always bore in mind the spiritual objectives of their mission among the poor.27 To sum up, then, in contrast to the Protestant establishments, the Catholic orphanages, according to clerical rhetoric, offered first-class services at an absurdly low cost and delivered by devoted and utterly competent workers, services that would guarantee that the orphans would be perfectly reintegrated into society. Realizing, no doubt, that the credibility of a clergy praising its own institutions might readily be called into question, Arthur Saint-Pierre even took the trouble to poll some 145 former inmates of orphanages with the expressed intention of learning the opinion of those most closely affected, but also in the hope, one supposes, that they would confirm his sentiments and thus silence criticism. Not surprisingly, the results proved most laudatory of the religious communities. Of the group polled, only a minority, 29 out of 145, retained any bad or merely fair memories of their stay in the orphanage, while a strong majority had only minor complaints when asked about the food, discipline, care, and education or training they received. If more than half of them stated that they seemed less likely to assert themselves in their own behalf and were more timid and less resourceful than the average young adult, Saint-Pierre deemed that this group of negative responses came about because of a badly formulated question, it could not therefore be deduced that the orphanages inculcated an “abnormal timidity” in their inmates.28 At the time of the poll, their occupations, which included two brothers, six priests, and six men and women in religious orders, not to speak of a certain number of professionals (agronomists, accountants, journalists, teachers, and so on), with only two unemployed in the group, demonstrated, according to Saint-Pierre, that the orphanages, even more than the public schools, adequately prepared children for desirable jobs.29 In all, this study, which was, according to Saint-Pierre, conducted in accordance with “scientific” methodology,30 corroborated what the church had been saying for a long time – far from “maltreating” children, “ruining” their health, depriving them of an education, or “robbing” them of all personality, the orphanage offered them a refuge, moral training, and the opportunity to study, all of which many other children, living in the bosom of their families, might well lack.31 The quality of the institutions and the results they attained certainly constituted sufficient grounds to justify their retention, but according

312

Denyse Baillargeon

to Saint-Pierre, Bourgeois, and their disciples, there were other factors, at least as important if not more so, which also argued in their favour. On the one hand, the orphanage system kept the state at a remove from the children; on the other, contrary to what the Protestant social workers asserted, it contributed to the preservation of family bonds, while respecting parental rights, especially the rights of the father, at least as far as the church understood them. As the experience of other provinces had shown, the foster family system did indeed imply a greater degree of intervention by the public authority into the realm of childhood welfare than the church could allow. 32 Clerical antagonism to the state, expressed over and over on the question of compulsory school attendance and family policy on the grounds of preserving parental prerogatives,33 appeared even more virulent in the case of children “lacking support” because it became a matter of defending the rights of parents who had to all intents and purposes abdicated them. It should be recalled that when, in 1920, the Taschereau government, in response to the request of the women’s religious communities themselves, who felt unable to cope,34 introduced a law that encouraged adoption so as to relieve overcrowding in the crèches, the male clergy and certain nationalists such as Henri Bourassa were violently opposed on the grounds that the legislation would allow the civil authority to decree the loss of paternal rights which had been conferred by divine law. In effect, this legislation allowed children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, to be declared available for adoption if they had been abandoned for two years, without requiring parental consent.35 Hardly was it in place than the law became the target of a barrage of criticism in Catholic circles, which, among other reasons, invoked the inalienable character of paternal power.36 This general outcry led the Taschereau government to amend its law to include a number of modifications demanded by its opponents, which would result in the category of “adoptable” being restricted to “illegitimate” children (except for those whose parents had announced their intention of regaining them) and to “legitimate” children whose parents were dead or insane and whose relatives had declined to take responsibility for them. In short, the law, as amended, restricted adoptions as far as possible in order to safeguard the prerogatives conferred by God on the father of a family and enshrined in the Civil Code.37 Restrictions of this sort probably contributed to the maximum number of orphans being left in orphanages, since it became practically impossible to have them adopted. In fact, the position adopted by the clergy and those in conservative Catholic circles in this debate demonstrated how far they would go to prevent any attempt on the part of the

Orphans in Quebec

313

civil authorities to create new familial connections, even when the original family bonds had withered away. Twenty years later, when the Godbout government sought to establish children’s aid societies similar to those in Ontario and give them the power to supervise children placed in institutions and to act as legal guardians for children who were neglected or abandoned,38 another hue and cry arose from the same groups. This time it was not simply a question of preserving the principle of paternal power but also of protecting the church’s prerogatives, which were directly threatened by the implications of the law. In his book Une richesse à sauver, in which he repeated the essence of the argument he had presented to the Garneau Commission, 39 Bourgeois, who had become the champion of this opposition group, was indignant that parents or, to be exact, fathers of abandoned children lost all rights in regard to their offspring and that the religious communities would find themselves under the control of organizations run by laymen endowed “with the dangerous authority to intrude into every religious institution in order to take away the children who may be found there.”40 He was specifically disturbed that the law granted such latitude to the children’s aid societies in the matter of placement: “If this society is composed of persons of a neutral or secular mind, or if these very same persons express a marked preference for foster homes, then we can say without hesitation that these indigent children will be sent immediately and quickly to the foster home.”41 Confirming the clergy’s worst fears, the wording of the 1944 law, which never came into force, led to the prediction that, to the detriment of the religious communities, the state and its officials would have a stranglehold over the children, as they inevitably would favour foster families paid from the public purse. Rejecting family placement was thus the best way of preventing what for the church smacked of heresy, the “multiplication of wards of the state,” as Cardinal Rodrigue Villeneuve put it.42 In opposing family placement, the church always claimed to be not merely defending its own interests or those of the father; it argued that it was at the same time preserving family cohesiveness because, as a number of investigations had demonstrated, the great majority of “orphans” had either a father or a mother, if not both parents, still alive. In fact, according to the study undertaken by Arthur Saint-Pierre for the Montpetit Commission at the beginning of the 1930s, a bare 12 per cent of the children lodged in the establishments he had looked into were completely orphaned. In the mid-1940s Bourgeois estimated that the proportion was only around 5 per cent.43 In these circumstances, and leaving aside genuine orphans and “illegitimate” children, for whom it was appropriate to find homes wholly “free of all suspicion,”44 said Saint-Pierre, “there is not, nor can there be, any question

314

Denyse Baillargeon

of creating a new family circle ... but ... of turning to the kind of aid most inclined to maintain family bonds – in short, the institutions.”45 From the clergy’s point of view, it was absolutely useless and even detrimental to find a new family for the child who still had at least one living parent, since even a temporary placement led a child to form new emotional bonds which could breach those he had already made with his natural parents and his siblings. If one were to believe the representatives of the church, the biological connections between the generations, despite being represented as all the stronger because they were “natural,” could readily be destroyed when material advantages came in play. Family placement “runs the risk of rupturing the bonds of blood the more that the homes found for the children are of a better sort. Grafting the child onto the trunk of a new family tree necessarily renders final a separation that ought normally be only temporary.”46 The institution, on the other hand, encouraged the maintenance of familial bonds since it both permitted and encouraged parental visits and could take in all the children of a particular family, regardless of how large (at least those of the same sex), which was not the case with a foster family. The institution also protected the rights of the poorest parents over their children because, according to Saint-Pierre, they had “chosen,” with a full knowledge of the facts, to place their children in the orphanage, knowing that they would there receive every guarantee of a good education. To oblige them to place their children with a foster family made a mockery of the sacred right even of the most impoverished parents to make the best decisions for their children: If maternal or paternal authority ... still retains some respect and significance in our province, if freedom of education, which necessarily involves the free choice of teachers by the child’s usual protectors, has not become an idle word for poor people, we wonder on what grounds genuine or so-called experts, prying busybodies, or a meddling bureaucracy might interfere in the exercise of the rights of those parents who have not been shown to be either unworthy or merely incompetent. If they choose an orphanage for their children above all other educational establishments, they need not explain themselves to anyone, and any pressure exerted on them to force them to make another choice is clearly abusive. Such pressure would be especially odious if it presents itself under the cover of some past or future federal or provincial law for the protection of children.47

It was thus, among other reasons, in order to protect poor families from an interfering state bureaucracy and to defend them against unjust accusations levied by lay “experts” that Saint-Pierre and Bourgeois after him justified their opposition to dismantling the orphan-

Orphans in Quebec

315

ages. In fact, as we shall see, the church itself suspected such families of incompetence, but in this argument, it was a question of siding with the weakest so as to re-enforce its legitimacy. Saint-Pierre’s remarks reveal, moreover, that he was seeking to rehabilitate the orphanage by defining it as an educational institution rather than as a place for children in distress. Later in the same text, he makes the point: “I have long held that the orphanage was, for us, at the very least the boarding school for poor children.”48 From this point of view, the institution, however disparaged in Anglo-Protestant circles, shed its sordid character and found total justification for its existence. Since at this period there was as yet no questionof demolishing the boarding schools maintained by the clergy,49 it became unnecessary, not to say unseemly, to think of abolishing the institutions for orphans. Indeed, as we shall now see, for the church the boarding school often represented for the Church a more salutary place in which to raise children than their “natural” families; all the more reason that the orphanage was certainly in a better position than the foster homes – the “mercenary” homes (foyers mercenaires), in the oft-repeated phrase – to accomplish this sensitive mission. The religious discourse concerning the family, the child, and its education in the first half of the twentieth century in fact reveals that the clergy and many laypersons in circles close to them maintained virtually unattainable ideals in the area of family life for even the best-intentioned of parents, who were, of course, in the small minority. The model of the Holy Family, held up to Catholic homes the world over from the time of Leo xiii and to French Canada since the era of Mgr de Laval of New France, was effectively beyond the grasp of the majority. Considered the “highest spiritual expression of the carnal reality that is the human family,”50 it presumed an existence wholly devoted to sanctity, so as better to sublimate all sensuality. Despite its stress on the responsibility, even the sacred right of parents, especially the father, regarding the education of their children,51 the church was far from being convinced that parents could, or even would, transform their home into a “sanctuary,” as it recommended they do,52 or that they were ready and able to bow to the divine will in ensuring a fully and exclusively Christian upbringing and education for their children. To the church, the child represented a “gift of God,” an “immortal soul” entrusted to the care of its parents while it awaited its return to him.53 As this soul was “enshrouded in flesh, captive to the senses,”54 “filled with gloom, corruption, and sorrow,”55 it fell to the parents to redeem it, to strengthen it, so that it would be raised “toward truth, duty, and God.”56 The child, weak and marked by original sin, though nevertheless created in the image of God and destined to resemble him and be

316

Denyse Baillargeon

reunited with him in the afterlife, was in need of protection and the imitation of virtue. Canon law, which stipulated that “parents are charged with a very grave obligation to provide their children, according to their ability, with a religious, moral, physical, and social education and ensure their temporal well-being,”57 evidently placed the spiritual responsibilities of parents toward their children in first place, judging by the order of this list. Moreover, in church discourse, education and religion were to all intents and purposes interchangeable, since genuine education was not possible in the absence of religion; all educational enterprise thus became a spiritual work, a view that opened the door wide for a clergy who prided itself on being better able to accomplish this task than the laity.58 Reasons to take over from the parents were evidently not lacking. As many religious writers remarked, the duty of parents to establish truly Christian households, to cultivate religious feelings in their children before anything else, and to instruct them in the “true faith” in order to ensure their ultimate spiritual destiny was too often neglected or even trodden underfoot, and this occurred at every level of society. As Father Albert Tessier explained, “The souls of children must be touched and moulded by the pure hands of angels. Alas, alas, the poor little ones! Everywhere I have seen them placed in unworthy or at least clumsy and ignorant hands.”59 The absence of a Christian spirit among parents, their ignorance of their religion and of moral law, their indifference to or abdication of their duties as educators,60 their lack of interest in the “fundamental elements of [Christian] training,”61 especially piety, their reluctance to turn their backs on the world and the pursuit of immediate and sometimes not even innocent pleasures in order to devote themselves to the work of education, or, even worse, their lack of religion altogether and, in certain cases, their depravity were all very frequent evils, in the view of many Catholic writers. In the early 1930s, Father Rutché filed this alarming report: Even our homes are barely Christian, save on the surface. Listen to their everyday conversations; hear what they are talking about. The topics of money, of pleasure, of material well-being dance ceaselessly about. God is almost wholly absent from their thoughts and preoccupations. There is hardly a trace of family prayer in a multitude of homes ... Christ still hangs on the wall, but as a forgotten symbol, alas! ... Family life no longer exists. The Catholic family is disintegrating. Family members scatter in the pursuit of idle pleasure ... The home will soon mean no more than a boarding house, fortunate only if arguments and quarrels have not rendered the atmosphere poisonous.62

In short, from the perspective of the church and a portion of the Catholic elite, a very large number of households, if not the majority,

Orphans in Quebec

317

represented potential sites of corruption for children, who found themselves deprived of good examples from which to cultivate their spiritual life.63 Too often left to their own devices by parents who were either careless or absorbed in their own social lives, or entrusted to the care of maids who might be at best indifferent or at worst immoral, young people were literally abandoned to their impulses and their instincts. The gaps in their moral and religious training were such that the majority arrived at school not knowing their prayers or even how to make the sign of the cross, as numerous teachers bitterly complained.64 It was therefore infinitely preferable that they should be placed in a boarding school, where at least for the greater part of the year, the nuns and priests would instill in the children the true precepts of their religion and see to it that they practised their religious duties.65 This outcome assumed, however, that the parents would stay the course during the vacations, something that was far from certain, given their laxity. “How does it happen that children are able to attend Holy Mass frequently and to take communion during the school year, while during vacations these beautiful, pious practices are swept clear out of their minds? Is it that the children’s faith has suddenly declined? Is it not rather that parental authority has failed? ... After the freedom of the school holidays, is it any surprise to see children coming back to school who have so altered in their moral life that their teachers no longer know the right way to take up once again the task of edification that had been so painfully accomplished under their care?”66 For poor parents, the accusation that they were intellectually incapable of fully mastering the art of raising children properly might be added to the charge of parental incompetence, which could exist at any social level. “God has not distributed his gifts of intelligence, tact, and expertise with an equally generous hand to every brain,” Father Plamondon had to remark in 1924. Children of this sort of family were also more in danger of finding themselves in homes that were broken or deteriorating as a result of their parents’ separation or plain immorality. “Hence arises ... the urgent necessity of seizing hold, one way or another of these dear children, these decent adolescents, and helping the family by supplementing it.”67 For poor families, this help came largely in the form of the orphanage, which Plamondon also saw as a kind of boarding school. While recognizing that these institutions were not perfect, that the children in them lived “an artificial life,” he nevertheless concluded: “This means of coming to the aid of the family is all the more commendable since the experience of hundreds of years is there to reassure us. The influence that the heads of these institutions exert over these children and their families sometimes makes all the difference. Many children owe

318

Denyse Baillargeon

their Christian education and their position in society solely to the virtues they were made to practise during their time in the orphanage or boarding school.”68 Because the church placed so fundamental an importance on religion in the training of children and because it was convinced that the family constituted far from an ideal setting in which to encourage the acquisition of Christian values, it preferred to maintain children at a distance from their families so as to ensure its supervision of their education, rather than see them lose their souls in the care of negligent or more or less deviant parents, whether these parents were “natural” or “foster.” In the establishments run by religious personnel, it goes without saying that the priority went to the “spiritual and supernatural training” of the child, as Bourgeois explained. He added, “Our religious institutions understand that the child is composed of a body and a soul, and without neglecting the physical and intellectual sides of his body, they fasten particularly on his soul, according to the principles of the religious and social doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church.”69 According the the archbishop of Ottawa, Mgr Alexandre Vachon, the orphanages thus rendered a “splendid service” not only “to unfortunate children, but also (above all?) to religion and the nation; by immersing the young souls so thoroughly in their faith, they prepare committed disciples for the church and devoted, peaceful, virtuous citizens for the nation.”70 To the image of a family that was disunited, disorganized, immoral, decadent, debauched, and depraved, descriptive terms that the clergy used as a matter of course, the church countered with the representation of a stable and honourable institution wholly devoted to the transmission of “true values,” thanks to virtuous personnel who offered every guarantee of morality. In such circumstances, how was it possible to imagine, as the Protestants alleged, that the institution “stifled the personality” of the child? In fact, the orphanage or the boarding school represented a healthier setting in which to live than did many families, since it offered a shelter from the debauchery that was corrupting the world and encouraged the expansion of spirituality in each child in its charge, thus respecting his or her “supernatural” rights to attain truth. What is more, the devotion and the competence of the staff charged with the care of the children could not be called into question because what they did was uniquely guided by their faith and by God. Faced with the grand task that education represented, the religious were superior to even the most attentive of parents, since, as Judge Dorion observed, “The mother loves something of herself in her children; the religious loves God himself in each of them – thus the gift of self is more complete.”71 The renunciation of the world, celibacy, the

Orphans in Quebec

319

choice of consecrating one’s life to others, especially the weakest, for the greater glory of God, conferred an aura of perfection on the religious which no group of parents could hope to claim, for Arthur SaintPierre, it was perfectly clear that, even if one were able to pay the price, it would be impossible to find a sufficient number of substitute parents who could demonstrate the same zeal, the same selflessness toward the children, and who would provide “educational and moral conditions”72 of the same exalted standard because, in their case, beyond the limitations inherent in any group of parents who were living in the world and who seldom avoided its temptations, the lure of gain was always to be feared. In essence, for the church, the children who lived in the orphanages were not really deprived of a family. On the contrary, they were transformed into the best family that could exist, the church, which had welcomed them at their birth with “a mother’s tenderness” and “adopted” them in baptism. In Catholic imagery, the Christ child himself, or at least his brother, was incarnated in every orphan, and the orphanage became an extended family where the true spirit of the Holy Family reigned supreme and God, “father of orphans,” through the agency of his representatives, the paternal and maternal members of religious orders, provided for their every essential need, beginning, of course, with spiritual nourishment.73

no tes This chapter was translated by Yvonne M. Klein.

1 “Duplessis orphans” are a group of orphans who were transferred to psychiatric asylums during the 1950s (or orphans who lived in institutions that were transformed into asylums) on the grounds of a false diagnosis of mental illness. The religious communities responsible for these children, the ecclesiastical authorities, the psychiatrists who made the diagnosis, and the Quebec state were all complicit in this enterprise, whose aim was to secure more grants from the federal government. Duplessis orphans have recently obtained some compensation from the Quebec government. 2 Marie-Paule Malouin, L’univers des enfants en difficulté au Québec entre 1940 et 1960 (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1996). 3 On John Joseph Kelso’s career, see John Bullen, “J.J. Kelso and the New Child-Savers : The Genesis of the Children’s Aid Movement in Ontario,” Ontario History 72 (1990): 107–28. 4 Patricia T. Rooke and R.L. Schnell, Discarding the Asylum: From Child

320

5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13

14

15 16

17 18 19

Denyse Baillargeon

Rescue to the Welfare State in English-Canada (1800–1950) (New York: University Press of America, 1983), 309. It should be remembered that at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the crèches directed by nuns in Montreal, infant mortality rates were absolutely catastrophic, reaching nearly 850 deaths per 1,000 live births. According to Andrée Lévesque, in the 1930s at the Miséricorde hospital where single mothers gave birth , the rates were still around 370 per 1,000, compared with 70 per thousand for “legitimate” children. See Andrée Lévesque, La norme et les déviantes: Des femmes au Québec pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Montréal: Boréal, 1989), 134. For statistics pertaining to the first decades of the twentieth century, see Montréal, Rapport annuel du Service de santé de la Ville de Montréal (1941), 243. Charlotte Whitton, in Child and Family Welfare, March 1931: 60. Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum, 310–11. Ibid., 392–3. Ibid., 396. On the history of social work in English-speaking Canada, see Gale Wills, A Marriage of Convenience: Business and Social Work in Toronto, 1918–1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 12–32. Arthur Saint-Pierre, L’oeuvre des congrégations religieuses de charité (Montréal: Éditions de la bibliothèque canadienne, n.d.), 23. Ibid.: “les institutions de charité de la province de Québec hospitalis[aient] trois fois plus d’indigents que celles de l’Ontario.” Arthur Saint-Pierre, Témoignages sur nos orphelinats (Montréal: Éditions Fides, 1940), 129: “Ces institutions font partie de nos richesses morales, elles forment une part singulièrement précieuse de notre patrimoine national ... Tout ce qui s’attaque à elle nous menace, tout ce qui les frappe nous blesse, tout ce qui gêne et restreint leur liberté d’action nous appauvrit.” Saint-Pierre, L’oeuvre, 28–9 and 32: “bonnes familles capables de fournir aux enfants qu’on leur confie l’atmosphère la plus favorable à leur développement physique, intellectuel et moral.” Ibid., 31, my translation: “le placement familial offre des difficultés insurmontables pour le plus grand nombre.” Arthur Saint-Pierre quoted in Édouard Montpetit, Rapport de la Commission des assurances sociales de Québec (Québec: Ministère du Travail, 1932), 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th reports, 46: “Un chaud partisan du placement familial admet que le régime de l’institution est nécessaire pour 90 pour cent environ des enfants assistés.” Charles-Édouard Bourgeois, Une richesse à sauver: L’enfant sans soutien (Montréal: Le centre familial 1946), 154–8. Ibid., 158. Arthur Saint-Pierre, “L’Assistance institutionnelle dans la province de

Orphans in Quebec

20

21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30

321

Québec,” La Santé 11 (fév. 1932): 20: “L’Assistance institutionnelle ... est remarquablement développée chez nous et supérieurement organisée ... grâce à leur personnel d’élite et aux motifs d’ordre surnaturel dont il est animé nulle part la souffrance humaine n’est entourée de plus de sympathie que chez nous, d’un pareil réconfort moral ; nulle part n’est respectée aussi constamment, d’une façon aussi universelle, l’éminente dignité du pauvre.” According to Rooke and Schnell, several reasons may explain Whitton’s leniency towards Catholic orphanages, including a kind of respect for the nuns, capable women just like herself, although she did not hesitate to denounce Protestant institutions. Alternatively, the authors also suggest that this attitude could have stemmed from a kind of contempt: “Or, finally, perhaps her Protestant biases prompted her to believe that Protestant organizations were more likely to respond to progressive thought and new modes of welfare than such medieval structures as the Catholic Church or the religious orders with their old methods of discipline and dispensing of charity” (Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum, 362). These testimonies are quoted at length in Saint-Pierre, L’oeuvre, 59. Saint-Pierre quoted in Montpetit, Rapport, 47: “la valeur d’une oeuvre dépend, aux trois-quarts, de la valeur de son personnel. Or, la valeur de ce personnel dans nos institutions n’est pas mise en doute. Des enquêteurs en Colombie britannique, au Nouveau-Brunswick, en Ontario, leur ont rendu d’excellents témoignages. Devant cette Commission mademoiselle Whitton, en particulier, s’est plu à rendre plusieurs fois hommage à nos institutions.” Saint-Pierre, L’oeuvre, 58. Ibid., 84. Ibid., 87–88. Ibid., 91: “de l’intérêt bien compris des indigents eux-mêmes que leur entretien ne coûte pas trop cher.” It was only at the end of the 1930s and the beginning of the 1940s that the two French schools of social work, respectively at the Université Laval and the Université de Montréal, were founded. Run by male clerics for several years, these schools first attracted a significant number of nuns and priests. On the history of social work in Quebec, see LionelHenri Groulx, Le travail social: Analyse et évolution, débats et enjeux, (Québec: Les Éditions agences d’arc, 1993). Saint-Pierre, Témoignages, 87–9. Ibid., 56–7. The methodology was obviously wrong since it was only possible to reach inmates who had kept contact with their alma mater and, very possibly, were more likely to have a pleasant recollection of their stay at the institution. Saint-Pierre acknowledges this bias, but he does not draw the

322

31 32

33

34

35 36 37

38

39

Denyse Baillargeon

conclusions that follow because it could call into question the validity of his inquiry (Saint-Pierre, Témoignages, 31). Ibid., 29–30. In fact, children’s aid societies managed to obtain the title of legal guardian for abandoned or neglected children (Rooke and Schnell, Discarding the Asylum, 274–5). On this question, see Dominique Marshall, “Nationalisme et politiques sociales au Québec depuis 1867: Un siècle de rendez-vous manqué entre l’État, l’Église et les familles,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 9 (1994): 301–47. This request from the religious communities who sheltered children abandoned by their mother, usually a single woman, shows that all members of the Church did not necessarily consider the question of childhood protection in the same way. On the contrary, it seems that opinions were divided according to sex and the specific roles played within the church. Thus on the question of foster families, the representatives of female religious communities that were on the front line in taking care of abandoned or neglected children expressed a different point of view on the matter: many considered that it was preferable to find a foster family, especially for very young children (under six years old). On this question, see Soeur Allaire, L’entrée à l’orphelinat (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1930), 2. For a historical account of the Loi de l’adoption of 1924, see Dominique Goubau and Claire O’Neill, “L’adoption, l’Église et l’État: Les origines tumultueuses d’une institution légale,” in Renée Joyal, ed., Entre surveillance et compassion: L’évolution de la protection de l’enfance au Québec, des origines à nos jours (Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2000), 97–130. Ibid., 98 and 107–8. Ibid., 10. In addition, it should be noted that according to the amended version of the law, adoption was revocable “in very serious cases” and did not extinguished the “natural rights” of the biological father regarding the child (Goubau and O’Neill, “L’adoption, l’Église et l’État,” 115). Malouin, L’univers des enfants en difficulté, 42–3: Renée Joyal and Carole Chatillon, “La Loi québécoise de protection de l’enfance de 1944: Genèse et avortement d’une réforme,” Histoire sociale/Social History 27 (mai 1994): 33–63. This commission, named after its chair, Antoine Garneau, was established to study the introduction of a health insurance program for the province. Following the death of several children placed in private nurseries at the beginning of 1943 (sixteen in five weeks), Premier Godbout asked the commission to investigate this “scandal” and the larger question of the protection of children in the province. On this question, see Joyal and Chatillon, “La loi québécoise de protection de l’enfance.”

Orphans in Quebec

323

40 Bourgeois, Une richesse, 94: “du dangereux pouvoir de pénétrer dans toutes institutions religieuses pour en sortir les enfants qui s’y trouvent.” 41 Ibid., 98: “Si cette société est composée de membres à mentalité neutre ou laïcisante, ou si ces mêmes personnes professent une préférence marquée pour le foyer nourricier, c’est dire tout de suite que ces enfants indigents seront dirigés tout d’abord et en vitesse vers le foyer nourricier.” 42 Cardinal Villeneuve, “Lettre préface,” in Saint-Pierre, Témoignages, 11. 43 Bourgeois, Une richesse, 113. 44 Villeneuve quoted in ibid., 160. 45 Rapport de la Commission des assurances sociales de Québec, 35; quoted in Bourgeois, Une richesse, 159: “il n’est pas, il ne doit pas être question de créer un milieu familial nouveau [...], mais [...], de recourir au mode d’assistance plus apte à maintenir les liens de famille, c’est-à-dire l’institution.” 46 Saint-Pierre, L’oeuvre, 47–8: “[Le placement familial] risque d’autant plus de rompre les liens du sang, que les foyers qu’il trouve pour ces protégés sont de qualité meilleure. En greffant l’enfant sur un tronc familial nouveau, il rend presque nécessairement définitive une séparation qui, normalement, ne devrait être que provisoire.” 47 Saint-Pierre, Témoignages, 53:“Si l’autorité paternelle ou maternelle ... garde encore dans notre province quelque respect et quelque signification; si la liberté d’enseignement – qui comporte nécessairement le choix libre des professeurs par les protecteurs attitrés de l’enfant – n’est pas devenue un mot vain pour les pauvres gens, on se demande de quels droits de véritables ou de prétendus experts, des busybodies indiscrets ou une bureaucratie envahissante viendraient gêner dans l’exercice de leurs droit des parents dont l’indignité ou la simple incompétence n’a jamais été démontrée. S’ils choisissent l’orphelinat pour leurs enfants de préférence à toute autre maison d’enseignement, ils n’ont de compte à rendre à personne et toute pression exercée sur eux pour leur imposer un autre choix serait nettement abusive. Elle deviendrait particulièrement odieuse si elle tentait de s’exercer à la faveur de quelque loi de protection de l’enfance fédérale ou provinciale, passée ou à venir.” 48 Ibid., 53: “J’ai toujours soutenu que l’orphelinat était, chez nous à tout le moins, le pensionnat des enfants pauvres.” 49 However, at the end of the 1930s a group of francophone middle-class parents, under the direction of Claudine Vallerand founded an association, the École des parents du Québec, which opposed the common practice in bourgeois and petit bourgeois milieu of sending their children to boarding schools. See Denyse Baillargeon, “We Admire Modern Parents: The École des parents du Québec and the Post-War Quebec Family, 1940–1959,” in Michael Gauvreau and Nancy Christie, eds., Cultures of Citizenship in Post-War Canada, 1940–1955 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming).

324

Denyse Baillargeon

50 Henri Guindon, “La Sainte famille,” in Le foyer base de la société: Compte rendu des cours et conférences, Semaines sociales du Canada (Montréal: Institut social populaire, 1950), 271: “la plus haute expression spirituelle de cette réalité charnelle qu’est la famille humaine.” 51 On this question see, for example, Arthur Maheux, “Parents et maîtres: Leur collaboration,” (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1928), 2; and Abbé Albert Tessier, “Collaboration de la famille et de l’école,” in L’éducation sociale: Compte rendu des cours et conférences, Semaines sociales du Canada (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1935), 295. 52 “Lettre des Pères du premier concile plénier de Québec, 1909,” in L’esprit chrétien dans la famille et dans la société (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1916), 6. 53 C. Rutché, La famille (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1932), 9. 54 “Lettre des pères,” in L’esprit chrétien, 10. 55 Preface from Mgr. Alexandre Vachon, archbishop of Ottawa, in Bourgeois, Une richesse, 2 56 “Lettre des pères,” in L’esprit chrétien, 10. 57 Maheux, “Parents et maîtres,” 4: “les parents sont tenus par une très grave obligation, à donner selon leurs forces aux enfants l’éducation religieuse et morale, physique et sociale et à assurer leur bien-être temporel.” 58 André Turmel, “Absence d’amour et présence des microbes: sur les modèles culturels de l’enfant,” Recherches sociographiques 38 (1997): 99. 59 Abbé Albert Tessier, “L’éducation des enfants,” La Semaine religieuse de Montréal 76 (sept. 1920): 162: “Il faudrait pour toucher et pétrir l’âme des enfants, les mains pures des anges! Hélas! hélas! les pauvres petits! J’en vois partout confiés à des mains indignes ou du moins maladroites et si ignorantes.” 60 Maheux, “Parents et maîtres,” 5 and 6. 61 Abbé Albert Tessier, “Collaboration de la famille et de l’école,” in L’éducation sociale: Compte rendu des cours et conférences, Semaines sociales du Canada (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1935), 298: “des points fondamentaux de la formation.” 62 Rutché, La famille, 18: “Nos foyers mêmes ne sont plus guère chrétiens que de surface. Écoutez ce qu’on y dit chaque jour, entendez de quoi on y parle. On y agite sans cesse la question argent, la question plaisir, la question bien-être. Dieu est à peu près entièrement absent des pensées et des préoccupations. De prière familiale il n’y a plus guère de trace dans quantité de foyers ... Le Christ pend bien encore au mur, mais hélas! comme un symbole très oublié ... Il n’y a plus de vie familiale. La famille catholique se désorganise. Le désir des jouissances disperse les membres de la famille ... Le foyer n’a bientôt plus que la signification d’une

Orphans in Quebec

63

64

65

66

67

325

pension, heureux encore si les disputes et les querelles n’en rendent l’atmosphère irrespirable.” As late as 1950, Roger Brien wondered: “How can one expect from parents who don’t even know anymore the value of sacrificial spirit, who don’t have any ideal of holiness for themselves, how can one hope that they will prepare for the Church the saints it requires? [Comment espérer de parents qui ne savent même plus la valeur de l’esprit de sacrifice, qui pour eux-mêmes n’ont aucun idéal de sainteté, comment espérer d’eux qu’ils prépareront à l’Église les saints nécessaires?]” See Roger Brien, “L’éducation, premier devoir des parents,” Le Foyer base de la société. Compte rendu des cours et conférences, Semaines sociales du Canada (Montréal: Institut social populaire. 1950), 91). For example, in a paper presented at the Semaines sociales du Canada in 1935, Albert Tessier stated: “Recently, one of my friends, a teacher in a primary school, told me that in a classroom of forty students aged five to seven years, over thirty did not even know how to make the sign of the cross. [Récemment, un de mes amis, professeur à l’école primaire, m’affirmait que dans une classe de quarante élèves de cinq à sept ans, il y en avait plus de trente qui ne savaient même pas faire le signe de la croix].” (See Tessier, “Collaboration de la famille et de l’école,” 300. It should be noted that during this period, numerous public schools run by religious communities demanded that children be present at school on Sunday mornings, from where they went together to mass. In this way, the clergy made sure that children would perform their religious duties, even if they lived with their families. Maheux, “Parents et maîtres,” 32. For similar commentaries, see Tessier, “Collaboration de la famille et de l’école,” in particular, 294: “Comment se fait-il que des enfants soient capables pendant l’année scolaire, d’assister fréquemment à la sainte messe et d’y communier, tandis que pendant les vacances on fait table rase de cette belle pratique de piété ? Est-ce la foi des enfants qui subit une baisse soudaine ? N’est-ce pas plutôt l’autorité des parents qui faiblit ? ... Après le dévergondage des vacances faut-il être surpris de voir arriver aux écoles des enfants qui ont tellement évolué dans leur vie morale que les maîtres ne savent plus par quel bout recommencer l’oeuvre d’édification si péniblement accomplie par leurs soins.” R.P. Plamondon, “L’aide à la famille,” in La Famille: Compte-rendu des cours et conférences, Semaines sociales du Canada (Montréal: Bibliothèque de l’Action française, 1924), 193 and 194: “Dieu n’a pas distribué ses dons d’intelligence, de tact, de savoir-faire avec une égale richesse dans tous les cerveaux ... D’où il résulte ... la nécessité urgente de s’emparer d’une façon ou d’une autre de ces chers enfants, de ces braves adolescents et d’aider la famille en la complétant.”

326

Denyse Baillargeon

68 Ibid., 206: “Ce moyen de venir en aide à la famille est d’autant plus recommandable que l’expérience vieille de centaines d’années nous rassure. L’influence qu’exercent sur les enfants et sur leurs familles les directeurs ou les directrices de ces établissements est quelquefois prépondérante. Bien des enfants ne doivent leur éducation chrétienne, leur position sociale qu’aux vertus qu’on leur a fait pratiquer dans leur stage d’orphelinat ou de pensionnat.” 69 Bourgeois, Une richesse, 16: “Nos institutions religieuses reconnaissent que l’enfant est composé d’un corps et d’une âme et sans négliger la partie physique et intellectuelle de son corps, elles s’attachent d’une façon particulière à son âme, d’après les principes de la doctrine religieuse et sociale de l’Église catholique romaine.” 70 Vachon, preface in Bourgeois, Une richesse, 4: “à l’enfance malheureuse, mais aussi (surtout?) à la religion et à la patrie ; car en trempant fortement les jeunes âmes dans la foi, elles préparent à la religion des disciples convaincus et à la patrie des citoyens dévoués, pacifiques, vertueux.” 71 C.E. Dorion, Les communautés religieuses dans la Cité (Montréal: École sociale populaire, 1929), 25: “La mère aime dans ses enfants quelque chose d’elle-même; le religieux aime, dans le prochain, Dieu lui-même : le don de soi est plus entier chez celui-ci.” 72 Bourgeois, Une richesse, 160. 73 Ibid., 226. See also L’oeuvre patriotique des orphelinats agricoles de Notre-Dame de Montfort (Montréal: Eusèbe Sénécal et fils imprimeur, 1892), 2; and Institut des Frères de Saint-François Régis, Orphelinat agricole St-Joseph-du-Lac (Chicoutimi: Imprimerie G. Delisle, 1907).

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

327

11 Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975 s uzanne mo rton

For the first half of the twentieth century, Nova Scotia, the most populous of Canada’s Atlantic provinces, had the distinction of having the highest rates of births outside legal marriages in the country. In the 1950s, when British Columbia and the North, areas with very different demographic and religious characteristics, reached and surpassed Nova Scotian levels, the eastern province still maintained the highest rates of illegitimacy among what has been referred to as “Old Canada.” Only the enormous transformation of marriage and sexual practices that followed the 1960s – something that Nancy Cott has recently referred to as the “disestablishment” of marriage – and the corresponding rise in the number of common-law or “self-married” families brought Nova Scotia into line with other jurisdictions across the country.1 Since the mid-1960s, across the Western world, rates of formal marriages and births tumbled, while the number of divorces and births outside marriage rose. Among the many ramifications of this challenge to traditional family formation and structure was the lessening of the stigma associated with single women raising a child alone. This chapter seeks to examine attitudes and government policies in Nova Scotia toward women having children outside legal marriage – women who usually formed and headed marginal families. These women posed many threats to the status quo since their sexual relationships were unsanctioned by both church and state and they usually lived without a male household head. The historical investigation of non-married mothers is difficult since in the sources they are often hidden from posterity as marginalized women and as a result of their

328

Suzanne Morton

own intentional efforts to hide their pregnancies at the time. As a result, these women are both accidentally and purposefully made invisible and are most likely to be seen through the policy of the welfare state and the quasi-private institutions that sought to assist them. Families headed by never-married mothers were not only marginal; they were legally defined as illegitimate. While the concept of illegitimacy may have originally referred to inheritance rights, by the twentieth century it carried a broad range of associations that included not only immorality or sexual impropriety but also feeble-mindedness and economic dependence upon the community.2 In Nova Scotia, which maintained a form of the sixteenth-century English poor law until the 1950s, the local community bore the direct burden of financial assistance for those in need and had an immediate interest in keeping costs low. Social work experts in the twentieth century argued that the Nova Scotia local relief system did not work, and during World War ii, services for illegitimate children were so poor that one commentator identified them as the “greatest weakness in the entire chain of protective services of children in the Province.”3 Yet it was not until the 1970s that a new welfare state, the system of public relief that took over the poor law’s responsibilities, was extended to most never-married mothers and their children. Rates of births to unmarried mothers in Nova Scotia ranged from 4 per cent in the 1920s, to 8 per cent of all births in the mid-1940s. These rates, although the highest in Canada, were probably under-reported. Although Nova Scotia began a system of civil vital statistics in 1908, which called for the mandatory reporting of births, deaths, and illegitimacy, we can assume that a relatively weak state structure meant that rural areas did not necessarily conform to the law. In the late 1960s, when nearly all infants were born in hospitals and birth registration is presumed to be complete, the percentage of children born to unmarried mothers climbed to 10 per cent; it then continued to climb sharply throughout the seventies, eighties, and nineties to the current rate of more than 30 per cent.4 This dramatic rise in the last thirty years undoubtedly reflects the increased number of women in common-law relationships. Quebec, which until the 1970s had the lowest level of reported births outside marriage, today, as the province with the highest rate of common-law relationships, reports that slightly fewer than 40 per cent of its infants are born outside marriage. This point is relevant to a historical study of unmarried mothers for although common-law relationships are now more numerous, they are definitely not new. Not all non-married mothers were single mothers, a fact that was overlooked by social commentators and most historians. The increase in the number of women living in common-law relationships and the loss of a social stigma around illegitimacy since the

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

329

mid-1960s has altered the demographic characteristic of the women who have children outside marriage. Until the 1950s, most single women giving birth in Nova Scotia were in their late teens and early twenties, often having left home for waged employment.5 During the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, births to younger, typically teenage, single mothers increased dramatically, and this age cohort became the largest group of unwed mothers. This trend changed in the 1980s and 1990s when the number of teenage births declined in real numbers, while the number of births to unmarried women over nineteen doubled between 1981 and 1992. Even though these mothers were older, they continued to be economically vulnerable since unmarried mothers in their twenties and thirties have only a 35 per cent chance of having complete high school, compared to more than 70 per cent of married mothers.6 The high rate of births outside marriage is evident not only in provincial statistics but also as a thematic presence in twentiethcentury Nova Scotian literature. Novels such as Frank Parker Day’s Rockbound (1928), Hugh Maclennan’s Barometer Rising (1941), Charles Bruce’s Channel Shore (1954), and most recently, Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven (1998), Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief (1999), and Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (1997) all touch upon women having children outside marriage and the shame it generated. While all these novels amplify the theme of shame, Charles Bruce, writing about a rural community in interwar Nova Scotia, was perhaps most explicit in his depiction of character Vangie Murphy, whom he described as, after having “got ... in trouble,” fated to a life in “a broken-down house, a couple of kids with different surnames,” and “hand-outs of second-hand clothes” from the neighbours.7 Another pregnant and never-married character in this novel had the support of extended family; she travelled to Toronto on the pretext of “dressmaking” and adopted what Bruce referred to as “the public masquerade” of using a married name.8 These fictional accounts provide an unusual glimpse at this experience, for while there is a growing Canadian literature on mothers as lone parents, Cynthia Commachio has recently argued that we know remarkably little about the family lives of women who gave birth outside marriage.9 Historians such as Andrée Lévesque and journalists such as Anne Petrie and Bette Cahill have provided valuable insights into the religious and commercial institutions that took in pregnant single women and provided either boarding or adoption facilities for their babies.10 So while we are beginning to know something about these institutions, which in Nova Scotia were often fascinating examples of religious, philanthropic, and quasi-government co-operation,

330

Suzanne Morton

we know virtually nothing about the vast majority of women who handled this difficulty on their own or with the assistance of their families. Indeed, as Marian Morton has pointed out in her study of Cleveland, “We know nothing about the majority of unmarried women who bore children unaided and unnoticed by public and private agencies.”11 The high rate of illegitimate births in Nova Scotia was a source of ongoing embarrassment for a province that has been characterized as a generally conservative society. Today, Nova Scotians are more likely to attend weekly religious services than individuals in any other province in Canada, and the province has a history of enforcement of morality legislation around issues such as alcohol, prostitution, and gambling.12 Indeed, since 1969, when therapeutic abortions were decriminalized and access widened, Nova Scotia, like the other Atlantic provinces and notwithstanding its rate of illegitimacy, has among the lowest rates of therapeutic abortions per 100 live births in the country. For example, Nova Scotia in 1990 had a rate of 14.5 therapeutic abortions per 100 live births, and in the entire country only Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan had lower rates.13 Given its high degree of rurality, its religiosity, and its conservative legislative approach to moral issues, one might have expected a more abstemious attitude and practice toward extramarital sexual relations. This rigidity was apparent in welfare policy. In the 1920s and 1930s, most provinces in Canada began to make public money available to support certain “deserving” single mothers. The mother’s allowance program was based on traditional assumptions about women’s dependent status in the home and their importance as mothers. These programs permitted long-term family support until children reached the age of sixteen as long as they remained in school. But not all single mothers were eligible to make claims. With the exception of British Columbia, original programs mandated that only if the children were legitimate and the mother respectable were they eligible. In her study of Ontario, Margaret Little has found that “respectable” was usually defined as adherence to sexual propriety, but it could also be determined by ethnicity or housekeeping standards.14 In Nova Scotia a commission that investigated the establishment of mother’s allowance in 1920 recommended that no public money be available for unmarried mothers and that their support be left to the legal system to establish paternity and financial responsibility. While Nova Scotia shared the original position of other provinces, it was distinct in its maintenance of it. The decision to exclude unmarried mothers from eligibility, adopted when the first cheques were distributed in 1930, remained official government policy until 1966.15 The Mothers’ Allowance Act claimed that all women eligible for public money had to be “fit and

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

331

proper” persons, a description that excluded women who engaged in sexual relations outside marriage. The provincial mother’s allowance programs established a moral hierarchy of deservedness. Widows were at the top of this list. Gradually, the definition was expanded to those who had been deserted by their husbands, women whose husbands were in sanatoriums and, later, in prisons, women whose husbands were disabled, and finally women who were divorced or separated and not receiving financial assistance from their former husbands. There was a willingness to support certain single mothers, albeit in a parsimonious and often highly intrusive manner, but these indigent women were not considered responsible or accountable for their own lack of a husband and male breadwinner. Indecent sexual conduct or perhaps, more accurately, the ill fortune of becoming pregnant and not marrying the father made other needy women ineligible. But unmarried mothers in Nova Scotia were eligible for another form of support. From the beginning of the British colony, it had adopted the structure of the English poor laws. This system held small local communities, referred to as “poor districts” – and these sections could be sparsely populated – responsible for the care of their own poor who had established residency or settlement. Settlement was established by birth, continuous residency for five years without claiming relief after the age of twenty-one, or for women, marriage. Illegitimate children usually took their mothers’ settlement. This system meant that the local community – kin and neighbourhoods – was directly responsible for the support of its own. It also meant that children born outside marriage posed a considerable drain on often limited local resources. The Nova Scotia Illegitimate Children’s Act (1900), which replaced the Bastardy Act, focused completely on indemnity for the poor district by providing a means to compel a putative father to maintain, educate, and bear any expenses for the birth or death of the illegitimate child. This act permitted any unmarried pregnant women to take an oath stating the father’s name, at which point the putative father would be brought before a justice of the peace and have a bond set at $150. Unlike in other legal practices, evidence of the mother did not require to be corroborated, but nevertheless, the onus, as in all civil cases, was on the plaintiff.16 There appears to have been the widespread assumption that a woman would not lie about the identity of the father of the child she was carrying. The unmarried woman also had legal responsibilities to support the child, and the poor district could compel a mother to contribute to the costs of supporting the infant, including breast-feeding the infant for the first ten months. But this was a public process that many women appear to have tried to avoid, although doing so meant considerable personal and family expense.

332

Suzanne Morton

The elected overseer of the poor or sometimes a committee was responsible for providing for the needy and for setting poor rates as taxes to cover the expenses incurred. This dual function led most overseers of the poor to perform their jobs as cheaply as possible to keep community expense at a minimum. If the unmarried mother and her infant received help from the local poor district, the province’s Illegitimate Children’s Act permitted any ratepayer of that district to initiate legal proceedings. The proceedings forced the mother to appear in open court for a humiliating inquiry into the circumstances of her pregnancy, and if the poor district received funds to cover its cost from the punitive father, the mother was preempted from going to him through the courts for any additional support. It is difficult to know how often proceedings were initiated by third parties before the law changed in 1951. Certainly, it appears to have been common at the turn of the century, when judgment forms for putative fathers’ payment to specific poor districts were available to magistrate court judges on preprinted forms.17 By World War ii, however, it appears as if only a few local poor districts pursued this potentially cruel and very public option. One observer suggested that there was such general ignorance among overseers of the poor that they were unaware of the act they were expected to administer.18 But cases of such action did exist. One of these infrequent occurrences was described as brutal by the director of the Lunenburg Children’s Aid Society. The Lunenburg director recounted to the director of the Maritime School of Social Work an incidence in which the local overseer and the putative father’s lawyer “tore every shred of self-respect” from a woman who had had a child out of wedlock, publicly labelling her promiscuous and immoral.19 Indeed, an external report written during World War ii with a view to post-war reconstruction concluded that Nova Scotia’s laws concerning illegitimacy were directed at ratepayers’ concerns rather than at care of the mother and child. But despite widespread criticism and concern, legal reform was slow. Part of the explanation was a lack of provincial resources and the unwillingness to allocate them to these women and children. The provincial economy did not generate sufficient income to modernize its state and welfare structure and badly needed access to the more plentiful federal resources. Although the period after the war is generally associated with great prosperity in Canada, this well-being was not evenly spread, and all the Atlantic provinces experienced comparatively limited growth.20 Many of the immigrants who arrived in Canada after the war landed in Halifax, but immediately boarded trains for more plentiful opportunities in Montreal and Toronto. Soci-

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

333

ologist Alan Hunt’s observation that moral politics are often linked to economic interests is useful in understanding the lack of action.21 When the 1900 Illegitimate Children’s Act, was revised in 1951 as the Children of Unmarried Parents Act there were no provisions for public economic support, although the court hearings were moved into private sessions with the intention of guarding the privacy of the individuals involved.22 The act also placed the mother’s interest first in the collection of payments from the putative father, increased the sum that could be collected, and transferred responsibility from the local overseer of poor to the provincial Department of Child Welfare and the law from a “quasi-criminal” to a civil act. This type of makeshift response was in part the result of the way some professionals and local ratepayers understood the issue. Some government officials and local social workers typically denied that “real” Nova Scotians were responsible for the problem and attributed the high rates of births outside marriage to the local African–Nova Scotian population and young women recently arrived from nearby Newfoundland. The first draft of a report on welfare services prepared as part Nova Scotia’s World War ii Commission on Provincial Development and Rehabilitation assigned responsibility for the province’s high illegitimacy rates to its Black population. This section was removed from the final version when a provincial bureaucrat decided it would “be offensive to the Negro population of the province” and the report’s author himself admitted that his statistics did not really support such an exaggerated claim.23 The director of the Halifax Children’s Aid Society was more likely to attribute blame to Newfoundland girls, especially before that jurisdiction joined Canada in 1949. Large numbers of unmarried pregnant Newfoundland women were thought to come to Nova Scotia and especially its largest city, Halifax, in search of work and as a place to hide their pregnancies.24 One group of white Nova Scotian women whom child-welfare experts associated with the problem was those of “subnormal intelligence.” Although the director of the Cape Breton Children’s Aid Society demanded “that serious thought be given to the disposition of girls of subnormal intelligence who have to be confined annually,” there does not appear to have been any support for the extreme sterilization policies adopted elsewhere.25 This assignment of blame to marginal groups may have been convenient for experts, but it did not reflect what was being reported. Births outside marriage were spread throughout the province, although rates appear to have been slightly lower in the predominantly Roman Catholic counties of northeastern Nova Scotia. Explanations for the province’s high rates might be found in the highly mobile and often itinerant male labour force, both the sailors who briefly visited port

334

Suzanne Morton

and local men in the community who were sexually involved with their neighbours and then abandoned them before marriage, for the opportunities of the “Boston states” or the Canadian west.26 The annual reports made by various county children aid’s society directors attributed higher than normal rates of non-marital births not to abandoned women but to couples living openly in “adulterous” common-law relationships which may have been the result of the legal difficulties and expenses of formally ending marriages.27 It is also possible that a high rate of births occurred outside marriage because, even if all the public rhetoric censured extramarital sexual relations, there was in practice a low level of acceptance. In an examination of the experience of rural, white unwed mothers in Maine and Tennessee between 1876 and 1956, historian Mary Louise Hough found that attitudes towards children born outside marriage were shaped by the community’s economic and demographic structure. Her insights are pertinent, since Nova Scotia shared many of Maine’s economic, cultural, and demographic characteristics. Maine and Nova Scotia had remarkably similar laws concerning relief and abnormally high rates of births outside marriage. Hough argues that Maine had a more relaxed attitude towards young women who gave birth before marriage since the predominantly rural stable community “relied on inter-generational systems of mutual obligations that extended from the family outward.”28 If they belonged to the community and claimed legal settlement, pregnant unmarried women could come home if they were willing to work to support the household and their child. Infants were either adopted by related kin or incorporated into an eventual marriage of the mother. Hough argues that rural communities had the expectation that young girls without supervision were likely to have sexual encounters, and the community was willing to accept one mistake.29 There is some Nova Scotian evidence to support this interpretation. In 1946 the children’s aid director from rural and relatively poor Queens County concluded that “in certain cases illegitimacy is being accepted as an everyday occurrence.”30 This disjuncture between practice – what actually happened – and rigidity of both the law and the dominant rhetoric of shame is glaring and I would propose that it could be mediated, as in Maine, by the women’s own families. Most women in Nova Scotia who found themselves pregnant with no husband depended on their families for support or managed on their own. Quite simply, there were insufficient institutional spaces to deal with the number of women and infants in need. For example, while 1,184 illegitimate births were reported in Nova Scotia in 1950, the annual reports of three provincial philanthropic homes for unwed mothers accounted for only 358 infants.31 To be certain, among those

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

335

who did not turn to philanthropic institutions, we cannot assume that the family always helped. Not all families were willing to help, or possibly they remained ignorant about their daughters’ condition. The surviving nominal register for the Halifax Poor House in the 1930s listed pregnant women in residence, although they had family in the city. Assistance from the family ranged from providing housing to using kin networks to leave the local community and hide the pregnancy from public knowledge. The children themselves could be incorporated into the family and raised as a new sister or brother to the mother or adopted by relatives.32 Other assistance might be provided through placing daughters in one of the province’s private or philanthropic maternity homes. The philanthropic maternity homes were denominationally based and centred in the province’s two urban centres – industrial Cape Breton and Halifax. The two largest homes were located in Halifax: the Halifax Infants’ Home, supported by the Protestant community, and the Home of the Guardian Angel, operated by the Catholic Sisters of Charity. Both these homes were somewhat unusual in the Canadian context. In most Canadian cities, Protestant work among unmarried mothers was spearheaded by the Salvation Army. It had operated a woman’s refuge in Halifax from 1893. However, it appears to have given up this work after it opened its modern public maternity hospital in 1922, although it continued to operate a home, Grace Haven, in Sydney, Cape Breton. In Halifax, Protestant women seeking assistance were admitted to the Halifax Infants’ Home, founded in 1882. Its creation had no doubt influenced the Sisters of Charity, Halifax, a large teaching order, to open their own maternity home, the Home of the Guardian Angel, in 1887 as an isolated project, created as a response to a specific community need. As a teaching order, the Sisters emphasized professional training and credentials, an ethos they brought into their work with unmarried mothers. As a result, the Home of the Guardian Angel, with a highly educated staff with secular credentials, was at the forefront of modern secular social-work practice in the province.33 By the early 1960s, half the clients at the Home of the Guardian Angel spent no time at all in residence, since women were increasingly cared for on an “outpatient” basis. Rather than privacy, pregnant women were offered counselling service and either adoption assistance or ongoing child-care support according to individual choice. The Sisters’ program to support mothers who decided to keep their infants developed into the first resource centres for single mothers in the province.34 Philanthropic institutions served women and infants on a sectarian and often a racial basis. In 1946, during a campaign to close private

336

Suzanne Morton

for-profit maternity hospitals, the director of Child Services for the province, approached the Salvation Army to resume its charitable services for unmarried mothers in Halifax.35 These negotiations did not proceed to any conclusion, but in 1954, when a rival denomination, the Pentecostals, proposed the establishment of a residence for unmarried mothers, the Salvation Army pre-empted this initiative and opened its own Halifax residence for unmarried mothers. The Salvation Army home soon supplanted the Halifax Infants’ Home in popularity among non-Catholics, and when the Halifax Infants’ Home closed in 1958, the Salvation Army took over its larger facilities.36 The Salvation Army was open to all “races and creeds,” as was the Halifax Infants’ Home after 1949, although the specific mention of the presence of a “coloured girl” in 1953 in the home’s minutes suggest this was an unusual occurrence.37 In addition to these philanthropic homes, financed by the churches, centralized annual community fund raising, local municipal government, and the billing of specific poor districts, there were before midcentury a significant number of private maternity homes. The Ideal Maternity Home was the largest private hospital east of Montreal, and in 1947 it charged $130 for delivery plus $10 a week for board of the mother until the child was born and a flat fee of $300 for maintenance of the infant until he or she was adopted. This home served women who wished to keep their condition “free from publicity” and actively encouraged adoptions before this policy was taken up by the religiousbased philanthropic homes.38 Like the so-called baby farms of the nineteenth century, which had fostered the development of the philanthropic homes, the Ideal Maternity Home was also plagued by scandal. It was associated with charges of maternal negligence, infanticide, and selling babies internationally. Despite provincial child-welfare bureaucrats’ campaigning to close commercial maternity through regulatory licensing reforms and the Ideal Maternity Home’s infamy in the courts and press, it was the clear institutional preference for women who could afford this option. Before it finally closed its doors in 1947, it served thousands of women, compared to the scores helped at no or meagre cost by the philanthropic homes. In exchange for cash payment, it permitted women to forgo the religious rhetoric of sin and moral training and the compulsory residence requirement. Private maternity homes also provided spaces that philanthropic homes could not meet. When the Ideal Maternity Home closed in 1947, a shortage of spaces in the Halifax Infants’ Home and the Home of the Guardian Angel led the Halifax Children’s Aid Society to place a number of pregnant and new single mothers in the City Home, or poorhouse.39 Unfortunately, the poorhouse was not a new option. Other than the

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

337

religious refuges and other small private homes, unmarried pregnant women who, for whatever reason, had no home had few choices. The only surviving nominal list of admissions and discharges to the Halifax City Home reveals the brutal reality that some unmarried pregnant women were forced to face. As Halifax had a specialized maternity hospital from 1922, it is possible to identify individual women who were released or admitted from the Grace Maternity Hospital. In the register of poorhouse inmates from 1929 and 1938, no fewer than 23 women spent the last months, weeks, or days of their confinement in, and often returned with their infant to, the poorhouse. These Protestant and Catholic Newfoundland, African, and Anglo-Celtic Nova Scotian women had no other means of support and underwent intolerable conditions. Their lack of alternative refuge is what I have come to see as the real “scandal” of Nova Scotian maternity care. Women who gave birth outside marriage had the option of supporting, boarding, adopting, or abandoning the infant. To be sure, they did all four although the preferred response changed over time. Socialwork practices for unmarried mothers point triumphantly to the way in which the “problem” of unmarried mothers was social construction, as prescribed solutions, with no evidence of debate, took opposite directions within very short periods of time. Until 1945 the policy of both the Catholic Home of the Guardian Angel and the Protestant Halifax Infants’ Home was based on compulsory residence for mothers for six months after confinement with the purpose of breast-feeding infants and cementing a bond between mother and child, which would entrench a sense of responsibility for the infant and redeem the wayward woman through the power of mother love. The assumption was that the mother should take responsibility for the care of the child, ideally with the financial assistance of the putative father, even if it meant boarding the infant while she returned to work. The compulsory six months’ stay after childbirth also addressed an important labour problem since it kept an unpaid labour force in the home to care for labour-intensive infants. Within a short period after 1945, the policy was completely inverted so that the emphasis was placed on expectant mothers entering the homes months before delivery, leaving within two weeks of birth, and serving the best interest of the child through infant adoption.40 Changing attitudes towards female sexuality and a rising rate of young women engaged in premarital sex meant that more young women were unlucky and found themselves pregnant outside marriage. Experts, influence by psychological insights, were likely to see the act of becoming pregnant, not as an accident, but as a conscious form of rebellion or a manifestation of deep-rooted psychological problems usually identified as a domineering mother. The majority of

338

Suzanne Morton

professional social workers and their medical allies now sought to rehabilitate young girls through encouraging them to relinquish their child and “resume the roles of normative young women.” In exchange for their babies, they could re-enter normal life, but only if they hid their pregnancies.41 The responsibility placed on the mother now became the unselfish act of handing over her child to a deserving, normal family. According to most social workers, their deviant and transgressive behaviour led many women to be considered a mother with no right to be a mother.42 While adoption was promoted by the Halifax Infants’ Home, the Home of the Guardian Angel, and the Salvation Army, a significant number of women throughout this period continued to keep their children. This pattern was most apparent in the African–Nova Scotian community, where adoption was less usual.43 For example, a master of social work student noted in 1966 that of the 97 babies born to unmarried African–Nova Scotian mothers at the Grace Maternity Hospital in Halifax, 76 were kept by their mothers. It is also interesting that this student did not collect parallel data for the 433 births to white mothers.44 Although individual choices were possible, they were often within the context of family or community support. For those on their own, women’s marginal position in the labour force made it difficult for them to support a child without family or public assistance. According to the 1941 census, nearly a quarter of the children living in charitable and benevolent institutions were illegitimate, a phenomenon that testified to the difficulty of maintaining separate homes which could include a child. Women’s low wages were compounded by very limited child-care options, from which unmarried mothers could be excluded on moral grounds.45 This does not seem to be the case for the longestserving day nursery in Halifax, the Jost Mission. In 1967 it reported that it had very few requests for services from unmarried and separated mothers and that “it is not like it used to be.” Although the Jost Mission was open to caring for the children of single mothers, it did not hesitate to impose other kinds of restrictions of their behaviour, and it sought to ensure a standard of respectability in the employment the mothers undertook. In 1945 a nineteen-year-old single mother was denied a place in the day nursery because she was employed at a local brewery.46 The difficult time that women had in the labour market was reinforced by a lack of local political will to change the Illegitimate Children’s Act. After World War ii, Nova Scotia’s children’s aid societies began a campaign to modernize the legislation and bring it into line with practice elsewhere. The local law was, in the words of one local

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

339

director, “nearly useless in providing maintenance.”47 Although there were minor changes, the lack of a major overhaul may suggest that the status quo of family support had been serving community needs, however inadequately. Unwed mothers and local bureaucrats were also adept at making a rigid law bend to suit their interests. In 1945 the director of a local children’s aid society reported that she had found a way to keep five illegitimate children with their mother and access provincial support. In this case, a common-law wife, described as a “quiet living citizen, a kind and faithful mother ... who from a social work view ... was a good mother,” was widowed by the death of the children’s putative father. The man had supported the family during his life and had left $1,500 in life insurance, which cushioned his common-law wife and children through the funeral and the first year after his death. As the children were illegitimate, the mother was ineligible for mother’s allowance payments. To get around the law, the provincial director of Child Welfare made the children legal wards of the province and then placed them as foster children in their own home, with a board rate paid to the mother that was equivalent to what she would have received on mothe’s allowance.48 Here the system was bent to aid a woman who had breached sexual mores but remained, by other criteria, “worthy” of support. By the 1960s, a similar loophole was noted by provincial bureaucrats as a widespread practice, although this time the impetus came from prospective recipients of aid rather than bureaucrats. Public welfare bureaucrats claimed that the majority of applications for funds to support foster children were coming from grandparents who were unable to maintain their unmarried daughters’ children, left in their care. Provincial civil servants suspected that these children had been left by their mothers as a conscious strategy so that the family might qualify for some public support.49 At the significant cost of maternal separation, individual families fashioned the law to suit their own particular needs. But the law also was changing slowly. Certain common-law widows left with dependent children less than sixteen years of age became eligible for public support in 1956. The amendment recognized long-term (five years or longer) common-law relationships and provided payments to common-law widows when one or more children were registered in the deceased husband’s name. While flaunting community standards of respectable behaviour by not marrying, these women were regarded as more deserving in terms of presumed sexual monogamy. Impetus for change by the early 1960s was coming from provincial civil servants in the Department of Public Welfare, who suggested that social assistance be extended to all non-married mothers more than eighteen who had first attempted to collect from the putative father

340

Suzanne Morton

and were maintaining their own separate “suitable homes.”50 It appears that the delay in implementing this recommendation was financial, since it became law only in 1966 as a result of new federal money available through the Canada Assistance Plan. Significantly, when support was extended to mothers of children born outside marriage, there was no reaction in the press and the minister responsible for public welfare remarked that the public was “more concerned that municipal assistance would be misused by poor men to drink and gamble than with the morality of unmarried mothers.”51 In the introductory year of 1967, eighty-one unmarried mothers were granted public funds. Ten years later, there were nearly fifteen hundred unmarried women with children on municipal welfare.52 But initially the reform did not help all those in need. In a survey in 1971 of Halifax unmarried women who kept their infants but needed some kind of financial assistance, 65 per cent stated that they planned to stay with their families even though doing so meant that they forfeited their eligibility for provincial social assistance.53 Finally, in 1975, the legislation was revised so that no mother needed to maintain a separate domicile to receive payment, but there was still no discussion of needs or support beyond financial assistance. Social workers from other parts of Canada remarked that, with the exception of the women associated with the Home of the Guardian Angel, unmarried mothers in Nova Scotia received no counselling54 – this despite repeated declarations by the local social workers stating, “One of the major social problems of present day society is illegitimacy.”55 Although the language was social, the concern was based in financial responsibility, a constant theme in the meticulous recording of social agencies that, since the 1950s, had carefully recorded the number of unmarried mothers and their children who were assisted.56 Despite the economic concern, the language was not free of moral judgments. Historian Jeanne Fay, in her study of Nova Scotian welfare legislation, has noted that in the revised Social Assistance Act of 1970 single mothers were listed in descending order of worthiness as widows, deserted wives, those with husbands in sanatoriums, those with husbands in prison, divorced women, and finally unmarried mothers.57 Although there was a decline in the overall birth rate in Nova Scotia by the early 1970s, the number of births to never-married women continued to rise. At this time, some welfare activists claimed that as many as one in every five pregnancies in Nova Scotia was illegitimate.58 The increased number of births to unmarried, now referred to as “unwed mothers,” was accompanied by a return to the pre–World War ii practice of keeping children rather than surrendering them for adoption. By the mid-1970s, the majority of unmarried

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

341

mothers were teenagers between the ages of sixteen and nineteen and half of these young women were raising their own infants.59 This trend was generally criticized by provincial child-care professionals as not in the child’s interest, with one bureaucrat noting in 1972 that “many [illegitimate children] are taken into care several years following the birth when much damage has been done and there is little hope of adoption.”60 Department of Social Service officials’ disapproval of this trend and their skepticism about the suitability of these young women as mothers was conveyed in morally neutral expressions of concern about their “unpreparedness for motherhood.” Their lack of knowledge or “skill” and the absence of financial and support structures led civil servants in the Department of Social Services to conclude that the children of unwed mothers had a very high potential for child abuse. A department study published in 1982, Vulnerable Mothers, Vulnerable Children, whose title seemed to reinforce the hypothesis of child abuse, concluded that the problems these mothers faced were primarily financial, and in fact, it “disabused the idea that most unmarried mothers had very little capacity for mothering.”61 In the early 1980s the number of births to unmarried mothers stabilized, and from 1981 the majority of those giving birth outside marriage were not teenagers. By 1986 this ratio had dropped further, so that teenage single mothers accounted for only 25 per cent of such births.62 With the increasing social acceptance of non-marital births, the focus of professional social workers shifted from marital status to the age of the mother. The 1991 follow-up report Mothers and Children: One Decade Later, emphasized the age of the mother rather than marital status as the most important variable in successful mothering. While this study raised issues reflecting contemporary concerns about limited access to daycare, pay equity, and the need for education and training opportunities, it also documented remarkable continuity in the experience of raising a child alone. The report noted that close to 80 per cent of all unmarried mothers in Nova Scotia received and continued to receive child-care help from relatives.63 In the 1980s and 1990s, policy direction for single mothers shifted from welfare to child care support and daycare, in an attempt to integrate all mothers without wage-earning men into the workforce.64 Emphasis was increasingly placed on employability rather than social assistance. As the moral taboo around extramarital sex dissipated, the term “single mother” (and more recently, the gender-neutral “lone parent”) replaced the previous labels “unmarried” and “unwed” to recognize the variety of ways in which women were raising children without a male breadwinner. The term “single mother” made no distinction between the never-married, divorced, separated, deserted, and

342

Suzanne Morton

widowed. Moral connotations disappeared as all sole-support mothers were classified in the same manner. The change in terms from “unwed mother” to “single mother” is important, and after 1987 the provincial office of vital statistics – soon to be reassigned to the Department of Business and Consumer Services from the Department of Health – no longer published illegitimacy rates in its annual report. Illegitimacy lost its distinct meaning at the same time as other mothers, such as widows, who had once been considered the “deserving poor” lost their status and traditional claim to community support. Unmarried mothers were less stigmatized on the basis of their sexual histories, but the collapse of all categories of mothers needing support into a single category ironically marginalized an even larger group of women and their children. The moral issue was transformed from a woman’s sexual history to her dependency on the taxpayer. The Department of Community Services, which had replaced the old Department of Public Welfare, renamed its services to unmarried mothers the single-parent program. As public welfare was dropped from the departmental names, the identity of the great majority of its female “single parent” clients was obfuscated by the new nomenclature. New names do not change the reality of clients or the stereotypes of policy-makers, and occasionally there are revealing slips such as in the 1995–96 department annual report, where the word “illegitimate” slipped into a report on adoptions. Today there is an evolving redefinition of single mothers as primarily workers outside the home. This is touted as a new direction, while it actually returns to an earlier model.65 The choice of full-time mothering in the home is not an option that the Canadian state (or the taxpaying electorate) is willing to endorse as the province introduces incentives to promote “employability” through counselling and training. The significant number of women who bore children outside marriage in Nova Scotia challenged definitions of the family as they contravened taboos around sexual relations outside marriage and, together with their families, shaped policy responses. The Home of the Guardian Angel continues to operate a residence and community resource centre for “lone-parent mothers,” while the Salvation Army closed its last Nova Scotia operation in 1996, a casualty of women’s preference for independent accommodation available in public housing. Throughout the decline of institutional responses, the family maintained its important role. In another example of remarkable continuity, in 1995–96, of 179 adoptions that took place in Nova Scotia, 90 were private adoptions between the mother and relatives. The vast majority of these adopted children, 81 per cent, were born to unmarried parents.66

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

343

In the thirty years that followed World War ii, Nova Scotian women who had children outside legalized heterosexual relations were made vulnerable and marginalized by provincial welfare policies that generally excluded them. Most unmarried mothers were not eligible for provincial support until 1967, and the kind of assistance provided through the poor-law structure was both inadequate and humiliating. In this context, the sectarian philanthropic homes provided assistance to some women, but the vast majority coped on their own or through informal family networks. The Nova Scotia case suggests that while these women and their infants were marginal to those setting welfare policy, most did not sever links with their families. This pattern has been recognized among the African–Nova Scotian population, but it would probably be a mistake to restrict this pattern to this one community. While this study says nothing about the emotional and psychological cost of both providing and accepting family support, it does suggest that this area should be explored alongside research on institutional support. While unmarried mothers may have appeared to be undermining the structure of the traditional family, their actual responses may have simultaneously strengthened extended families by reinforcing and highlighting support obligations.

no tes This research was conducted under the sshrcc “Women and Change” strategic grant, “Women, Work and Social Policy in 20th-century Halifax.” I would like to thank my colleagues Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford for their contributions. 1 Nancy Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 212. 2 Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991), 108. 3 Nova Scotia, Report of the Royal Commission on Provincial Development and Rehabilitation, George Davidson, Public Welfare Services (Halifax, 1944), 153. 4 Canada Year Book, 1905–80. 5 This trend is evident in the records of the Halifax Infants’ Home, although Bette Cahill in her study of the Ideal Maternity Home claims that the average age of unmarried mothers was seventeen. See Cahill, Butterbox Babies: Baby Sales, Baby Deaths. The Scandalous Story of the Ideal Maternity Home (Toronto: Seal Books, 1992).

344

Suzanne Morton

6 Nova Scotia, Women in Nova Scotia: A Statistical Handbook, 2nd ed. (Halifax, 1995), 5–9. 7 Charles Bruce, The Channel Shore (Toronto: Macmillan, 1954), 26. 8 Ibid., 111, 210. 9 Cynthia Comacchio, “ ‘The History of Us’: Social Science, History and the Relations of Family in Canada,” Labour/Le Travail 46 (fall 2000): 215; Carolyn Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem: The Perils and Pleasures of the City (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), Angus McLaren “Policing Pregnancies: Sexuality and the Family, 1900–1940,” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 3 (1992): 17–23; Joan Sangster, “Incarcerating ‘Bad Girls’: The Regulation of Sexuality through the Female Refuges Act in Ontario, 1920–1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 7 (1996): 239–75; Tamara Myers, “ ‘Qui t’a débauchée?’ Family Adolescent Sexuality and the Juvenile Delinquent Courts in EarlyTwentieth-Century Montreal,” in Lori Chambers and Edgar-André Montigny, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scolars’ Press, 1998), 377–94; Andrée Lévesque, Making and Breaking the Rules: Women in Quebec, 1919–1939 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994). Bettina Bradbury continues her work on widows in her current project “From Wife to Widow”; see her “Wife to Widow: Class, Culture, Family and the Law in Nineteenth-Century Québec,” Les Grandes Conférences Desjardins, Montreal, 3 Nov. 1997. 10 Andrée Lévesque, “Deviant Anonymous: Single Mothers at the Hôpital de la Miséricorde in Montreal, 1929–1939,” Canadian Historical Association, Historical Papers, 1984, 168–84; Cahill, Butterbox Babies; Anne Petrie, Gone to Aunt’s: Remembering Canada’s Homes for Unwed Mothers (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998). 11 Marian J. Morton, And Sin No More: Social Policy and Unwed Mothers in Cleveland, 1855–1990 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993), 10. 12 Suzanne Morton, At Odds: Canadians and Gambling, 1919–1969 (University of Toronto Press, 2003); Greg Marquis finds similar conclusion in New Brunswick in his “Civilized Drinking: Alcohol and Society in New Brunswick, 1945–75,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 11 (2000): 173–203; “Year End Poll,” Maclean’s, 4 Nov. 1996. 13 Canada Yearbook, 1994, 151 Canada Yearbook, 1980–81: 191. Ten years earlier, in 1980, the rate had been 10.3, and only Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba had lower rates. 14 Margaret Hillyard Little, “Claiming a Unique Place: The Introduction of Mothers’ Pensions in B.C.,” in Chambers and Montigny, Family Matters, 91–113; Veronica Strong-Boag, “Wages for Housework: Mothers’

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

15 16 17

18

19 20

21 22

23

24 25

26

27

345

Allowances and the Beginning of Social Security in Canada,” Journal of Canadian Studies 14 (spring 1979): 24–34; Megan Davies, “Services Rendered, Rearing Children for the State: Mother’s Pensions in British Columbia, 1919–1931,” in Barbara Latham and Roberta Pazdro, eds., Not Just Pin Money: Selected Essays on the History of Women’s Work in British Columbia (Victoria: Camosun College, 1984), 249–64; Suzanne Morton, “Women on Their Own: Single Mothers in Working-Class Halifax in the 1920s,” Acadiensis 21 (spring 1992): 90–107. Suzanne Morton, Ideal Surroundings: Domestic Life in a Working-Class Suburb in the 1920s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 99. Maritime Provinces Reports 6 (1932–33: 298, Lake v Wilson. For example, see Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management (nsarm), rg 38, vol. 38, Halifax County Court, 1896, Overseer of the Poor vs Henry Hill, no. 8106. Dalhousie University Archives (dua), Maritime School of Social Work, Cape Breton Children’s Aid Society to Lawrence T. Hancock. 19 Aug. 1954. Ibid., 18 Aug. 1954. Margaret Conrad, “The 1950s: The Decade of Development,” and Della Stanley, “The Illusions and Realities of Progress,” in E.R. Forbes and D.A. Muise, eds., The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993). Alan Hunt, Governing Morals: A Social History of Moral Regulation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): i. A similar act was introduced in Ontario in 1921, which authorized the private but state-supported children’s aid society to play a central role in determining the welfare of the child. dua, ms 2 256 b1, R.M. Dawson Papers, Report of the Nova Scotia Royal Commission on Provincial Development and Rehabilitation, E.H. Blois to George Davidson, 5 April 1944, and reply, 14 April 1944. Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, year ending 30 Nov. 1946, 53. Ibid., year ending 30 Nov. 1948, 21. See Angus McLaren, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885–1945 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990) for the Canadian context of eugenics discussions. See Marvin McInnis, Warren Kalback, and Donald Kerr, “Population Changes,” plate 59, in Kerr and Derek Holdworth, Historical Atlas of Canada, vol. 3, Addressing the Twentieth Century, 1891–1961 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), and Paul Brown, “‘Come East, Young Man!’ The Politics of Rural Depopulation in Nova Scotia, 1900–1925,” Journal of the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society 1 (1998): 47–78. For example, see Nova Scotia, Journal of the House of Assembly, 1937, no. 23, Child Welfare Report; James G. Snell, In the Shadow of the Law:

346

28

29 30 31

32 33

34

35 36 37

38

39

Suzanne Morton

Divorce in Canada, 1900–1939 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991). Mary Louise Hough, “‘I’m a Poor Girl ... in Family and I’d Like to Know if you be kind’: The Community’s Response to Unwed Mothers in Maine and Tennessee, 1876–1956” (PhD thesis, University of Maine, 1997), 18. Ibid., 215, 410. Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, year ending 30 Nov. 1946, 102. Nova Scotia, Journal of the House of Assembly, no. 34, Report of Registrar General, no. 23, Report of Department of Child Welfare, 1952. This figure under-reports since the Little Flower Institute in Bras d’Or, Cape Breton, cared for 159 children, half of whom were illegitimate. Unlike Grace Haven in Sydney, the Halifax Infants’ Home, and the Home of the Guardian Angel, the Little Flower Institute was not licensed as a maternity home. A fictional account is presented in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1997). Sister Maura, The Sisters of Charity, Halifax (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1956); Mary Olga McKenna, Charity Alive: Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, Halifax, 1950–1980 (Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 1998): Suzanne Morton, “Managing the Unmarried Mother ‘Problem’: Halifax Maternity Homes,” in Judith Fingard and Janet Guildford, eds., Mothers of the Municipality: Women, Work, and Social Policy in Post–1945 Halifax (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). nsarm, rg 72, vol. 25, 2, Homes – Guardian Angel, 1966–67, Correspondence, Timothy T. Daly, Antigonish Diocesan Services, to F.R. McKinnon, 16 March 1966. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 9, 14, Salvation Army, 1946–59, Correspondence, F.R. McKinnon to Col. W.J. Carruthers. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 38, 12, Bethany Girls Home, 1963–66, Correspondence, Carman Jerry to James Harding, minister of Welfare, 4 March 1965. nsarm, mg 177, Halifax Infants’ Home, Minutes book 11, May 1949–28 Jan. 1954, 13 Sept. 1949, Oct. 1953. The Home for Coloured Children was not a maternity home, although illegitimate children were among its residents. See Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, various 1950s. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 25, 5, Ideal Maternity, 1946–47, Lila Coolen Young to rwc, 6 Jan. 1947. See Karen Balcolm, “Scandal and Social Policy: The Ideal Maternity Home and the Evolution of Social Policy in Nova Scotia, 1940–51,” Acadiensis 31 (spring 2002): 3–37. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 199, 7, Halifax Infants’ Home, 1940–60, Correspon-

Nova Scotia and Its Unmarried Mothers, 1945–1975

40

41 42 43

44

45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

347

dence, F.R. McKinnon, director of Child Welfare, to Mrs P.A. Wilson, president, Halifax Infants’ Home, and Mr D.K. McDermaid, Children’s Aid Society, 8 April 1947. Regina G. Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work, 1890–1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); E. Wayne Carp, “Professional Social Workers, Adoption, and the Problem of Illegitimacy, 1915–1945,” Journal of Policy History 6 (1994): 161–84. Rickie Solinger, Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race before Roe v Wade (New York: Routledge, 1992), 87–97, 104–6. Ibid., 3. See Solinger for a relevant discussion of race and illegitimacy in the United States; also Jeanne Fay, “From Welfare Bum to Single Mum: The Political Construction of Single Mothers on Social Assistance in Nova Scotia, 1966–77,” (msw thesis, Maritime School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, 1997), 155. Roberta Aggas, “Social Class Influences in Illegitimacy: A Study of the Effects of Social Class Affiliation Corresponding Patterns of Socialization and their Relationship to Illegitimacy” (msw thesis, Maritime School of Social Work, Dalhousie University, 1967), 48, 41. Sonya Michel, Children’s Interests/Mothers’ Rights: The Shaping of America’s Child Care Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999): 46. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 21, 22, Committee – Day Care, 1967 Survey, 24 Aug. 1967. nsarm, mg 20, vol. 1412, Reports, Sept. 1945, cited in Renée Lafferty, “‘A Very Special Service’: Day Care, Welfare and Child Development: Jost Mission Day Nursery, Halifax, 1920–1955” (ma thesis, Dalhousie University, 1998), 110; rg 72, vol. 21, no. 22, Committee Day Care 1967, Survey of Four Facilities, 24 Aug. 1967. Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, year ending 30 Nov. 1946, 92. Nova Scotia, Journal of the House of Assembly, no. 23, Child Welfare, 1945, 115. Nova Scotia, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, year ending 31 March 1961, 52. nsarm, rg 72, vol. 19, 12, Unmarried Mothers, 1961–66, memo undated. Mail Star, 28 June 1966, quoted in Fay, “From Welfare Bum to Single Mum,” 83. Ibid., 85. National Archives of Canada (na), rg 118, vol. 286, file 103–289 PT 1, Halifax Women’s Bureau, project “Single Mothers,” report by Anne Chaldecott.

348

Suzanne Morton

54 na, mg 28, i 10, Canadian Council on Social Development, vol. 228, 2 Halifax (ns), Child Welfare Survey 1;58 – Eric Smit draft. 55 Aggas, “Social Class Influences in Illegitimacy,” 1. 56 Nova Scotia, Journal of the House of Assembly, appendix 21, Report of the Department of Public Welfare, 1950–1959. 57 Fay, “From Welfare Bum to Single Mum,” 23. 58 na, rg 118, vol. 286, file 103–289, Halifax Women’s Bureau Project, “Single Mothers,” report by Anne Chaldecott, 2. 59 Ibid. 60 nsarm, rg 72, vol. 113, 7, Unmarried Mothers Study, 1972–74, Correspondence, Kevin Burns, director, Family and Child Welfare, to Dr B. Colford, director, Child and Maternal Health, 7 Nov. 1972. 61 Susan MacDonnell, Vulnerable Mothers, Vulnerable Children: A FollowUp Study of Unmarried Mothers Who Kept Their Children (Halifax: Nova Scotia Department of Social Services, 1981), foreword. 62 Mothers & Children: One Decade Later: A Follow-Up Study to Vulnerable Mothers, Vulnerable Children (Halifax: Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, 1991): 2. 63 Ibid. 64 See nsarm, rg 44, vol. 114, no. 1, Report of the Task Force on Day Care, Nova Scotia Department of Social Services, June 1983. 65 Melodie Mayson, “Ontario Works and Single Mothers: Redefining ‘Deservedness and the Social Contract,’ Journal of Canadian Studies 34 (summer 1999): 89–109; Stella Lord, “Social Assistance and ‘Employability’ for Single Mothers in Nova Scotia,” in Andrew F. Johnson, Stephen McBride, and Patrick J. Smith, eds., Continuities and Discontinuities; The Political Economy of Social Welfare and Labour Market Policy in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994),191–206. 66 Nova Scotia, Department of Community Services, Annual Report, 1995–96, 32.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

349

12 Grizzled Old Men and Lonely Widows Constructing the Single Elderly as a Social Problem in Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967 ja mes s truth e rs The image of a grizzled old man stares out at us from the cover of one of Canada’s most celebrated social-policy documents: the 1970 report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty in Canada. Its counterpart, an elderly single woman bent over double on a park bench, provides the inside jacket image in the same report. If poverty had a public face in 1960s Canada, it was most often that of the single, marginalized elderly living outside the boundaries of the family. Major studies of low income during that decade seemed to provide ample statistical evidence to back up these disturbing images of need. As the 1966 final report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging argued, “Without question the most serious problem [we] … encountered … was the degree and extent of poverty which exists among older people. Witness after witness at the hearings spoke of incomes insufficient to ensure proper food, housing and medical care; and every form of analysis made for the Committee … supported the proposition that older people are a low-income group and that many of them eke out an existence at or near the subsistence level.” According to the 1970 report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty in Canada, two-thirds of Canadians aged sixty-five or over were poor. Nowhere was this plight more severe, the report argued, than among Canada’s 600,000 single elderly, two-thirds of them women, whose median annual income in 1961 was $829, or less than $70 per month. Half of all Canadian women sixtyfive and over fell into this category. According to these widely publicized government studies, to be old and living alone was the most likely recipe for dire need.1

350

James Struthers

This close association of poverty and old age in public consciousness is not a new phenomenon, as a number of recent social histories of old age in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada have pointed out. Nor is the image necessarily accurate. Throughout much of the late nineteenth century and most of the twentieth, government, professional, and media commentary on aging most typically associated this stage of life with poverty, helplessness, and dependency for reasons that often had little to do with the actual living arrangements of most of the elderly. “In contrast to an assumption common to both observers in the past and present, the great majority of aged persons have never been impoverished or isolated,” Brian Gratton and Carole Haber argue in their recent survey of old age in the United States’s past. Canadian historian Edgar-André Montigny has made a similar plea for looking skeptically at the proliferation of government, academic, and social-policy literature depicting the elderly as helpless and dependent. The “vast majority of elderly people in late nineteenth-century Ontario,” Montigny observes, “lived independently and were capable of maintaining themselves.” A similar state of affairs may describe the fate of most of the twentieth century elderly, even before the pension era. “[D]iscrepancies between public perceptions of widespread dependency and crisis among the aged and the actual condition of the elderly population have usually been the result of political rhetoric,” Montigny argues, employed either by reformers pleading the case for more generous public pensions or by state officials exaggerating the cost of elder care in order to “justify policies of fiscal restraint.”2 In this chapter I intend to examine the construction of the single elderly as a social problem during the first two decades following the end of World War ii, clearly the era characterized by the most dramatic reforms affecting the well-being of Canada’s aged. My purpose is not to engage directly in the argument over whether or not most of the elderly were poor. Rather, since the focus of this volume is on “the margins of the family,” I want to explore the ways in which images of the single elderly, living outside the boundaries of family, were employed in the service of a wider public debate over responsibility for the aged, as well as over the merits of targeting versus universality in Canadian social policy.3 Between 1945 and 1967 government policy towards the elderly oscillated from means-testing to universality and back again towards selectivity, a trend that has only gained momentum over the past fifteen years.4 At the heart of this debate lay the constructed image of the neediest of the aged: the “grizzled old men and lonely widows” struggling to subsist on the residualist floor of Canada’s old-age pension and assistance schemes. During an era in which only a small minority of senior citizens enjoyed an income from

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

351

private pensions or savings,5 the maximum benefit provided by Canada’s Old Age Security system was the essential standard for determining the well-being of those with no other family resources to draw upon. The single elderly lived this debate at the margin. As subsequent government studies pointed out, the budgetary needs of these individuals were “two-thirds that of a couple, while their income averaged under half that of a couple.”6 The public perception of their lives and the extent of their entitlement would thus become a critical site for determining the meaning of basic rights and dignity for all those over sixty-five. “By 1951 the elderly had ‘come of age’ in Canada,” James Snell writes in his recent social history of the state and elderly in Canada during the first half of the twentieth century. With the launching of a universal Old Age Security pension of $40 a month at age seventy, “the citizen’s wage had been established.”7 But what kind of a wage was it? What policy alternatives were foregone through Ottawa’s decision to opt for the $40 oas benefit? More importantly for my argument, what would be the implications of this decision for the single elderly over the next fifteen years? In order to answer these questions, it is useful to revisit briefly some of the policy debates around pension reform prior to the decision to create a universal, flat-rate pension scheme at age seventy in 1951. Throughout the 1940s and with increasing force after 1943, in the face of ongoing increases in the cost of living, public dissatisfaction built up against Canada’s system of means-tested old-age pensions, first put in place in 1927. Criticism of the existing pension system, prior to 1951 centred on two overlapping but not identical sore points, each of which produced a different policy response. The most prominent campaign was against the indignity, humiliation, and intrusion of the “means test,” deemed “vicious in principle” because it pitted the interests of parents against children, punished those who saved for their old age, discouraged the negotiation of private pension agreements through collective bargaining, and symbolized the denial of the idea that the old-age pension was, in any sense, an earned social right of citizenship. Since James Snell and I have already written elsewhere about the campaign to abolish the “means test” in exchange for a system of universal Old Age Security payments, I will not dwell upon this aspect of the pension story here.8 Rather, I wish to focus upon a second debate that has received less attention but that arguably had more significance for the impoverished single elderly: namely, the campaign to achieve a pension benefit pegged close to a minimally adequate standard of living for those individuals who had little or no other means of support. Briefly put, old-

352

James Struthers

age pensions before 1951 were perceived to be degrading not only because of the means test but also because they were set at a level far below adequacy. In moving to a system of universality for those aged seventy and over in 1951, pegged at $40 a month – the same maximum ceiling as the previous oap, which it replaced – Ottawa addressed only the first of these concerns. The next fifteen years of pension politics would be devoted to campaigns aimed at correcting this mistake. A number of developments in the 1940s underscored the fiscal inadequacy of pensions, particularly for pensioners living in the city, who soon became constructed by newspapers and social agencies as the “tea and toast” or “rooming-house” elderly. Compared to Ottawa’s generous program of universal family allowances for children launched in 1945, the parsimonious treatment of the aged in this decade of heightened citizenship and shared sacrifice was placed in particularly bold relief. When the war ended, many of the single urban elderly who had returned to the workforce in a period of high employment rather than attempting to exist on the meagre $20–25 means-tested pension maximum suddenly found themselves thrust back into dependency on the old-age pension and competing for increasingly scarce and expensive rental accommodation in the nation’s cities during an acute housing crisis. As a 1947 report by Ontario’s Department of Public Welfare pointed out, a “major subject of concern … [was] the growing number of cases, largely in urban centres, in which the basic pension provided does not meet extraordinary needs of pensioners.”9 It was a theme echoed in much of the nation’s press. “These are time of high employment, but it’s still next to impossible for an elderly man or woman to get a decent job. Those who managed to struggle through the depression and war years with skimpy incomes now find them cut by at least one-third, by the rise in prices.” In large Canadian cities, the elderly, according to newspaper coverage, were to be “found in rooming houses, institutions, living with relatives or in their own homes – very much in that order, with the majority in single housekeeping rooms,” or they were “ekeing out an existence in the cellars and garrets of private homes” because of lack of other accommodation.10 The florid prose style of this 1948 Windsor Daily Star story entitled “Aged Pensioners Haunted by Want” was typical of the genre: Spectres of hunger, want and sickness haunt hundreds of old folks … [They] sit beside white haired ladies in shabby rooms, where weak tea and dry bread make up the bill of fare twice a day. They nag at the heels of feeble men who trudge icy pavements in search of odd jobs at which they can earn a few cents … These are the common conditions … among the men and women in this city … carried on the old age pension rolls. Most of them receive government

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

353

cheques of $30 a month or less, out of which some must pay as much as twothirds for shelter, leaving a fraction more than 33 cents a day for all other needs.11

In arguing in 1949 for an increase in the old-age pension to $50 a month in order to “cover the basic needs of an old person living alone in Toronto,” the Toronto Welfare Council pointed out it was very difficult for old people to get rooms at all. The rental of $17.00 monthly … is regarded as the rate most commonly paid in downtown areas where the old people prefer to live … Most landladies are unwilling to accept old people at any cost because they dread their becoming ill and being a burden to them as it is so difficult to have them admitted to hospitals. Many old people who are living in housekeeping rooms have had their cooking facilities withdrawn which means eating cold meals or going to restaurants … The old theory that the aged can get along on very little food or exist on ‘tea and toast’ is no longer acceptable.12

When Toronto opened a seven-hundred-bed Home for the Aged in 1950, over five hundred of its occupants were ambulatory, and many were there simply for want of any other affordable accommodation. “One of the most pathetic circumstances of our times,” city aldermen pointed out when Lambert Lodge opened its doors, “is the plight of our elder citizens attempting to live on inadequate incomes in times of high cost of living, many of whom were without proper accommodation and without adequate means to obtain the common necessities of life [or the] means of providing adequate food.” Over a hundred of the lodge residents “might have managed to remain in the community if some other form of assistance had been available to them, such as supplementation of Old Age Assistance or Old Age Security,” Toronto’s welfare commissioner argued.13 Nor was the city willing to move against flagrant dangers to health and safety in private nursing homes sprouting up throughout the 1940s, out of the recognition that “any drastic action might at present only add to our troubles, as by reason of the shortage of institutional accommodation for this type of case, they would probably be left on the street.” Across Ontario, antiquated county houses of refuge were filled to overflowing in response to similar pressures.14 During the 1940s, maximum federal government payments under the means-tested old-age pensions scheme were boosted three times: from $20 to $25 in 1943, to $30 in 1947, and to $40 in 1949. But in no case were these increases sufficient either to provide minimal adequacy for the single elderly or to keep pace with the rising cost of

354

James Struthers

living. As the Toronto Welfare Council pointed out during the year of the final pension boost, $40 a month was about $10 below the minimum amount a single elderly person with no other resources needed in that city to pay for rent, food, clothes, and laundry, and still have nothing left over for anything else. Public opinion seemed to agree. A Gallup poll taken in January 1949 reported that 76 per cent of Canadians supported a universal pension above $40 a month and 47 per cent favoured paying $50 a month or more. British Columbia’s government had already moved to supplementing pensioner income to this level by the spring of 1949. In their presentation to the joint parliamentary committee on old-age pensions, the Canadian Congress of Labour and the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada argued for a $50 or $60 monthly universal pension respectively, starting at age sixty-five, a plea echoed by ccf mp Stanley Knowles when the St Laurent government’s Old Age Security legislation was finally introduced in the House of Commons. As the ccl bluntly put it in its brief to the joint Senate-House of Commons pension committee, $40 a month was “an outrageous pittance to offer Canadian citizens … It might be far more humane to club our aged to death, as in more primitive cultures, than to condemn them to the barren existence of miserable back rooms, shabby clothing, bad food, and indifferent care.” Even federal officials, in planning for the new oas pension, conceded that $40 a month “would not provide an adequate system of social security” and that the financial position of the elderly already collecting the maximum means-tested pension – a group that comprised 73 per cent of all old-age pensioners – “would be in no way improved” by a pension which, as of March 1950, was “worth only $23.50 by 1939 standards.”15 None of these reservations, however, stopped Paul Martin, St Laurent’s ebullient Health and Welfare minister, from describing his government’s universal Old Age Security pension as “unquestionably the finest in the world in the generosity of its provisions.” This claim begs the question as to why the decision was made to start in 1952 with a flat-rate $40 monthly pension at age seventy, a payment which, because of inflation, was worth 18 per cent less in 1949 dollars than the oap it replaced?16 During their extensive internal meetings on oldage pension planning between 1949 and 1951, federal officials were certainly willing to contemplate a significantly higher monthly benefit. Paying $45 a month to those aged seventy and over “would be hailed as an outstanding step forward … and the additional cost involved is not frightening,” Health and Welfare officials observed. It would also “take a good deal of the ‘sting’ out of the retention of the means-test for persons 65–69 years of age.” Even “a $50 a monthly pension to all

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

355

at 65 is possible,” the finance department argued, “if the government is prepared to impose an additional 4 per cent social security tax on all personal income and all net corporation income without any exemptions whatsoever.”17 Realistically, there was little support for either option within the St Laurent administration because moving towards an adequate social minimum for the single elderly was never a principal policy objective. Instead, federal discussions on pension eligibility and benefit levels were dominated, above all, by the quest for cost containment and the need for dampening public expectations on the pension front. “The popular demand at present is for at least $50 a month with certain groups suggesting as much as $60,” J.W. MacFarlane, senior pension administrator within the federal Department of Finance, warned. “As long as there is a pension payable under a means test … they [can] be used over and over again to force up the whole scale of pensions.” Health and Welfare officials agreed that Canadian pension policy by 1950 had reached a dangerous crossroads. If a universal system of oldage security was not announced soon, deputy minister George Davidson predicted, the existing means-tested oap scheme would have to be increased. “The least that we can get away with is an increase of pensions to $45 or $50,” and once this rate was conceded, it would set the standard for any universal pension to come, at much greater cost to the federal treasury. For similar reasons, his minister, Paul Martin, was strongly in favour of financing oas through a ‘direct tax on personal incomes at lower exemption ceilings than those presently prescribed under the Income Tax Act in order that the economic impact of the … legislation be brought home more forcibly to a greater number of individuals.” As a general principle, Martin also recommended that the earmarked Old Age Security fund “should normally show a … deficit” in order to discourage public demands for higher benefits.18 This line of thinking also drove federal officials away from endorsing a contributory old-age insurance scheme similar to Social Security in the United States. “[S]ince pensions are now at a general level of $40 a month with $50 being paid in some provinces … there would be a strong possibility that a contributory pension of less than $50 could not be introduced and, since it is a pension that is being purchased at least in part, the pressure to reduce the eligible age to 65 would be irresistible,” Department of Finance officials warned. “Once the contributory scheme had this age limit, the pressure would be very great to make the non-contributory age limit the same.”19 In all of these internal state discussions, in other words, the core question was never how the single elderly with no other resources could survive in 1951 on $40 a month.20 Instead, government officials continually fretted over how the

356

James Struthers

pension line could be held at $40 a month in the face of public expectations for a more generous plan. This was a goal that St Laurent and his cabinet would pursue relentlessly until the eve of the fateful 1957 federal election, which would usher in the Liberals’ defeat. At stake in this debate was the shifting meaning of pension entitlement in the new era of universality. However inadequate its benefits, the earlier federal-provincial old-age pension scheme, precisely because it was “means-tested,” bore an explicit relationship to need, particularly of the most indigent elderly. It was perhaps for this very reason that old-age pensioners, their families, and their advocates were successful in lobbying for a doubling of its value between 1943 and 1949 in response to wartime inflation. Ottawa’s universal old-age security scheme in 1951, however, was constructed on a very different rationale. Its “generosity,” to use Paul Martin’s terminology, rested not in its ability to provide the “tea and toast” or “rooming-house” elderly with a decent standard of living – which it clearly could not – but rather, in the basic floor it provided for middle-class, self-employed Canadians, through their own savings, and trade unionists, through private pension collective bargaining, to build up their own provisions for an adequate and secure retirement. As Martin argued, “while the universal pension will provide a good start for our old age security, it is not a proper concern of government to do for us what we should do for ourselves. It remains our individual responsibility to build an adequate savings and retirement program on the sure foundation of the federal pension.” Abolishing the means test, in other words, was about incorporating the middle class into the Canadian pension system or, as Martin put it, providing “an invaluable foundation on which hundreds of thousands of Canadians can build for themselves their own retirement security programs … through commercial or government annuities [or] through the establishment of industrial pension plans.” It was not directed at the plight of the single, impoverished elderly living outside the margins of the family.21 Nowhere were the trade-offs between universality, adequacy, and means-testing more starkly drawn than within Leslie Frost’s Ontario during the 1950s. Throughout the federal-provincial discussions over oas in 1950–51, Ontario officials made it clear that they had no use for continued involvement with means-tested old-age pensions in any form. If Ottawa’s intention was to provide universal pensions starting at age seventy, then it would be better to do this “and nothing more,” Ontario’s welfare minister, W.A. Goodfellow, warned federal officials, rather than to create a companion means-tested scheme for the needy elderly between age sixty-five and sixty-nine.22 His advice was not heeded. Universal Old Age Security for Canadi-

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

357

ans seventy years and over came into being in 1952, accompanied by a means-tested Old Age Assistance scheme for the needy elderly between sixty-five and sixty-nine, cost-shared equally between Ottawa and the provinces, which also paid a maximum benefit of $40 a month. From the beginning, however, Leslie Frost made it clear that this was all the elderly in his province could expect to get, unless Ottawa raised the basic pension level. “Never again would I enter into a system of supplementary old age pensions and calling it an old age pension … There is nothing but tears and distress to try to do it in the way we were doing it before. Never again would I want to get back into the recriminations and misunderstandings which arose from that.” Provincial supplementation of the oap during the 1940s “held back progress in old age pensions to an unbelievable extent,” Frost argued. “We made no progress … until we got the emphasis where it should be, that is a pension arrived at by the Federal government in which we pay a proportion ... We are not going back to make the mistakes we made in the past.” In contrast to the western provinces, which did provide supplements to needy oas and oaa pensioners up to $10 per month, within Ontario, Frost vowed, there would be no provincial supplementation for the elderly unable to live on the monthly $40 maximum provided through either program.23 Frost’s intransigence on this issue quickly played havoc with the lives of Ontario’s neediest aged: single pensioners renting rooms in cities such as Toronto, hundreds of whom found themselves worse off than before as the municipality transferred their files from the city relief office to the provincial Old Age Assistance caseload, once this new program for the elderly between ages sixty-five and sixty-nine came into effect in 1952. When they were on relief, the city paid their entire rent, plus a food allowance, which often came to more than $40 a month. Once transferred over to oaa, the pensioners discovered, “I can pay my rent, perhaps, but what am I going to eat?” According to Jean Good of the Toronto Welfare Council, when they phoned Toronto’s welfare department to complain, they were told “that they were now provincial responsibilities. And when they phone the provincial department they are told that $40 is all they can get, that there is no allowance for any extras no matter what their need. They just can’t believe it. On no level of government has any planning been done on a personal basis.” Pressed to explain this paradox, city welfare commissioner H.S. Rupert replied that “the policy of the city is not to supplement Government assistance even though a person will receive less under the pension than he got on relief.”24 When grilled in the legislature over the plight of these seniors, Leslie Frost replied in kind. “If they are in need, it is up to the municipalities, not the province to top

358

James Struthers

up their monthly allowances … You know what a headache it was to administer the problem … of dealing with cases of need by [the] thousands.” Otherwise, the responsibility fell in the lap of Ottawa, not Queen’s Park. “The rates of allowances … have been established by the Federal Government, and they apparently consider the amounts to be proper at this time.” If Ottawa raised the $40 ceiling, the Ontario premier promised, his government would be pleased to pick up its half of the cost.25 The hardship experienced by the urban elderly living on oaa received additional support from a study published by the Toronto Welfare Council. Updating its previous 1948 cost-of-living survey, the twc documented that single old people living in Toronto in 1952 required a minimum of $63.29 monthly for an adequate existence. Elderly single recipients of Veterans’ Allowances in fact were receiving $60. Under relentless criticism in the legislature, particularly from the Communist Toronto mpp Joe Salzberg and ccf leader Donald Macdonald, Frost’s government eventually agreed in 1953 to share 50 per cent of the cost of providing supplements to individual oaa pensioners “in cases of special need” with municipalities, up to a maximum of $10 a month. In no case, however, would the government agree to supplement the income of oas pensioners. “If $40 is not enough, is $50 enough?” Frost argued. “I can [say that] we are not going back into that business, if I can help it. There was nothing which caused more dissatisfaction than all this business of ‘rent levels,’ ‘lodgings,’ ‘fuel,’ and so on … There is only one way to deal with it and that is by doing what was done in 1950 or thereabouts. We will pay our proportion of whatever the federal government thinks is a realistic old age pension … If they make it $50 a month we will pay our share and get rid of this business of a means test by examining into people’s affairs with a magnifying glass. I want to have nothing to do with that.”26 The extent of Ontario supplementation of pensioner incomes compared to the western provinces, however, was miniscule. By 1956 only 1,795, or 1.5 per cent, of 300,000 elderly in Ontario received any provincial top-up to their $40 monthly benefits, compared to 16,000, or 34 per cent, of Saskatchewan’s 48,000 pensioners. “Why are there less than 2,000 collecting the supplement?” ccf leader Donald Macdonald asked. “Because the initiative for paying it is left exclusively to the municipality, and a municipality cannot pay it, because in most cases it is so strapped financially, it cannot move, even if it wanted to, and pay $10 expecting the province to pay one-half.” 27 As other mpps argued, “there are dozens and dozens of municipalities in the province which do not have a single old age pensioner on supplementary allowance for the simple reason they are afraid to enter into this agree-

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

359

ment. They are afraid that if they give one person $20 a month, there will be 25 or 50 more people who are rightfully entitled to it, but they cannot give it to them for the simple reason that they cannot afford it. It is not fair that the people in British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan have the right to get an extra supplementary allowance that your father and my father cannot obtain in this province.”28 Frost’s weak reply was that through its Homes for the Aged construction program, his government was already doing everything it could to “eliminate fear and anxiety from the old age outlook of Ontario’s residents.” The elderly in dire straits could turn to “these attractive havens where special care and all the comforts and conveniences of home life are accorded those who are living in them.”29 Over four hundred delegates attending Ontario’s First Conference on Aging at the University of Toronto in 1957 heard a different story. Homes for the aged across the province were already filled to capacity, with waiting lists in the hundreds. Chronic-care bed space for the elderly in the province’s hospitals was also at a premium, a situation that would worsen with the arrival of universal hospital insurance two years later. As even provincial Treasury department officials conceded privately, too many of Ontario’s elderly in need of care quite simply had “no place to go.” Conditions within the many private unlicensed nursing homes that had been springing up throughout the 1950s were “very bad,” but their operators “cannot be penalized too heavily,” Treasury officials argued, “because the only funds they have available, in many instances, is the $40 per month pension on which the unwanted old person must live.” If they were suddenly put out of business, “what would we do with [their] patients?”30 Frost and his welfare minister, Louis Cecile, were well aware by 1956 that the $40 monthly pension benefit was creating severe hardship across the province, particularly among the single, widowed elderly, and that the extent of need among pensioners extended far beyond the mere 2,000 who were getting municipal supplementation of their monthly benefits. The flat-rate pension of $40 a month “is of course quite inadequate for fully 1/3 or an estimated 100,000 of the persons on Old Age Security in this Province,” Cecile told provincial treasurer Dana Porter in 1956. But if Ontario moved to make up the difference, it would be caving in to Ottawa’s pressure “to transfer additional financial responsibility [for the elderly] to the provinces and, in Ontario, to the municipalities.” Senior citizens over sixty-five comprised “a very large and influential voting population,” Cecile warned, and there was “a decided movement on [their] part … as well as the population at large, to treat the needy aged more realistically.” Rather than being “continually on defensive,” Ontario had to stand firm

360

James Struthers

against these demands for further supplementation and “take the initiative in this movement by pressing the federal government to accept the responsibility that is rightly theirs.”31 In the face of this government intransigence, media and social work research that spotlighted the plight of old-age pensioners, particularly the single elderly, struggling to exist on the $40 oas or oaa pensions in the nation’s cities, developed in intensity throughout the second half of the 1950s, drawing frequent unfavourable comparisons with the greater generosity of American social security payments to pensioners south of the border. A 1955 Winnipeg Tribune series entitled “Life on Forty” chronicled the struggles of a young reporter trying to spend a winter month in that city living on nothing but the $40 federal oas benefit. Here is how his experience was summarized by a subsequent Manitoba report, Aging and Opportunity: The best dwelling … this pensioner could find … was one for … $9 for two weeks ... The room was one of 12 on a dark corridor in a rooming house. The rooms were separated by paper-thin partitions. There was one bathroom and flush toilet for the floor. The ‘hot’ water was rarely more than tepid. Furniture consisted of a rickety chair, a bureau drawer, and a bed with one sheet and a ragged blanket. Light came from one window and from a single electric light bulb suspended from the ceiling. The pensioner spent a great deal of time here, trying not to feel hungry and cold … Meals were usually prepared in the room and consisted of “dull food in small quantities.” Typical provisions for one day was a pint of milk, a loaf of bread, two tins of pork and beans, two oranges, a chocolate bar, and a cup of coffee. Cash gave out towards the end of the month, and living on forty finally meant begging on the streets.32

A year later the Toronto Star duplicated the same experience with its story “Fourteen Days as an Old Age Pensioner,” a series so popular it was debated in the Ontario legislature and reprinted for distribution in pamphlet form. In fervid prose, Toronto Star reporter William MacEachern described, in his “diary of desolation,” the experience of trying to live in Toronto on $20 over two weeks: The room was dark and dingy; one lonely bulb hung from the ceiling and the only window was so small you could look out if only one eye at a time … I was cold, I was hungry, and I was lonesome … I wanted to talk, I wanted companionship; I felt that the world had closed in on me, my life had come down to four walls and a few measly dollars … In the eyes of my neighbour I saw the loneliness and fear of his wretched life, of dingy, dimly lit rooms, halfhearted hotplates and insipid, drab meals dumped from cans and washed down with listless tea; here too was the loneliness of old age and the fear of death …

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

361

In another room down the hall I can see another old man, lonely and embittered, hunched between sheets on his camel-backed bed, alone in a dark room and a darker world … looking ahead to the next day, and the next and the next, wondering but not knowing what they offer … Almost every cent I’ve spent over the past eight days has been for food; I’ve never been on a street car, I haven’t been to a show, I haven’t bought any toilet supplies, I haven’t even mailed a letter. Outside of food, all I’ve spent is five cents for a newspaper, 25 cents to get into the Art Gallery, another quarter for a handkerchief and 35 cents in church Sunday. I felt discouraged and disgusted … I’ve lost seven pounds in the last nine days … I want to give a true picture of an old age pensioner’s life but my youth keeps getting in the way. I know there are thousands of people in the city, and throughout the province, who by scrimping and saving and doing without, manage to stretch a five dollar bill further than I’m stretching it. I know they do it but I don’t know how except that their lot must be more miserable and lonely than mine.33

These dramatic journalistic depictions of the plight of the single, “rooming-house” elderly in the 1950s received support from wellresearched analyses conducted by social agencies in major cities across Canada. In its 1955 report Aging and Opportunity, the Welfare Council of Greater Winnipeg provided perhaps the best single study of the elderly in Canada before the 1966 final report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging in Canada. Based on close analysis of census data, as well as in-depth interviews conducted by a team of thirty University of Manitoba School of Social Work students with a representative sample of Winnipeg’s elderly, the report discovered 11,000 single women and 5,000 single men among the aged, accounting for onethird of all aged men and about 60 per cent of all aged women in that city. Approximately 4,600 of the women and 2,800 of the men were living without a spouse, apart from any relative. “Is it any wonder,” Aging and Opportunity asked, “that interviewers in the survey found many lonely persons?” Over 1,000 were “living miserably” in boarding houses in the downtown core described as “small third floor rooms thinly partitioned from other similar rooms, furnished with little more than a sagging bed and a single dull light suspended from the ceiling … [They were] paying much more than they should for rent and denying themselves other necessities.” In total, about 11 per cent of Winnipeg’s aged were “poorly housed,” the report concluded. But two-thirds were poor, “living on money incomes that are marginal or less.” The survey defined a “Monthly Budget for Marginal Living” to be $167.00 for a couple and $83.50 for a single aged person. Fifty-eight per cent of couples and 59 per cent of single persons had “less than enough money income to maintain such a standard of living.”34

362

James Struthers

A 1959 study of Ontario’s elderly undertaken by the Ontario Welfare Council, although not incorporating interview material, nonetheless provided a similar statistical portrait of the situation of the aged in Canada’s largest province on the eve of the 1960s. A “modest but adequate” urban standard of living for older people ranged from $86 to $98 a month for a single person and $135 for a couple, the owc study argued. This was defined, not as a subsistence budget, but as a living standard “consistent with health, decency, and self-respect.” Half of Ontario’s population sixty-five or over had incomes below this level, even though 165,000 of the province’s 454,000 elderly owned their own homes. Over 45,000 lived alone, two-thirds of whom were women. Among all of the aged, single women were by far the most vulnerable to poverty. “Typical rental accommodation of single unattached aged people in Toronto … and nearby urban areas, was found to be a second floor room with shared bathroom. Facilities included a two-burner hot-plate and the use of a refrigerator and telephone. For this room, the rent was between $7 and $8 weekly … [Such] cooking facilities … encourage malnutrition, while an upstairs location presents serious difficulties for the aged tenant who is in poor health. Overcrowded accommodation was common.”35 A survey of British Columbia’s elderly that same year, conducted by the province’s Old Age Assistance Board, “showed that something like one quarter of them were poorly housed.” A subsequent study of housing and the elderly, conducted for the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation by the Canadian Welfare Council, concluded that it was not possible “to know exactly how many elderly people in Canada live in substandard accommodation.” However, the report, At Home after 65, expressed grave concern “about the shortage of suitable accommodation for single, widowed, or divorced elderly people,” a need that was “particularly acute for … lone elderly women.” “Far too many [of this group],” the cwc report argued, “live in old hotels and rooming houses in slum areas, near the heart of the city,” which were “overcrowded and have inadequate heating, plumbing, or cooking facilities.” They were “paying too much for accommodation and too little for food, clothing, and medical care,” while “living in basement suites, ill-equipped flats, or rooms with only a hot plate to cook on and no running water nearby.”36 Despite this mounting evidence of and public anger towards the hardships being endured by Canada’s urban elderly, many of whom had no income to fall back on apart from Old Age Security, pension reform throughout the 1950s and early 1960s was slow and haphazard. Louis St Laurent’s finance minister, Walter Harris, provided only a $6 increase in oas, when he declared a $151,000,000 federal surplus

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

363

in 1956. The new $46 pension level reflected neither research into minimum living standards for the elderly nor the dramatic growth in Canada’s economy since 1949, when the $40 pension standard was first put in place. Instead, Harris’s $6 pension hike simply acknowledged the increase in the cost of living since 1952, when the oas program came into effect. This “cheese-paring” decision, as Paul Martin described it, proved to be a catastrophic political mistake for St Laurent’s Liberals heading into the 1957 federal election. Conservative opposition leader John Diefenbaker gleefully tagged the federal finance minister with the label “Six Buck Harris” and exploited the pension issue skilfully throughout the campaign as part of his surprise road to victory against a fiscally conservative and complacent Liberal government.37 Diefenbaker subsequently raised the benefits for both oas and oaa to $55 a month in 1958 and would raise them again to $65 a month on the eve of the 1962 federal election. Over his five years in office, however, the Tory leader remained confused and uncertain in his response to the pension issue and the question of poverty among Canada’s elderly, despite widespread criticism from the media, social agencies, municipalities, and the organized pensioners’ movement that Canada’s elderly, particularly those living almost exclusively on the oas, simply could not make do on $55 or $65 a month.38 Diefenbaker had signalled interest in developing a contributory pension plan during his 1958 election campaign and even appointed Dr Robert Clark, of the University of British Columbia, to conduct a one-man comparative investigation of old-age pension policy in the United States and Canada.39 But after receiving Clark’s massive report in 1960, Diefenbaker then refused to act on it, leaving the bc professor baffled as to whether the Conservative Party had any “unified philosophy … in the whole field of welfare legislation.”40 While in opposition, both the Liberals and the ccf/ndp developed detailed proposals for a national contributory pension scheme, which they promised to add to the existing system of Old Age Security if elected. When Lester Pearson’s Liberal Party wrested power from Diefenbaker in the 1963 federal contest, the development of the contributory Canada Pension Plan became the key component of his celebrated “sixty days of decision.”41 The complex political bargaining over the cpp-qpp between 1963 and 1965 has been well told elsewhere and need not be repeated here.42 The creation of the companion Guaranteed Income Supplement for the elderly, which emerged in 1967, however, is more relevant to my analysis of the construction of the single urban elderly as a social problem in the post–World War ii era, since few within this group, two-thirds of whom were women, would

364

James Struthers

benefit from the creation of an earnings-related, contributory pension plan based on the male breadwinner model. Of particular significance is the critical policy turn away from universality and back towards selectivity symbolized by the gis. Why, fifteen years after its celebrated abandonment of the “means test” for old-age pensioners, did Ottawa return to a preoccupation with measuring needs, during a decade of social-policy experimentation that otherwise celebrated the principles of inclusive social citizenship and universality? The answer to this question is to be found, in part, within Canada’s social work community. Throughout the latter half of the 1950s, as discussed above, social work leaders who had once championed the universality of oas,43 became increasingly dissatisfied with its inability to provide a sufficient minimal income for Canada’s urban, impoverished elderly, as well as by the political bickering between Ottawa, the provinces, and municipalities over who was responsible for their plight. Ad hoc and politically motivated increases to the basic oas entitlement in 1946, 1958, and 1962 were never sufficient to close the budgetary gap between the income and minimum needs of the urban elderly with no other means of support.44 At the same time, federal politicians ruled out raising the level of oas to a standard of budgetary adequacy advocated by social work organizations such as the Toronto, Winnipeg, and Canadian Welfare Councils because of the fiscal cost involved, as well as the close linkage between oas, oaa, and other categorical welfare programs administered by the provinces and municipalities.45 A contributory pension plan along with lines of the cpp, although endorsed by leading social work organizations such as the Canadian Welfare Council,46 offered no way out of this dilemma. As the cwc argued, “the aged woman alone – single, widowed, or divorced – is likely to be the most poverty-stricken … Women are in the majority in the group over 65 years of age, and although more and more married women are working, most aged widows have never worked full-time since marriage. And pension schemes – public and private – are framed largely in terms of the worker’s needs rather than his widow’s. And as long as wages for women remain below the level of wages for men, any formula (e.g. a percentage of former earnings) that may produce acceptable pension levels for men may not do so for women.”47 Indeed, the very language and arguments used by cabinet ministers such as Health and Welfare minister Judy LaMarsh to describe the Canada Pension Plan, in contrast to the more gender-neutral discourse surrounding debates over Old Age Security between 1949 and 1951, was shot through with the masculinist assumptions of the male breadwinner ideology. cpp pension benefits, LaMarsh noted in 1964, were to be pegged at 25 per cent of “what a man had been earning.” In calculat-

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

365

ing their value, it was important to exclude “a man’s years of lowest earnings from the calculation of his average earnings” in order to avoid being “very unfair to the man who suffered sickness or unemployment in the last few years before retirement.”48 The basic unfairness of the cpp to women, most of whom in its early years would gain entitlements only as dependents of men, was viewed as unproblematic. As the designers of the scheme noted, “the proportion of women contributing to the plan at any one time will obviously be lower. It will be of the order of 30 per cent (of all those aged 18–64). But, of course, this does not mean that only 30 per cent of women will benefit directly from the plan. In future, almost all women will be contributors for at least some few years and therefore will be entitled, when they reach age 65, to some pension related to their previous earnings.”49 It was in response to the growing recognition that neither increases to oas nor the creation of a contributory pension plan could deal with the plight of the poverty-stricken urban elderly, the large majority of whom were women, that Canadian social work leaders once again took up the cudgels on behalf of the means test. As the Ontario Welfare Council observed in its influential 1959 study Economic Needs and Resources of Older People in Ontario, “The elderly female is at a particular disadvantage because of the smaller retirement income resources generally available to her,” and getting her the money she needed was not possible through simply boosting oas “owing to the heavy cost of making payments to those who do not need the money” as well as “the failure of the universal payment to recognize differences in the need for money income, as between one province and another, as between rural and urban life, and as between single and married people.” The only way around this dilemma was to bring back the means test into federal policy towards the elderly. As the owc report concluded “there is much to be said for a means test skillfully administered … Means testing when wisely applied can also save substantial sums of public money, in contrast to any universal payment method.”50 Between 1963 and 1966 social work leaders found their most effective champion for this argument in the person of Liberal senator David Croll. Croll’s close links with the social work community went back to his early and somewhat controversial career as Ontario’s public welfare minister between 1934 and 1937 in the Liberal administration of Mitch Hepburn. Between 1948 and 1953 he, as a Liberal member of Parliament, chaired the Canadian Welfare Council’s influential Committee on Public Welfare, which developed an early model for federal cost-sharing of social assistance that would eventually reach fruition in the Canada Assistance Plan of 1966. He also played a key role, in his capacity as a Liberal backbench mp, in the deliberations of

366

James Struthers

the 1950 joint Senate-House of Commons committee on social security, whose recommendations helped to spark the creation of the universal oas plan in 1951, and he was one of the key group of leftleaning Liberals working with Tom Kent, Walter Gordon, and Maurice Lamontagne to move the party towards an activist social-policy agenda as part of its route back to power between 1958 and 1963.51 The Liberals’ victory in the spring of 1963, under Lester Pearson, soon galvanized Croll into action in his capacity as his party’s most influential senator. During the election campaign Pearson had promised a further $10 increase in Old Age Security to $75 a month if he was victorious, in anticipation of the creation of the Canada Pension Plan during his first “sixty days of decision.” The announcement, coming so close on the heels of Diefenbaker’s $10 boost in oas the previous year, prompted dismay from key voices within Canadian social work. John Morgan, social work professor at the University of Toronto and a key adviser for the Canadian Welfare Council’s 1958 blueprint for social reform, Social Security for Canada, wrote to Croll as soon as the election ended, arguing for a more rational and coordinated approach to welfare planning: “some of us who are aware of the complex problems of Social Security were somewhat disturbed by the suggestion during the recent election that the major welfare need of the moment is to increase Old Age Pensions by $10 … Is it too much to hope that … any action in the field of Old Age Pensions will not be taken in such a way that it will pre-empt other … much more needed improvements? … While it is true that old people, in the big cities especially, cannot live adequately on $65 a month, it would be most unfortunate if in meeting the needs of this group we were to set aside the urgent needs of other groups for whom no protection is provided.”52 Croll conceded to Morgan that “I see the problem as you do but, on the other hand, there is the realism of politics to be faced.” Nonetheless, Morgan’s letter set him to thinking about the need for a wider “review of welfare services.” Three weeks later Croll again wrote to Morgan pointing out that he was thinking of establishing a Senate “Committee on the Welfare of the Aged” to “take an overall look at this problem.” Was the idea “worth it?” Morgan quickly replied expressing his warm enthusiasm. On 23 July Croll announced in the Senate the creation of a Special Select Committee on Aging. The committee’s tasks would include examining the “problem of adequate income,” ascertaining “how far we are away from the ‘poor house’ approach to old age,” and developing “practical, rather than sentimental approaches to problems on aging.” Much was already being done for the elderly, Croll acknowledged, “but it is all poorly co-ordinated. No one knows what is being done, and who is doing it … [W]e

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

367

need to ... map out what exists already, and where the gaps are. Then governments at all levels, and voluntary agencies, can be helped to work together in a coherent plan in which support is given on the basis of a clearly articulated policy that looks at the whole need of these aged persons.” Over the summer of 1963 Croll hired Morgan on contract to prepare a comprehensive memorandum outlining a program of action for the Senate committee to pursue over the next two to three years of its work.53 Morgan’s report for the Senate committee on “The Needs of the Aged” highlighted the poverty of the elderly as the number one problem it would have to address. In tackling this issue, the committee faced three critical challenges. The first was that “many old people are close to the level of mere subsistence and a sizeable number are trying to live on incomes that do not provide the essentials of physical life at a level that can be defended by any standards of social decency.” The second was that there was still “no reliable or accepted set of criteria against which to measure any standard of health and decency.” And the third was that “much more accurate information is needed about incomes of old people before it is possible to suggest what provisions are needed to meet [their] evident income needs.” The living standards of the aged owning their own homes and making do on $100 a month, for example, were clearly much different from those with the same income “who live in a rented room, in poor health, [and] needing help to keep up with the daily chores.” All the elderly needed public programs “designed to raise [their] general level of income,” Morgan argued. But there was also the “need to design additional or supplementary income maintenance programmes that are capable of great flexibility in meeting the very varied conditions of older people … These cannot be satisfactorily dealt with by universal cash benefit programmes.” The gist of Morgan’s analysis, in other words, was that the Senate committee had to develop more precise measurements of need and to search for alternatives to universality as a solution to the problems faced by Canada’s aged.54 As a key step towards the first task, the Senate committee turned to the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, which during the 1961 census had developed, for the first time, a comprehensive supplementary survey, based on a 20 per cent sample of private non-farm households (800,000 in total), of “the incomes and resources of older people.” A talented young dbs statistician, Jennifer Podoluk, was assigned the task of interpreting the data.55 Podoluk’s background study, Incomes of the Older Population, eventually published in 1965,56 became the most important piece of research informing the work of Croll’s committee on aging. It was also the first definitive analysis in Canada of the

368

James Struthers

Table 12.1 Household status of population age sixty-five and over, 1 June 1961

Status

Male (percentage)

Female (percentage)

Total (percentage)

in families (married) In own household Not in own household Live with relatives Lodgers

63.2 3.3 2.6 .7

44.7 2.8 2.3 .5

53.7 3.1 2.5 .6

not in families (single and widowed) Own household – living alone Own household – another person present Not in own household Live with relatives Lodgers In institutions Employees or share accommodation

9.8 4.8 19.0 7.8 6.8 3.9 .5

15.5 7.8 29.1 17.2 5.2 4.7 2.0

12.7 6.4 24.2 12.6 6.0 4.3 1.3

Total

100.0

100.0

100.0

source: J.R. Podoluk, “Income Characteristics of the Older Population,” Submission to Senate Committee on Aging, 22 Oct. 1964, 1253.

deeply gendered poverty of old age. Almost 53 per cent of elderly women age sixty-five or over, Podoluk discovered, were single or widowed and thus “not part of what is considered a normal family group,” compared to 34 per cent of elderly men (see table 12.1). The average income of elderly women was “less than one-half that of men while their median income was little more than one-half.” Two-thirds of women family heads aged sixty-five or over and 56 per cent of widowed or single elderly women not in families had annual incomes below $1,000, compared with one-quarter of male family heads aged sixty-five to sixty-nine and about 40 per cent of those aged seventy or over. In terms of predicting the incidence of deep poverty among the elderly, Podoluk concluded that “the critical income problem of the older population is the problem of persons who are no longer part of a family group … [This] problem is more critical for women than for men.” Or as Dick Davis, of the Canadian Welfare Council, put it in testifying before Croll’s committee, “the real poverty is among the widows.”57 The Senate Committee on Aging continued its deliberations on a wide range of issues pertaining to the elderly until 1966, when it published its highly publicized final report. Most of the time period it was

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

369

at work coincided with the complex negotiations between Ottawa and the provinces over the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans, which came into effect in 1965. The most important recommendation of the committee took dead aim at the major shortcoming of the cpp-qpp as a response to the plight of Canada’s aged. Contributory public pensions would benefit the next generation of the nation’s elderly, not this one. There were already, in 1965, a million or more retired older people in Canada who would get nothing from the cpp, and the majority of them, the Senate committee report argued, were “in serious economic need.” “Having lived through two World Wars, the great depression and a period of marked inflation, these older people find themselves now with few personal resources and dependent on the support of government programs to a much greater extent than the new retirees are likely to be. The concern of the present aged is not one of maintaining a pre-retirement standard of living, which for many was abandoned long ago, but rather of being able, in the face of rising prices and depleted means, to secure the bare necessities of existence.”58 It was “utterly unacceptable,” the Senate committee argued, to believe that these people should be expected to turn to means-tested welfare or public assistance to make up the difference between a $75 oas pension and their basic needs. “The main reliance for meeting their ordinary requirements should be on benefits to which they are entitled as a matter of right.” Nor did it make sense to continue trying to bridge this gap exclusively through increases in the basic rate of oas. Not only was this expensive, but it would “do nothing to improve their position relative to that of future retirees [since] in addition to their Canada Pension benefits [they] would be entitled also to whatever increase is made in the basic pension.”59 As a result, the Senate committee recommended a major innovation in Canadian social policy, namely, “an Income Guarantee Program,” to be administered and financed by the federal government, and involving “no means or needs test” which would bridge the difference between a “socially acceptable minimum budget” adjusted automatically each year, and the “net cash income from all sources, including Old Age Security and the Canada Pension Plan below [this] amount.” There would be no home investigations, no caseworkers, and no detailed or intrusive asset checks. Instead, the aged need only complete “a simplified income form annually and the amount by which their declared income falls short of the established minima in any year [would] constitute the benefit for the year following.” Since the committee argued that Canada still lacked “scientific” studies “on minimum adequate income levels,” it recommended that such a proposed income guarantee program should start at the existing maximum income levels for

370

James Struthers

Old Age Assistance: $1,260 for the single elderly and $2,220 for married couples, or in other words a guarantee of $105 a month, $30 above the level of oas. The Senate committee report also regarded its recommendation as mostly a transitional program since, within a decade, the full benefits provided through the cpp-qpp in tandem with oas would take care of the elderly’s basic minimum needs.60 Parallel to the Senate Committee on Aging’s report, officials within the Department of National Health and Welfare had been working on their own recommendations for an income supplement program for the aged, in order to provide some transitional benefits for the cohort of elderly who would get nothing out of the cpp. nhw’s draft plan for an “old age security supplement” of up to $25 a month shared many similarities with and some important differences from the Senate committee proposal. It too would be administered and financed by Ottawa and paid monthly on the basis of a simple declaration of income, rather than a needs or means test. It was worth less than the Senate plan, however, and would be payable only to the aged on oas, that is, those aged seventy or over, rather than the elderly from sixty-five onwards, as recommended by Croll’s committee.61 However, up to the moment when Croll’s report, with its call for guaranteed annual income for the aged, appeared in the spring of 1966, nhw planning was surrounded by a plethora of qualifications and reservations. Department officials noted that there was no consensus within Canada on what such a minimum for the elderly should be. A single guaranteed national standard was also problematic because of variations in actual living costs and standards across Canada, a dilemma that faced all federal welfare programs. “The level that is satisfactory for communities with modest incomes is quite inadequate for metropolitan centres; the level adequate for metropolitan centres is far too high for small rural communities.” The Canada Pension Plan, as well as unemployment insurance, got around this difficulty by relating benefits to earnings, which varied regionally. The Canada Assistance Plan left it to the provinces to decide what their maximum welfare allowances should be. A guaranteed income supplement for the elderly, however, would be taking Ottawa into hitherto uncharted waters, outside the special realm of veterans’ benefits, in defining national minimum living standards. Up till now, the federal government has maintained that its role in the field of income security was to assist aged persons by augmenting the income arrangements they had been able to make for their old age – to provide a basic income upon which private savings and other income arrangements could be built. With the guaranteed income approach the Federal government would be rec-

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

371

ognizing … that all persons over age 65, as a matter of right, are entitled to benefits which will be sufficiently large so that they can rely on them to meet all their ordinary requirements … It will also set the stage for the expansion of the principle of the guaranteed minimum income to cover other needy groups within our population, apart from the aged.

Such a commitment might also intrude constitutionally on areas of provincial jurisdiction over defining welfare needs, provoking likely opposition from Quebec. Defining income tests through the tax mechanism, nhw officials argued, was much less reliable than relying on provincial welfare machinery and could prove “embarrassing” at a time when Ottawa was pushing for a “needs test” through the Canada Assistance Plan. An income test also discriminated in favour of homowners or those with substantial savings “since it takes no cognizance of ‘assets’ such as ownership of homes or holdings of non-dividend-yielding assets.” It would add a “fourth tier on an already complex old age income maintenance system.” It might be seen “as an extremely elaborate technique for paying an extra sum of $25 a month to from half to two-thirds of the aged population.” The elderly needed “guaranteed services” such as health and home care, more than a “guaranteed income.” There were only two “clear advantages” to the Senate committee’s idea, Health and Welfare officials concluded. It would “cost considerably less than an across-the-board increase of $25 to all old age security recipients,” which would represent an expensive permanent addition to the base of oas that would balloon over time. And there was also “no social stigma attached to completing an income tax return.”62 In the final analysis, these last two points were all that mattered, when coupled with the widespread public acclaim that greeted the publication of the Senate committee’s final report. On 14 July 1966 Health and Welfare minister Allan MacEachen announced that the government was acting on the recommendation of the Senate committee by launching a guaranteed minimum monthly income of $105 to oas recipients, beginning on 1 January 1967. The proposed gis, which added $30 a month to those below the requisite income threshold, would be pegged at 40 per cent of the oas. Although the increase was targeted, not universal, it was a “far, far cry from the means test” for the elderly, MacEachen argued. “A means test means just that. It involves an examination of the nooks and crannies of a person’s financial status: the money he has in the bank, whether he owns a car or home, the ability of relatives to contribute to his support, his earnings and so on.” The guaranteed income supplement involved none of that, but used a process “identical with that used for income tax purposes … There will be no snooping, no prying into financial affairs, no

372

James Struthers

demeaning questions.” And since the elderly on oas were by definition out of the workforce, there would be no undermining of the work ethic. Best of all, its fiscal burden “will be almost entirely a transitional one,” the Health and Welfare minister concluded, because of the “increasing benefits that will be available under the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans.” Unlike a flat rate increase to oas, which was “a commitment in perpetuity,” the anticipated $225 million annual cost of the gis was eventually expected to disappear or at least diminish.63 Instead, the gis, as the thin edge of the wedge for the return of selectivity in federal social policy during the 1960s, became a favourite instrument of the federal Department of Finance during the inflationary and deficit-driven years after 1975. When first introduced in 1967, the gis – pegged at 40 per cent of oas – was viewed as a transitional stopgap designed to fade away by the mid-1970s. As of 2003, however, its value stands at 119 per cent of oas, which itself is progressively clawed back from the elderly whose net annual incomes exceed $57,879.64 In effect, the increasing prominence of the gis has created “two spheres of public provision for the aged – a public, but income-tested, domain, which is ‘predominantly a welfare state for women,’ and a tax-subsidised and government-regulated ‘semi-private welfare state of occupational pensions and rrsp’s … [which] is mainly, if not exclusively, a welfare state for men – organized workers and the predominantly male occupations of employed professionals and managers.’”65 Recent neo-liberal calls for the restructuring of the welfare state, British historian Pat Thane has argued, proceed on the assumption “that the post-war social security system had initially been good but was failing under the pressure of social change, in particular changes in gender roles and in patterns of marriage, divorce, and work … There was little appreciation that the post-war pension system had been inadequate for the needs of very many pensioners from the beginning.”66 Thane’s insight applies equally well to post-war Canada, particularly with respect to the elderly solely dependent upon public provision through Old Age Security. As this study has shown, no sooner was the “citizen’s wage” established in 1951 than conflict arose over its meaning. Was oas intended to provide Canada’s aged with a decent basic minimum? Or was the flat-rate pension simply a floor upon which middle- and working-class Canadians could begin to save or bargain collectively for a secure and decent retirement? Clearly, from the inception of oas, federal government officials believed the latter. But with increasing force, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the public image of the “tea and toast” or “rooming-house” elderly, living at the margins of the family, called the very idea of a “citizen’s wage” into question. What kind of citizenship was being honoured by the single,

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

373

urban elderly, survivors of two world wars and a Great Depression, now struggling to live on $40, $55, or $65 a month? The deeply gendered construction of entitlement for Canada’s oldage pensioners also intruded increasingly into this debate. For male trade unionists and their political allies within the ccf/ndp and Liberal parties, a contributory, wage-related public pension plan such as the cpp-qpp was viewed as the principal solution to the basic inadequacy of oas. For aging women in this era, whose attachment to the labour force had always been marginal or intermittent, the answer was not that simple. Adequacy for them could only be reached through expanding a non-contributory approach to pension entitlement, or it would not be achieved at all. By the late 1950s the voice of Canadian social work – recently adamant in its opposition to the means test for the elderly – re-emerged in favour of its return in modified form. As Linda Gordon has argued, social work discourse, rooted in a separate, more feminine “needs talk” as well as in “empirical studies of the cost of living and the making of family budgets,” has always existed in some tension with the masculinist social insurance language of “rights” based on a “male breadwinner ethic.”67 Nowhere is this bifurcation more evident than in 1957–67 debates over old-age pension entitlement. Through the vehicle of David Croll’s Senate Committee on Aging, an alternative social work vision of “unify[ing] the two rhetorics of rights and needs” or the “right to have one’s needs met”68 converged around the call for a guaranteed income supplement for the elderly. The constructed postwar image of urban Canada’s “grizzled old men and lonely widows” played a critical role in the success of this campaign by helping to focus public attention upon the importance of a more pluralistic approach to the needs of the aged, particularly single women, not just for more adequate pension income but for affordable seniors’ housing as well as for medical, nursing, and home care services, programs that would only begin to emerge on a piecemeal basis in the years after 1967.

no tes 1 Canada, Final Report of Special Senate Committee on Aging in Canada (Ottawa, 1966), 9–11; Report of the Special Senate Committee on Poverty in Canada (Ottawa, 1971), 22. 2 Carole Haber and Brian Gratton, Old Age and the Search for Security: An American Social History (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 172; Edgar-André Montigny, Foisted upon the Government? State Responsibilities, Family Obligations, and the Care of the

374

3

4

5

6 7 8

9 10

11 12

James Struthers

Dependent Aged in Late Nineteenth-Century Ontario (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1997), 51–2, 61–2. A similar plea for a less-pessimistic perspective on the condition of the elderly can be found in Pat Thane, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12. Unlike Haber and Gratton or Montigny, however, Thane argues that “most old people for most of recorded history have been more or less poor” (15). As of 2001, the annual median income of Canadians 65 years of age and over was $15,634. According to Monica Townson, “about 19 per cent of Canadians 65 and over are considered low income” compared to 16 per cent of the population aged 18 to 64. See Townson, Pensions under Attack: What’s Behind the Push to Privatize Public Pensions? (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, 2001), 26. My thinking on this policy question is influenced by Theda Skocpol, “Targeting within Universalism: Politically Viable Policies to Combat Poverty in the United States,” in her Social Policy in the United States: Future Possibilities in Historical Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 250–74. See, for example, Lynn Mcdonald, “Retirement for the Rich and Retirement for the Poor: From Social Security to Social Welfare,” Canadian Journal on Aging, 14 (1995): 447–57. In 1971 “personal savings, whether in the form of investments or private retirement pensions, were the major source of income for only 26 per cent of elderly heads of families and 19.14 per cent of all elderly individuals not in the labour market. Government transfer payments, on the other hand, were the major source of income for approximately 60 per cent of family heads and 70.59 per cent of all elderly individuals.” See John Myles, “The Aged, the State and Structure of Inequality,” in John Harp and John R. Hofley, eds., Structured Inequality in Canada (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 323. Canada, Canadian Governmental Report on Aging (Ottawa: Department of National Health and Welfare, 1982),13. James G. Snell, The Citizen’s Wage: The State and the Elderly in Canada, 1900–1951 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 10–11. Ibid., 130–225; James Struthers, “Building a Culture of Retirement: Class, Politics and Pensions in Post–World War ii Ontario,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association, new series, 8 (1997): 259–82. Ontario, Department of Public Welfare, Annual Report, 1947–48, 10–11. “Problem of the Aged,” Cornwall Standard-Freeholder, 1 July 1949; “Care of the Aged One of Most Complex of Social Problems,” Windsor Daily Star, 7 July 1949 (my emphasis); “Cellars and Attics,” Sudbury Star, 15 March 1949; “The Vision is Clearer,” Sudbury Star, 25 Aug., 1949. “Aged Pensioners Haunted by Want,” Windsor Daily Star, 24 Jan. 1948. City of Toronto Archives (cta), Department of Public Welfare Records,

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

13

14

15

16 17

18

375

rg 5.1, file 48.1, (B), “Endorsement of Representations Made by Welfare Council with Respect to Old Age Pensions,” 7 March 1949. In its presentation the twc developed the following minimum monthly budget for the single elderly: food, $23.57; clothing, $5.26 (man); $5.42 (woman); rent, $17.00; laundry and cleaning, $2.50; total, $48.33 (for a man living alone) and $48.49 (for a woman living alone). cta rg 5.1, box 62, file 80 (a), “Lambert Lodge, 1950–52,” “Report of Alderman Cowling on the Operation and Management of Lambert Lodge,” 3 May 1950; ibid., unsigned memo to H.S. Rupert, “Lambert Lodge – Possibility of Returning Residents to the Community,” 29 April 1953; William Main, “A Study of Lambert Lodge Home for the Aged” (msw thesis, University of Toronto School of Social Work, 1951), 67–9, 72. cta rg 5.1, box 44, file 48.1, “Old Age Assistance, 1944–48,” A.W. Laver to Robert Saunders, “Re: Kehoe Home,” 25 May 1944; on overcrowding in Ontario houses of refuge, see James Struthers, “A Nice Homelike Atmosphere: State Alternatives to Family Care for the Aged in Post World War ii Ontario,” in Lori Chambers and Edgar-André Montigny, eds., Family Matters: Papers in Post-Confederation Canadian Family History (Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press, 1998), 337. Snell, The Citizen’s Wage, 195, 181; cta, “Endorsement of Recommendations Made by Welfare Council with Respect to Old Age Pensions,” 7 March 1949; National Archives of Canada (na), rg 29, Department of National Health and Welfare Records, vol. 2376, file 4–10–00, memorandum on “Possible Extensions of Program Suggested by Parliamentary Committee on Old Age Security,” n.d. but circa 1950, p. 4; ibid., file 275–4–2[1], memo by Mitchell Sharp, “An Approach to Social Security,” 5 Dec. 1949, p. 2; Canada, House of Commons, Debates, speech by Stanley Knowles, 21 June 1951, p. 4419, 25 Oct. 1951, p. 396; na, mg 6, 26l, St Laurent Papers, vol. 229, file S-24, “Old Age Security,” Trades and Labour Congress of Canada, “Submission to the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Old Age Security,” pp. 5–6, n.d but circa May 1950; ibid., “Submission of the Canadian Congress of Labour to the Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on Old Age Security,” 11 May 1950, pp. 3–4, 7; na, mg 32, b12, Paul Martin Sr Papers, vol. 41, file “Old Age Security Correspondence,” “Arguments for Acting,” n.d. but circa 1950. na, rg 29, vol. 2376, file 4–10–00, copy of speech by Paul Martin on “Old Age Security,” n.d. but circa 1951. Ibid., file 275–4–2(2), “Possible Extensions of Program Suggested by Parliamentary Committee on Old Age Security,” n.d. but circa 1950, p. 4; ibid., file 275–4–2[1], memo on “Contributory Scheme – $50 Monthly at Age 65,” p. 5. na, rg 29, J.W. MacFarlane to H.D. Clark, 2 June 1949, memo on “Contributory Pensions”; [Pensions – nhw file]; mg 32, b12, vol. 41, file

376

James Struthers

12–10–00, “Arguments for Acting,” p. 2 (my emphasis); na, rg 19, Department of Finance Records, vol. 327, file 101–81–G, memo, N.A. Robertson to W.C. Clark, “Old Age Security Legislation,” 17 Oct. 1951 (my emphasis). Three years later, the same arguments were being made: “You will recall that several months ago when we were discussing the old age security fund, I mentioned that I thought the Department of Finance was particularly anxious to have a sizeable deficit under the old age security fund. Among other things this would be helpful in resisting demands for a higher benefit payment” (rg 29, vol. 2376, file 275–4–1, [1], “Old Age Security – General,” Joe Willard to George Davidson, memo on “Old Age Security Fund,” 29 Jan., 1954). 19 na, rg 29, vol. 2376, file 275–4–2[1], H.D. Clark, memo on “Old Age Security,” 3 Dec. 1949, p. 9. 20 Canada, House of Commons, Debates, speech by Stanley Knowles, 25 Oct. 1951, p. 396. 21 na, rg 29, vol. 2376, file 275–4–2 (2), speech by Paul Martin on “Old Age Security,” n.d. but circa Oct. 1951. Or as George Davidson, deputy minister of National Health and Welfare, argued, a minimal $40 benefit at age seventy “would safeguard administrative arrangements of existing private pension plans and [this] proposed freedom from government intervention in the area where industrial pensions are most feasible would allow the greatest possible scope for individual and collective initiative” ibid., Davidson, “Report to the Senior Committee on Social Security, Outlining Administrative Plans for a System of Old Age Pensions,” n.d. but circa Aug. 1950 [my emphasis]; Canada, House of Commons, Debates, speech by Paul Martin, 25 Oct., 1951, p. 484). Ontario premier Leslie Frost made the same contrast between universality and targeting in old-age pension policy. “I know there are some old age pensioners who are having difficulties but … for that one old age pensioner having difficulties there are fifty old citizens of this country – clergymen, railroaders, and others – who today are having infinitely more difficulties because their pensions are not sufficient and because with a means test we cannot give them old age pensions … What would you do under these circumstances? Would you make additions to the present out-worn system of means test, or would you play for the big game, trying to get old-age pensions for all our people without a means test? … We are playing the big game to get old age pensions for everybody … I am not unmindful of the plight of some our citizens but I say that the soundest thing that [we] can do right now is to stick to our knitting … For one old age pensioner with difficulties … and I know there are some, there are hundreds of our fine citizens of this country, school teachers and others who have saved up for pensions that are now entirely inadequate. I want to help them” Ontario, Legislative Debates, speech by Leslie Frost, 27 March 1951 [my emphasis].

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

377

22 na, rg 19, vol. 3442, file “Cabinet Committee on the Dominion-Provincial Conference,” minutes of the “Committee on Old Age Security,” Dec. 1950, pp. 3–4; mg 32, b 12, vol. 41, “Incomplete Notes on ‘In Camera’ Meetings of Committee on Old Age Security, Federal-Provincial Conference,” 6 Dec. 1950, p. 2. 23 Ontario, Legislative Debates, speech by Leslie Frost, 27 March 1951, 26 February 1951. 24 “Old Folks Aged 65–69 Seen as ‘Goats,’ ” Toronto Telegram, 22 Feb. 1952, cited in speech by mpp Grummett, ibid., 4 March 1952. 25 Ibid., speech by Leslie Frost, 7 April 1952. 26 Archives of Ontario (ao), rg 29–01, Department of Public Welfare Records, box 665, file 2534, memo from Toronto Welfare Council, Division of Old Age, “Re: Supplementary Assistance for Old People,” 15 Aug. 1951; Ontario, Legislative Debates, speech by W.A. Goodfellow, 30 March 1953; ibid., speech by Leslie Frost, 16 March 1954; ibid., speech by W.A. Goodfellow, 22 March 1955; ibid., speech by Leslie Frost, 22 March 1956. See also “Old Folks Hungry on $40 Pension,” Toronto Star, 26 March 1954. 27 Ontario, Legislative Debates, speech by Donald Macdonald, 6 Feb. 1957. In response to such criticisms, Frost and his welfare minister, W.A. Goodfellow, replied that western provinces had a 3 to 5 per cent sales tax, which Ontario had no intention of implementing, ibid., 22 March 1955. 28 Ibid., speech by backbench mpp, 27 March 1957. 29 Ibid., speech by Leslie Frost, 27 March 1957. For a different perspective on Ontario’s Homes for the Aged program in this era, see Struthers, “A Nice Homelike Atmosphere,” 335–54. 30 ao, rg 6, Department of Treasury and Economics Records, series iii-1, box 18, file “Conference on Aging, 1957,” memo by G.C. Clarkson on “First Ontario Conference on Aging,” 3 June 1957; ibid., box 2, series iii-1, file, “Aging and Old Age Assistance,” Proceedings of the First Ontario Conference on Aging, 31 May – 3 June 1957. Toronto’s Lambert Lodge, the largest home for the aged in Ontario with 700 beds, had a waiting list of 460 applicants in July 1956; see cta, rg 5.1, box 46, file 48.5, “Metro Housing & Senior Citizens, 1954–1965,” City of Toronto Planning Board, “Report on Housing for the Elderly,” 6 July 1956. Supplementing old-age assistance benefits, Toronto’s planning board pointed out, was simply providing “in effect a public subsidy for accommodation which is often an expensive and inadequate type of shelter for elderly people.” A more sensible strategy for the city and the province would be to co-operate in “small redevelopment schemes for housing elderly persons” and in “allocating accommodation for elderly persons in future residential development schemes.” See James Struthers, “Reluctant Partners: State Regulation of Private Nursing Homes in Ontario, 1941–72,”

378

31

32

33

34 35

36

37

38

James Struthers

in Raymond B. Blake, Penny E. Bryden, and J. Frank Strain, eds., The Welfare State in Canada: Past, Present, and Future (Concord: Irwin Publishing, 1997), 171–92, for Ontario’s confused and contradictory response to the rise of private nursing homes in this era. ao, rg 3, Leslie Frost Papers, series e-16–A, box 158, “Public Welfare Correspondence,” Louis Cecile to Dana Porter, 20 Sept. 1956; Louis Cecile to Leslie Frost, 30 Oct. 1956. na, mg 32, c59, Stanley Knowles Papers, vol. 79, file 80–200, “Old Age Security Act, 79–5,” Welfare Council of Greater Winnipeg, Age and Opportunity (Winnipeg: June 1955), 26. ao, rg 29–138–0–20, box 3, item 5, William MacEachern, “Fourteen Days as an Old Age Pensioner,” reprinted from the Toronto Star, Feb. 1956. The Star reported that “the number of grateful letters received from pensioners for the publication of this diary is testimony to the extent of the problem in Canada. Hundreds of pensioners found the time to attest to the accuracy of Mr MacEachern’s reports.” na, mg 32, c59, vol. 79, file “Old Age Security Act,” 79–5, Welfare Council of Greater Winnipeg, Aging and Opportunity (June 1955). ao, f837, Ontario Welfare Council fonds, series 11, box 62, Ontario Welfare Council, Economic Needs and Resources of Older People in Ontario (Toronto: Ontario Welfare Council, 1959), 32, 41, iv, 6–7. na, mg 32, c59, vol. 8, file “Canadian Welfare Council, 1963–1972,” Canadian Welfare Council, At Home after Age 65: Housing and Related Services for the Aging (Ottawa: Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 1964), 3–4, 13. Paul Martin, A Very Public Life, vol. 2, So Many Worlds (Toronto: Deneau Publishers, 1985), 291–3, 300. See also J.W. Pickersgill, My Years with Louis St. Laurent: A Political Memoir, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975), 318. See, for example, cta, rg 5.1, file 83, City of Toronto, Committee on Public Welfare, “Increase in Old Age Assistance and Old Age Security Pensions,” 6 Jan. 1961, arguing, “The basic amount of the allowance should take into consideration a more realistic view of the expenses of an elderly person who lives alone, including food, shelter, clothing, medicine, personal expenses, etc. Present allowances are not adequate to meet a minimum subsistence level at the current cost of living for those recipients who must maintain themselves entirely from such pensions … Unless an adequate minimum allowance is provided, there will continue to be widespread hardship among needy elderly citizens which is a contributing factor toward breakdown in their health”; ibid., file 80b, Toronto city councillor William Dennison, “Statement of the Treatment of Pensioners and Others in Metro Homes,” 21 Jan. 1958, noting that “this welfare committee has asked the present government … to raise the pension to $75.00 per month to restore the purchasing power of the pension to its

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

39 40 41

42

43

44

45

379

1947 level”; and na, rg 19, vol. 73, file 5350–02, Federated Legislative Committee, Elder Citizens Associations of bc, “Federal Submission,” 22 Jan. 1959, asking for “an increase of the basic pension to at least $75.00 per month at 65 years of age, without a means test.” Robert M. Clark, Economic Security for the Aged in the United States and Canada (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1960). na, rg 19, vol. 4144, file 1–2a, “Pension Plans,” Robert Clark to Donald Fleming, 30 June 1961. For an excellent study of the Pearson Liberals’ return to power through social policy reform see P.E. Bryden, Planners and Politicians: Liberal Politics and Social Policy, 1957–1968 (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1997). Ibid. See also Kenneth Bryden, Old-Age Pensions and Policy-Making in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1974); Richard Simeon, Federal-Provincial Diplomacy: The Making of Recent Policy in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972); Struthers, “Building a Culture of Retirement.” Deputy minister of National Health and Welfare George Davidson worked closely behind the scenes with his former colleagues in the Canadian Welfare Council between 1949 and 1951 to build public and parliamentary support for his favoured alternative of a universal, flat-rate $40 oas benefit at age seventy, administered by nhw. A point conceded by Health and Welfare minister Judy LaMarsh in 1964. As LaMarsh noted in arguing for the cpp, “Realistic minimum levels of pensions cannot be achieved, in a country like Canada, simply by increasing the flat-rate pension. Living costs vary greatly between town and country, and between different regions of Canada. What people need, in order to make satisfactory provision for retirement, is related in part to the level of earnings to which they have been accustomed.” na, rg 29, vol. 2432, file 5004–2–1, pt. 2, “Statement by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, Honourable Judy LaMarsh, Respecting the Canada Pension Plan,” March 1964. The $10 boost in oas benefits to $75 a month by the Pearson Liberal government in 1963, for example, provoked howls of outrage from the provinces, particularly in Atlantic Canada, on the grounds that oas-oaa benefits were now seriously out of alignment with basic welfare entitlements in other programs such as mother’s and disability allowances, as well as general welfare assistance. See, for example, na, rg 29, vol. 2311, file 251–15–1, vol.7, Joe Willard to the Minister, “Increase of $10 under Categorical Programs,” 18 June 1963. As Willard noted, “First of all there has been concern over the years that increases under these programs [such as oas-oaa] have been made on the basis of unilateral action without prior consultation with the provincial governments. While the provincial governments may welcome the increase in terms of the welfare

380

46 47 48

49

50 51

52 53

54

55 56

James Struthers

it extends, they may also find themselves extremely hard-pressed financially … When the Federal government announces that it will raise the level of benefit under the Federal legislation, it puts pressure under the provincial programs to follow suit.” See, for example, Canadian Welfare Council, Social Security for Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Welfare Council, 1958). Canadian Welfare Council, At Home after 65, 9 (original emphasis). na, rg 29, vol. 2432, file 5004-2-1, pt. 2, “Statement by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, Honourable Judy LaMarsh, Respecting the Canada Pension Plan,” March 1964 (my emphasis). na, rg 29, vol. 2114, file 23–3–5, “Draft Memorandum from the Prime Minister to Provincial Premiers,” n.d. but circa September 1963, 2 (my emphasis). Ontario Welfare Council, Economic Needs and Resources of Older People in Ontario, 3, 21–2, 29. On David Croll’s early career as public welfare minister in Ontario between 1934 and 1937, see James Struthers, The Limits of Affluence: Welfare in Ontario, 1920–1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 77–118; for his work for the Canadian Welfare Council, see Public Assistance and the Unemployed (Ottawa: Canadian Welfare Council, 1953). See also Bryden, Planners and Politicians, 37–9, for Croll’s key work on helping to formulate the Liberal social policy agenda in 1958. As Bryden points out, “it was … Croll who was responsible for putting together a statement on the social goals of the party,” which included the call for “a universal, contributory, and portable pension plan.” For a somewhat hagiographic biography of Croll’s career as a Liberal reformer, see R. Warren James, The People’s Senator: The Life and Times of David A. Croll (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1990). na, mg 32, c-49, David Croll Papers, vol. 7, file 6, “Correspondence, 1963,” John Morgan to David Croll, 18 April 1963. Ibid., David Croll to John Morgan, 15 May 1963; John Morgan to David Croll, 17 May 1963; na, mg 28, i 10, Canadian Council on Social Development Records, vol. 322, file F-15, “Senate Committee on Aging, June 1963–January 1964,” Reuben Baetz to Selected Canadian Welfare Council Members and Other Interested Organizations, enclosing copy of Senator David Croll’s speech in the Senate, 23 July 1963. na, mg 32, c-49, vol. 8, file “Morgan, Professor John S., 1963–65,” John Morgan, memo on “The Needs of the Aged,” to David Croll, 14 Aug. 1963. na, rg 29, accession 86/87/095, vol. 2, file 200–1–8, vol. 1, R.E.G. Davis to Joe Willard, 6 Dec. 1963. J.R. Podoluk, Incomes of the Older Population, part 2 of Sylvia Ostry and Jenny Podoluk, The Economic Status of the Aged (Ottawa: Dominion Bureau of Statistics, 1965).

The Single Elderly and Canada’s Welfare State, 1945–1967

381

57 Final Report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging in Canada, appendix “U-1,” J.R. Podoluk, “Income Characteristics of the Older Population,” submission to the Senate Committee on Aging, Oct. 1964. Podoluk’s study also observed that “family financial and other ties may not be so weak as has been assumed … In 1961 nearly 200,000 elderly widowed and single persons lived with relatives (younger persons –probably children) who thus assisted by providing at least living accommodation. Women were more likely than men to become members of relatives’ households: in 1961 there were about 40 per cent of widowed or single women aged 65–69 and 50 aged 70 and over residing with relatives compared with about 30 per cent of men aged 65–69 and 40 per cent of men aged 70 and over in this category … While 70 per cent of women living with relatives had incomes below $1000 suggesting that financial need was the primary reason.” na, mg 31, d158, vol. 1, file “Some Highlights of Incomes of the Older Population,” Research and Statistics Directorate, Department of National Health and Welfare, Dec. 1965. Interpreting the same data in its brief before the Senate committee, the Department of National Health and Welfare pointed out that among the elderly, ‘median income for men falls by stages from just above $2000 in the late sixties to about $1500 a year in the early seventies, to settle at about $900 from the late eighties onward. Females, on the other hand, have a median income that increases from just under $500 in the late sixties to about $800 in the early seventies, and thereafter their median is virtually stationary. This stability could be partially explained by the old age security pension, which at the time of the survey [1961] was $660 a year.” Ibid., appendix i-2, Dr J.W. Willard, “Social Welfare and the Aged,” 10 Dec. 1964; Special Senate Committee on Aging, “Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence,” testimony of R.E.G. Davis, 10 Dec. 1964. 58 Final Report of the Special Senate Committee on Aging in Canada, 16. 59 Ibid., 17. 60 Ibid., 18–19, 78. Croll’s report also speculated that $125 a month might, in fact, provide a more realistic definition of “an adequate, if modest, standard of living for older people” (82–3). The idea of a “guaranteed annual income for the elderly” delivered through the tax system did not originate with the Senate Committee on Aging. Ben Spence, a well-known Toronto social activist, had been lobbying for such a scheme since 1957. As Spence argued in a comprehensive memorandum to Stanley Knowles, “provision should be made to establish a certain level of minimum income below which the amount received by any person shall not be permitted to fall … The whole plan could … be integrated with the income tax structure. This implies an accurate knowledge and record of income, from all sources, of each individual citizen. Above a certain specified amount of income, a graded tax is levied … When income falls below $1500 per year, let it be brought up to that standard. The amount required to do this might be only

382

61

62

63

64

65

66 67

68

James Struthers

$10.00, or $500.00 – it might be $1500.00 … It may be complained that this is a form of means test. It is, and it is not. It is but an enlargement or expansion of an existing means to which few object and which now assesses those above the ‘enough’ zone and determines how much shall be paid by them. This proposal would also ascertain who are below the ‘enough’ zone and determine how much they should receive … This ‘Guaranteed Income’ Plan would recognize certain facts and circumstances that the present Old Age Pension policy does not take into account … Income could thus be automatically adjusted to fluctuating facts and circumstances and be related directly to the cost of living” (na, mg 32, c59, vol. 80, file 79–6, “Old Age Security Act Correspondence,” Ben Spence to Stanley Knowles, “Guaranteed Income Plan”). Knowles replied that “the guaranteed income idea, slow though it may seem to take root, is certainly what society will come to some day” (ibid., Knowles to Spence, 15 Feb. 1957). na, rg 29, vol. 2412, file 35 25–1–1 (2), memo from John Osborne to Joe Willard, “Supplementary Old Age Security Pensions or a Guaranteed Minimum Income for the Aged,” 4 Jan. 1966. Ibid., John Osborne to Joe Willard, “Difficulties Involved in this Approach,” 4 Jan. 1966; ibid., “Memorandum on the Proposal of the Senate Committee on Aging for a Guaranteed Minimum Income,” March 1966. na, rg 29, vol. 2378, file 275–10–1, “Statement by the Honourable Allan J. MacEachen, Minister of National Health and Welfare on Income Guarantee Program,” 14 July 1966; ibid., Statement by Allan J. MacEachen on the Resolution to Provide a Guaranteed Income Supplement, 5 Dec. 1966. Human Resources Development Canada, “Old Age Security Payment Rates,” http://www.drhr.gc.ca/isp/oas/rates_1e.shtml, last modified 2003–06–30. When net income exceeds $94,148 the clawback is 100%. Julia S. O’Connor, Ann Shola Orloff, and Sheila Shaver, States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 130; John Myles and Les Teichrow, “The Politics of Dualism: Pension Policy in Canada,” in John Myles and Jill Quadagno, eds., States, Labor Markets and the Future of Old Age Policy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 84–104. Thane, Old Age in English History, 379. Linda Gordon, “Social Insurance and Public Assistance: The Influence of Gender in Welfare Thought in the United States, 1890–1935,” American Historical Review 97 (Feb. 1992): 30–5. For a skilful Canadian exploration of this dichotomy, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). Gordon, “Social Insurance and Public Assistance,” 33.

The Family and the Margin in Rural Quebec

383

6 Conclusion: The Family as Pathology Psychology, Social Science, and History Construct the Nuclear Family, 1945–1980 mi c h a el gauvre au Alarmed by the rising divorce rate among North American couples aged twenty-five to thirty-four, Quebec social worker René Raymond offered an explanation for this wave of marital breakdown. The modern family, he stated, was particularly afflicted by the “secularization of values,” a catch-all rubric under which he lumped religious decline, the growing role of material comfort, and the disproportionate attention given to children. Secularization, in the form of “the increased freedom given to the sexual aspects of marriage,” stated Raymond, instead of making the family the centre of personal, intimate values in an increasingly bureaucratic, impersonal society, had merely accentuated the potential for discord. Up to this point, he was simply articulating what was, during the early 1960s, a standard conservative critique of the impact of post-war social and cultural developments on the family. According to this analysis, the abrupt conjunction of material prosperity and a democratic cultural climate had undermined the status of the family as a social institution anchored in procreation, child rearing, and “the gift of mutual affection,” and had transformed it into a temporary collection of individuals seeking individual self-fulfillment. While there was nothing particularly novel or unexpected about this lament for the family, Raymond made an oblique reference that serves as the starting point of this chapter. Secularization, he declared, had brought in its train “certain forms of marginality” that had made the family the “black sheep of social life.”1

384

Michael Gauvreau

A number of recent interpretations of post-war Canadian history have brought sharply into focus the existence of a discourse among social scientists, government officials and medical practitioners that effectively constructed an “ideal” nuclear, heterosexual, white, middleclass, patriarchal “normal” family in the years after 1945 and, as a corollary, various categories of “deviancy” that effectively marginalized and in some cases criminalized such groups as homosexuals, sexually delinquent youth, and single mothers.2 However, the most striking feature of post-war Canadian culture was that it contained, and indeed fostered, a plurality of discourses on such matters as the nature of democratic citizenship, personal identity, and family roles and relationships.3 A conservative discourse that sought to idealize the “normal,” “nuclear,” “democratic” family certainly existed, but running in tandem, employing many of the same criteria, and frequently intersecting with it there existed an influential body of opinion, widely shared by French and English Canadians, progressives and traditionalists, psychologists, social scientists, and historians, which identified the family as a marginal, residual category in modern society. Three major considerations shaped this vision of the modern family. The first, a consequence of pre-war developments in sociology and psychology, argued that the family in urban and industrial society had become nuclear, shorn of any extensive kin networks, had been progressively losing its productive functions and wider educative role, and had become increasingly “privatized,” reduced to a unit of biological procreation and caring for the inner psychological well-being and maturity of its members. Second, during the 1950s, middle-class Canadians were increasingly exposed to discussions of various forms of abnormal behaviour such as alcoholism, drug addiction, homosexuality, and other forms of sexual deviancy. These problems were not simply outside threats to the idealized, “normal” middle-class family that had to be contained. Rather, because the nuclear family was viewed as primarily responsible for individual psychological health and emotional adjustment, they came to be regarded the product of psychopathological conditions within the family itself. And because apparently “normal” Canadians seemed prone to these “diseases,” the conclusion seemed inescapable that even families which appeared on the surface to be harmonious and emotionally well-adjusted could themselves unconsciously produce the conditions that incubated these pathological types. Third, the dominant post-war definition of the family as a largely domestic, private psychological entity based almost entirely on the affections exerted a profound effect on a generation of influential social historians, who began a series of investigations into the etiology of the nuclear family in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By

Conclusion

385

situating the origins of the “sentimental” or “affectionate” nuclear family sometime in the seventeenth century, their studies had the effect of exalting the nuclear family as a universal archetype, thereby simultaneously marginalizing the historical study of family relationships that did not conform to this pattern. More tellingly, historians such as Philippe Ariès, Peter Laslett, and Lawrence Stone – significantly, all men – by effectively concurring with the post-war definition of the family as a private entity, assigned the family to the “female” sphere of the home, entirely preoccupied with the inner world of individual emotions and psychology. This characterization effectively elevated the post-war division of gender roles to the status of a historical law and, by so doing, artificially closed off the possibility of dialogue and crossfertilization between family history and other strands within the discipline whose role was to study the more public and institutional aspects of social history. The most significant aspect of post-war discussion of the family by Canadian social scientists was the conviction that the isolated nuclear family, shorn of its productive functions, kin, and intergenerational connections, was synonymous with modernity itself and was of such recent vintage as to constitute nothing less than a social and cultural revolution. As late as 1943, the Chicago sociologist Everett C. Hughes evoked the institutional character of the “traditional” French-Canadian family, describing it as coterminous with the parish structure of the Catholic Church. The primary function of such families was an economic one, and Hughes wrote of the “intimate union of the family and its farm plant” in the rural districts of Quebec,4 while his colleague Horace Miner applied the category of “folk society” to French Canada’s rural parishes, painstakingly etching a family type that was “more primitive and outside of the European world,” an economic unit in which all members of both ages and sexes shared in agricultural work. Such families, Miner stated, were extended rather than nuclear, including all relatives and direct descendants and even collateral kin through the degree of third cousin.5 This type of family, reckoned a number of Quebec’s new generation of social investigators, did not survive the transition to the city; nor could it, in the long run, operate in a society in which urban values now thoroughly permeated rural areas. According to Guy Rocher, a sociologist at Université Laval, “the family is now running through a major crisis, which can prove to be of great moment in shaping the future of the French Canadian culture.” Specifically, what Rocher meant was that the urban transition provoked the rapid erosion of kinship ties, the loss of the family’s productive functions, and the withering of its recreational and educational functions. “The urban family,” he concluded, “is now isolated from its

386

Michael Gauvreau

kin. In the city, we have lost the sense of kinship ties ... in traditional rural society ... kin constituted, with the parish and neighbourhood, the backbone of our social organization.”6 For Quebec social observers, however, the most compelling feature of these discussions was that even in more “traditional” rural families, long assumed to be the bedrock of the society’s fundamental values, not only extended kin ties but even intergenerational solidarity appeared to be lost under the various transformations of modern life. Analyzing changes in family structure and function that had occurred since the 1930s, Gérald Fortin declared, “The family can no longer be said to form a social entity; it has become a juxtaposition of individual consumers ... the children feel freed of any responsibility towards their family.”7 The central point to be made is not that these social investigations were accurate or inaccurate: although it is fair to say that until the mid-1930s, the policies of various levels of government had been calculated on the existence of an economically “interdependent” family,8 depression and war had combined to focus government efforts on the status of the individual male breadwinner, responsible for supporting a single nuclear family. As well, the wartime language of democracy had profoundly affected discussion of the family among government officials, youth workers, church leaders, and social scientists. Their ideal of the “democratic” family, emphasizing the notion of “rupture” in an attempt to enlist Canadians behind the idea that the post-war world would be an era of new departures, was one that downplayed insistence upon the institutional or collective role of the family. It thus devalued kin and intergenerational solidarities in favour of individual self-expression and realization and, by contrast, accentuated the nuclear character of the family as primarily concerned with personal ties of affection and the need for greater attention to the educational and psychological needs of family members, especially wives and adolescents.9 Because of the close connections that Quebec social scientists discerned between the “traditional” family, rural social institutions, and especially the link between these and Catholicism and national character, the emergence of the isolated nuclear family stimulated considerable debate as to its exact meaning. However, social investigators of English Canada, thoroughly committed to the symbiotic relationship between the nuclear family and the production of democratic civic identity, were equally adamant that the typical post-war family also conformed to this type. The Crestwood Heights study of a comfortable, upper-middle-class Toronto suburb, undertaken between 1948 and 1954, discerned similar changes among Anglo-Protestant urban families. “Invention and change,” concluded the authors, “tend to

Conclusion

387

sever links with the past; personal movement in physical and social space, even in the present, tends to distance the individual from his kin and from places and associations that maintain family solidarity.” Not only was the suburb almost totally characterized by “lone” nuclear family units living in single-family dwellings, but Crestwood Heights residents’ responses to questions demonstrated little awareness of kinship ties across more than two or three generations. In terms of both structure and sensibility, the nuclear family was completely isolated and lacking in any awareness of continuity in time.10 Isolation from kin and a sense of past tradition, however, was regarded as a positive gain rather than a loss, for as the authors concluded, “the ideal for family life ... which has been emerging bears much more resemblance to Christian ethics and to democratic practice than did the authoritarian pattern of those more traditionally religious families of Victorian days.”11 Thus by the early 1960s, the post-war equation of the nuclear family with the desirable attributes of modernity itself, democratic individualism, and an urban way of life led many observers to the conclusion that the nuclear family, isolated from extended kin, was the “normal” Canadian pattern. In inaugurating the 1964 Canadian Conference on the Family, Governor General Georges Vanier stated that the “immutable” human value was “the family, that is to say, the union of man and woman in the sacred bond of marriage.”12 What is significant about this statement is that relatives or even grandparents had completely disappeared from the equation; Vanier restricted the meaning of “family” to the conjugal couple and their immediate children. While social commentators certainly acknowledged that extended family structures still existed in Canadian society and that communication between children and their grandparents might be desirable,13 these were clearly residual “survivals” that did not challenge the isolated nuclear family norm. As Simone Paré concluded after a study of Montreal families, a high degree of kin interaction was characteristic of French-Canadian urban migrants, but she noted that such ties tended to break down among the second generation.14 Where they did survive, such family types based upon extended kin and economic activity were described as characteristic of “working-class subcultures,” or were present among new Canadians who had not yet completed their adjustment to the dominant cultural norms of the society.15 However, those post-war Canadian social commentators who exalted the detachment of the nuclear family from the older solidarities of kin, religious institutions, and community structures in the name of democratic individualism found themselves imprisoned within a paradoxical logic. Relying upon pre-war sociological studies undertaken by

388

Michael Gauvreau

the Chicago School and by the more recent work of Talcott Parsons, who attempted to integrate Freudian psychology into an overarching framework of social structure and action, they were constrained to admit that the very social forces that had created industrial society, the modern bureaucratic state, and urban ways of living had also lessened dependence on the family for the satisfaction of human needs. In the mid-twentieth century, the North American family had almost entirely lost its economic function as a unit of production, and it seemed progressively less able to educate and socialize children for specific careers in the larger society. “The business of the world,” concluded one influential American study, was increasingly carried on by individuals working within large, structured organizations, rather than by family groups. “[T]he accent has shifted to the individual, so that the family is relatively less influential, the individual more so.”16 Speaking at the Canadian Conference on the Family in 1964, Nathan B. Epstein, psychiatrist-in-chief at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, stated what in fact was the conventional view when he summarized the basic functions of the family as sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational. However, he warned that “the functions of the nuclear family in the highly differentiated North American society of today have been reduced beyond the four listed.”17 Of special concern was the perception that the modern family had become particularly incapable of performing the task of “cultural transmission.”18 But how far could the family’s functions be reduced before it ceased to be an institution and became simply a temporary collection of individuals seeking self-gratification? Indeed, it was the overriding concern of this conference, sponsored by Governor General and Mrs Vanier and enlisting a prestigious roster of psychologists, sociologists, journalists, religious leaders, and child-welfare experts, to distill an irreducible, essential core social function that the modern family alone could fulfill. “The family,” stated the journalist Eric Hutton in 1956, “needs to be studied because it is a sensitive organism that requires attention ... [I]t is capable of vanishing without being attacked.”19 Hutton’s warning about the disappearance of the Canadian family captured what in effect was the central concern of a wide array of Canadian family experts after the mid-1950s: that the value assigned to individual need and self-expression within the ideology of the post-war “democratic” family was corrosive to the very idea of the family as “institution.” Thus post-1955 social trends, such as the increasing entry of married women into the labour market and the growing consumer appetite for luxury personal goods, particularly evident at the beginning of the 1960s,20 were interpreted as the harbingers of an excessive, atomistic individualism oriented to material gratification

Conclusion

389

which eviscerated the communal, affectional elements from the family. From the perspective of social and cultural conservatives, these recent cultural shifts had tended to exalt the role of the individual conscience over religious doctrine or historic traditions as the sole authoritative moral standard. “What will the family be like,” queried St Michael’s College philosophy professor Lawrence Lynch, “if each member sees in himself a creator of new values?”21 As Governor General Vanier remarked in his inaugural address to the Canadian Conference on the Family, “[a] civilization can so insist upon certain aspects of the human being – upon its liberty for example – that even motherhood may appear not as a glory but as a fetter to woman.”22 According to Dr S.E. Rosenberg, the “‘prevailing doctrine has been so successful in overemphasizing the importance of the individual that he now acts as though he believed he no longer needed a family at all.’”23 During the 1960s, what was particularly troubling to a number of social scientists was that institutions such as the church, which had until recently fostered a more communal vision of the family, had capitulated to the prevailing individualist temper. Philippe Garigue, professor of sociology at the Université de Montréal, openly criticized the “personalist individualism” that characterized an important section of the post-war Quebec Catholic clergy and laity. The dissolving effects of Catholic personalism, in Garigue’s estimation, had had a twofold influence on family life. First, the church had overemphasized the isolated nuclear household, thus cutting the modern family off from wider social developments; second, personalism tended to devalue institutional forms in favour of a culturalist concept of religion, which was inclined to “privilege the individualist conception of these values.”24 As a result of this weakening of “institutional” concepts of the family, the lines of social and political citizenship in Canadian society had undergone a fundamental reconstruction. Where the family had once stood as a mediating institution between the individual and the state, social scientists such as Garigue charged that the modern state, through social policies directed to meet the needs of specific individuals and constituencies such as youth, women, the unemployed, and students, was consciously engaged in a “carving-up” of family relations by abstracting particular categories of individuals25 from the collective context of the family. The dominant note of the Canadian Conference on the Family was thus a retreat from an earlier, more optimistic assessment of the “democratic” family. While this ideology had served as a most effective counterpoint in the early post-war period to overly authoritarian or economistic notions of the family, commentators in the mid-1960s such as Nathan Epstein admitted that the idea of the family as a democracy had been overstated. “[T]hose

390

Michael Gauvreau

families which are rated as democratic according to our scale,” he admitted, “produce more illness, more disturbed children, than families leaning towards more authority ... where someone, usually the father, is in a position of authority.”26 Insistence upon the need to constrain the individualistic tendencies within the modern family, in turn, testified to a desire among many social scientists to reaffirm an “institutional” or mediatory role for the family in modern society, to discern an exclusive function from which the family could not be displaced by the imperative of the modern welfare state to cultivate direct relationships with individual citizens. “I am most concerned,” stated Lillian Thomson, executive director of the Canadian Conference on the Family, “that we continue to see the family as a unit in the whole community rather than attempt to relate it to isolated segments of that community.”27 However, the views of social and cultural conservatives did not entirely predominate in Canadian discussions about the future of the family during the early 1960s. The basic division among the participants in the Canadian Conference on the Family centred on how much weight to give to the “institutional,” more collective aspects of the family, focusing on continuity, intergenerational solidarity, and parental authority, versus the “individualistic” imperatives of personal self-realization. One of the keynote speakers was Philippe Garigue, a conservative voice whose many studies during the late 1950s and early 1960s had reiterated the message that the family was a “universal institution” in French Canada and that the adaptation of Quebec Catholics to urban society had not entailed a fundamental rupture and the abandonment of older traditions such as the extended family and patriarchal authority. Rather, Garigue emphasized important continuities, especially the continued reality of male authority in the modern family, and the coexistence of the nuclear family with extensive interaction with kin groups. “Among French Canadians,” he declared, “there has not been a crisis in the family. There is a fundamental continuity between the eighteenth-century family and the modern family, which is due to the fact that the extremes of change are less abrupt.”28 Not surprisingly, Garigue’s address to the Canadian Conference on the Family sounded the alarm that the family was being directly attacked by excessive individualism. Pointing specifically to the United States, where family life was “much idealized” but “not considered an institution,” he lamented the “dispersion of responsibilities” occasioned by the priority of the individual over the family group, equality between the sexes, and the satisfaction of the individual needs of the children. The American family, in his estimation, was but a temporary assemblage of individuals, existing only between the birth of the children and

Conclusion

391

their departure from home. For Garigue, the increasingly ephemeral character of the family could have only one result: the complete subordination of the individual to the supremacy of the state.29 However, Garigue’s emphasis on the institutional family was criticized by more liberal Quebec voices such as his Université de Montréal colleague the psychologist Thérèse Gouin-Décarie and by the journalist Gérard Pelletier, both of whom insisted that the primary imperative of the family lay in “[h]elping the individual to develop continually.”30 From a religious perspective, Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg firmly but politely rebuked Garigue, stating that it was the individual human person and not the family that was divinely ordained, the latter being but “a convenient means used by man” to achieve union with God. The tensions that existed in modern society between the individual and the family occurred, not from an excess of individualism, but because “we do not really understand the difference between authority and authoritarianism.”31 Such conflicts over the shifting balance between the “institutional” and the “individualistic” family masked, however, a broader area of agreement between conservatives such as Garigue and his liberal critics, which revolved around the notion that, for good or ill, the modern family had become a largely psychological entity, co-extensive with the emotional and affective elements of human existence and oriented almost entirely towards meeting the affectional and emotional needs of individuals, rather than a legal or hierarchical entity that existed in relation to other social institutions. The word “crisis,” which was so frequently used by social commentators during the 1960s to describe family life, was in fact a shorthand to express the conviction that the family no longer played an exclusive role in educating the individual child in values that would allow him or her to participate in the wider society; rather, society itself, through agencies such as the school and the mass media, had to some extent displaced and marginalized the family by direct contact with children and adolescents. As Father Gonzalve Poulin, a leading Quebec family expert, stated in 1956, the family was now dominated by the school in the task of transmitting values, and the teacher had become “a competitor of the parents in the education of youth, in the transmission of the cultural heritage, values, ideals, and modes of behaviour.” To the older view that the school was simply the extension of the family, Poulin counterposed the idea that it was no longer simply a means or a mechanism that provided a continuum between individual, family, and the wider society, but now communicated the global values of the society directly to the individual child.32 The sociologist Philippe Garigue identified as one of the fundamental attributes of modernity the reversal of the lines of authority

392

Michael Gauvreau

between family and society: from being considered the basic unit of society, the family’s functions, he stated, “are dependent upon the degree of development of social institutions.”33 Nor was this sense of the family’s growing “marginality,” even in its function of training children for roles in the wider society, merely symptomatic of the far-reaching cultural changes occurring in post-war Quebec. Similar patterns were observed by English-Canadian social investigators, such as the authors of the Crestwood Heights study, who noted that the outstanding feature of life in this Canadian suburb was “the degree to which secondary groups are assuming responsibility for virtually the whole socialization process.” The family, they argued, “is still necessary to ensure the launching of the child into the society ... but its traditional social function is widely shared with other institutions, in the endeavour to procure early and radical emancipation from the family of orientation.”34 And in the rapidly changing cultural world of 1960s Canada, where the accumulated traditions of the past seemed to many to be of less worth than the rapid turnover of images and identities which stressed the creative liberation of the individual from the constraints of the past,35 both liberal and conservative social commentators agreed that the family could not, without considerable assistance from outside agencies, assume “its primordial task of bringing up its children and assuming their personal growth” and would have in the future to take a subordinate role to educational institutions and the mass media.36 Kaspar Naegele, a keynote speaker at the 1964 Canadian Conference on the Family, urged the audience to acquiesce in the youth rebellion, which he characterized as “constructive.” Because vertical family ties between parents and young people could no longer serve as an effective guide to social values, youth had to “develop ties along horizontal lines.”37 If the modern family seemed increasingly marginalized by the greater competence of school and mass media in the task of transmitting social values and by the new, sharply etched lines of generational identity, did it truly possess any exclusive, essential, unalterable core function that distinguished it from the larger society? And did the existence of such a core function afford any argument for reinvigorating the “institutional” role of the family? During the post-war decades, psychologists and sociologists wrestled with this conundrum, increasingly characterizing the family’s function as “private,” devoted to the production, defence, and enhancement of individual psychosexual identities, which were regarded as fundamental to any definition of the individual personality. In this task, they drew upon the insights of Talcott Parsons, whose studies had apparently demonstrated that all human groups rested upon the stability of certain learned elements of personality. For

Conclusion

393

Parsons and his followers, these were “the major value-orientation patterns,” which were “‘laid down’ in childhood and are not on a large scale subject to drastic alteration during adult life.”38 It followed that in modern society, the main function of the family was not so much on behalf of society itself as on behalf of developing the individual personality of its members, especially by well-adjusted parents providing proper examples of male and female sex roles. Thus, although in the larger sense marginal to education and cultural transmission, the private family as a human group was vitally important to the psychological health and ultimate personal adjustment of individuals. As Marie-Suzanne Blais stated, “the modern family ... has lost its social character; it has become subjectified ... Its role, once social, has become psychological.”39 Thus the isolation of the nuclear family and the loss of its economic and wider educative functions could be interpreted in a positive way: the more private the family was, the better it could handle its overriding task of stabilizing individual psychologies by attending to the primary socialization of children and of stabilizing “the adult personalities of the population of the society”40 by offering the possibility of psychological fulfillment through the sexual satisfaction of men and women in the context of the closed, emotionally affectionate nuclear family household and through the training of children to assume these sex roles in later life. As the authors of the Crestwood Heights study concluded, it was the family “which ideally gives emotional security, enabling the individuals comprising it to play their cultural roles in the larger society, and which provides ... the models for identification without which the psycho-sexual development of the child cannot be assured. ... the family is both the biological and psychological nexus of the society.”41 Moreover, another tendency of post-war intellectual life contributed to the portrait of the socially marginal but psychologically significant family. An influential trope in social scientific discussions in both the United States and Canada during the 1950s was the positing of a division from an “impersonal” world of government, churches, and corporation, in which individuals, in order to achieve effectively within the structure of competitive success values prescribed by the wider society, had to repress key elements of personality such as emotion and spontaneity, and conform to the standardized pattern set by the institution. As the Quebec sociologist Jean-Charles Falardeau lamented in 1960, although the school might be the chief agency of cultural transmission in modern society, it had unfortunately become “the generator of standardized human beings.”42 In such a bureaucratic society, the privatized, psychological-affective family appeared to both liberals and conservatives to be the only arena devoted to the “cultivation of the

394

Michael Gauvreau

personal”43 and to offer the modern individual the only way of achieving a precarious equilibrium by allowing the free play of spontaneity. Even Philippe Garigue, in many ways devoted to an older, vertical model of the family, was constrained to accept the prevailing wisdom of individual psychological adjustment, stating that the family was “a system of inter-personal relations,” the “only place where a person can be entirely himself.”44 Thus in the name of individualism, the dominant tenets of post-war psychology and social science defined the family as residual: the nuclear family itself was isolated from extended kin and, except in the area of individual adjustment and emotional well-being, was marginal to broader economic and political forces shaping the rest of society and public institutions. However, a second, equally powerful notion of “marginality” existed within post-war definitions of the family, one that not only applied the category to “deviants” who existed outside the heterosexual, nuclear family norm but identified nearly all the individuals within the nuclear family as potentially “marginal” because they were susceptible to various forms of addiction or mental illness. Paradoxically, this social science discourse subverted efforts at boundary maintenance between “normal” families and deviant “others.” Furthermore, the insistence upon the overwhelming role the family played in shaping the psychology of individuals contributed to shaping an even broader category of marginality which embraced the family itself. Psychologically maladjusted individuals were less the product of “marginal” social classes, overtly “deviant” groups, or personal moral failings than of often unconscious, pathological relationships that potentially characterized even families which appeared “normal” and well functioning. As the authors of the Crestwood Heights study observed in 1956, the family organization might play a positive role in supplying the community with leaders, but it “also creates persons who are problems.”45 Between 1945 and the mid-1960s, journalism directed at Canadian middle-class readers increasingly popularized the notion that very little distinguished drug addicts, alcoholics, juvenile delinquents, sexual deviants, divorced people, and homosexuals from the rest of the seemingly “normal,” well-adjusted population.46 “Women drug addicts,” stated Betsy Mosbaugh Mackay, “are to be found in any walk of life – in cheap rooming houses, respectable middle-class homes, in wealthy mansions.” Articles of this sort might be read as rather conventional fear-mongering in the genre of pre-war “moral panics,”47 but within them there existed another discourse that “normalized,” rather than “marginalized,” such forms of behaviour, because the category of individual moral degeneracy became increasingly obsolete. “[N]o person,”

Conclusion

395

Mackay concluded, “is immune to opiate addiction. Even within three weeks a strong-willed individual can become hopelessly enmeshed by the habit.”48 Likewise, Hugh Garner observed in 1957 that the “average alcoholic” was not poor or socially marginal. The large majority were usually semi-skilled or skilled workers, white-collar or managerial employees with outwardly “normal” families and steady jobs, and most, except when drinking, behaved in a way that was indistinguishable from the non-drinking population: “the sober alcoholic cannot be differentiated from anyone else not even by minute examination.”49 Even stages of life such as middle age were by the 1960s interpreted as potentially susceptible to psychological stresses that might induce men who were considered good fathers to engage in marginal forms of behaviour: “alcohol, overeating, or turning to ‘the Other Woman.’”50 The increasingly fuzzy character of the category “normal” was perhaps most evident in the way in which people wrote about the extreme example of criminal sexual deviancy. In popularizing current methods of psychotherapy, journalists were at pains to insist that such individuals were “not madmen or raving. There is nothing about their appearance or conduct ... to distinguish them from other people in the community.”51 One description of the fictitious “William Garcon,” a respectably married, middle-class Toronto pedophile and patient at the Forensic Clinic of the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital, opened with an anecdote of the hapless Garcon forced to prey on little girls because he was being nagged by his wife and mother-in-law. “Garcon,” stated the journalist, “was terrified of his mother-in-law, and frequently resented his wife and his employer. He was insecure. He had wanted to be a doctor, but his mother had insisted on accountancy.”52 Two central motifs stand out in this description. The first is the insistence on the absolutely “normal” nature of Garcon’s mental condition, played up by the journalist’s observation in passing that “[i]t is now recognized that nearly all men have sexually deviant thoughts.” Second, Garcon’s psychoneurosis was the consequence of a defective, pathological family situation, dating, in the first instance, from his childhood and related to his parents but most particularly to an immature, maladjusted relationship with his own wife. Indeed, the article concluded by mentioning that Garcon’s wife had been called into the clinic for group therapy, “where it became clear that she too had psychological problems, some of them sexual.”53 Attention to extreme cases such as that of William Garcon served, in fact, to define all the individuals within the family as potentially “marginal” because subject, invariably unconsciously, to a bewildering array of little-understood psychological conditions. However, the location of Garcon’s psychological problems in his

396

Michael Gauvreau

relationship with his wife reveals another crucial aspect of the investigation of the family during this period. The post-war definition of the nuclear family, by isolating the family from the rest of society in affirming it as the repository of individual psychological and especially sexual identity, focused increasing attention on the respective gender roles and emotional well-being of husbands and wives. By the mid1950s, psychologists and social scientists evinced growing doubts about the healthy nature of this relationship, and because its dynamics seemed to produce such maladapted, emotionally immature “problem” individuals, the growing tendency was to see the family unit itself as pathological almost by definition, incubating a literal epidemic of social and psychological diseases. A 1964 study of a Toronto inner-city neighbourhood, undertaken in the context of the Canadian Conference on the Family, coined the term “multi-problem family,” which the authors linked to a “lower-class subculture.” Significantly, economic deprivation figured only fifth on the list of causes; more important, in the estimation of the social investigators, were psychological factors such as the failure of husbands and wives to fulfill their gender roles and especially “failure in the marital adjustment,”54 which inevitably led to problems of juvenile delinquency, criminality, mental illness, and poor school attendance among children and adolescents from these families. Moreover, the distinguishing feature of this socalled lower-class subculture was a pathological confusion of gender roles and lines of authority, typified by the “female based family and the marginal male. The male, whether husband or lover, is physically present only part of the time, and is recognized neither as a stable nor dominant member of the household. He participates only minimally in the exchange of affection and emotional support, and has little to do with the rearing of children. The woman tries to develop a stable routine in the midst of poverty and deprivation; the action-seeking man upsets it.”55 Because post-war social commentators estimated that flawed gender and sexual roles and identities lay at the heart of the potentially pathological family, wealth and status rendered no family immune from this type of social and psychological marginality. Indeed, the Crestwood Heights study simply confirmed that the same pattern existed in upper-middle-class suburbs, which exhibited a matriarchal tendency of family organization in which, during their critical years, boys and girls were largely deprived of male role models because fathers had completely abandoned educative and child-rearing functions in order to achieve economic success. The consequence was that many marriages displayed increasing signs of stress, “given the mutually opposed value-systems of husband and wife.”56 What is striking about such discussions of the perils lurking within

Conclusion

397

post-war family sex roles is a curious dualism: on the one hand, wives and mothers were suspected of “Momism,” of creating a matriarchy within the nuclear family if they fulfilled their role as emotional nurturer too well; on the other, they were frequently criticized for neglecting their children if they assumed what were defined as “masculine” roles by seeking paid employment outside the home. Commenting in 1954 on families in urban Quebec, the liberal Catholic sociologist Guy Rocher stated that one of the consequences of the loss of extended kin was “a hypertrophy of the maternal figure,” in which, because the family centred almost completely on emotional and affectional fulfillment, the mother became the principal agent of the child’s socialization. While Rocher believed that such strict role definitions were necessary to the healthy emotional development of children, he also located within them the potential for the child’s resentment and hatred of parents. The father, he stated, increasingly represented the world outside the family, the modern, competitive success ethic, while the woman-as-emotional-nurturer, identified completely with the inner, psychological realm of the affections, frequently became, through overprotection, an obstacle to the child’s adaptation to the world57 and the source of a host of potential deviances: male alcoholism, sexual incompatibility, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and growing incomprehension between parents and adolescents.58 Again, what is important to consider is that this was far more than simply a conservative, misogynistic lament for a lost age of patriarchal authority. Rather, through incessant repetition, middle-class Canadians were introduced to a social science discourse that marginalized the family itself by inextricably linked, individual psychological deficiencies to the faulty notions of identity and relationships which unconsciously prevailed evenwithin the emotional hothouse of supposedly “good” nuclear families. “The delinquent behaviour of an individual,” stated the sociologist Frederick Elkin in 1965, “is really often a family affair.”59 Speaking to the Canadian Conference on the Family, Dr Idris Griffith noted the paradox of behaviourally disturbed children with “reasonably good parents,” which he traced to “undeveloped areas of the psyche of the parents which I related to unregenerate parts in their problem child.”60 Perhaps most surprisingly, even conservative commentators such as Philippe Garigue largely accepted the post-war shibboleth of “family-as-pathology.” Although much of his work had been devoted to conferring social scientific credence upon the continued existence of extended kin networks and, by implication, shoring up older concepts of authority within the nuclear family, the conclusion of his address to the Canadian Conference on the Family expressed considerable skepticism about any efforts to restore the stability of the

398

Michael Gauvreau

modern family. “Some of these investigations,” Garigue declared, “have led to the conclusion that the answer to problems does not automatically lie in the re-integration of the family, at least not from the point of view of the individuals in question ... In some situations, the existence of particular rules of conduct in the family can be enough in itself to drive members into asocial and even deviant modes of behaviour, despite the family’s complete structural stability.”61 Deviancy in the individual was the inescapable consequence of the nuclear family’s very essence – sex roles, gender identity, and personal emotional fulfillment – as all of these contained the potential for maladjustment. In this influential post-war discourse, the nuclear family itself suffered a double marginalization: in relation to education and the transmission of cultural values, it was clearly secondary to the school, the peer group, and the mass media; and in relation to its own raison d’être, the private world of affection, emotion, and spontaneity, it was a bottomless well of deviancy and conflict. By implication, the family was subject to further marginalization because it was identified with a privatized world ruled by lonely, bored, sexually frustrated, and emotionally voracious women. Although this particular discourse on the post-war family was articulated largely by psychologists and sociologists, it had enormous influence on the way in which historical study of the family was shaped between the 1960s and the early 1980s. Two strands of historical practice represented, in effect, the two notions of marginality to which the family was subjected. In the first case, social historians often adopted at face value the displacement of the family by schools and other public institutions, and their studies tended to downplay the family by reading back into the past, often in a critical way, the displacement of the family by the school, the asylum, the welfare state, and the “helping” professions. The second strand, represented by the influential works of Philippe Ariès, Peter Laslett, and Lawrence Stone, which dominated the field from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, professed directly to study family dynamics but often uncritically adopted the same presuppositions as characterized the work of post-war family psychologists and sociologists. Indeed, all three of these historians assumed as a central canon of their work that modernity itself was defined by an ineluctable social dynamic in which, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, the family was transformed from an extended “Open Lineage” network of kin, open to a wider public sociability, to a “Closed Domesticated Nuclear Family,”62 which was privatized, isolated from society, and largely dominated by “a profound existential attitude between parents and children,”63 which nourished the affections and the modern individualist temper.

Conclusion

399

Thus privacy, domesticity, and equality, the central canons of the post-war “democratic” nuclear family, were assumed to be the historical desiderata for the well-functioning family in time. Indeed, in the case of Peter Laslett and his Cambridge-based History of Population Group, their work conferred the scientific prestige of demography on the idea that, historically, the household structure of all except the very wealthy and socially prestigious had been “nuclear” in character.64 What was significant about the work of these three historians was the priority it placed upon the emotional, rather than the economic or social, character of the family; underpinning Laslett’s statistics lay a rich language in which individuals existed within a “circle of affection” and the “love-relationship” provided by the close-knit nuclear family, and in which the “‘balanced’ and ‘healthy’” family provided the primary focus for the individual.65 So “universal” did these historians consider this restricted nuclear family model that they assigned antihuman attributes to the patriarchal, “open lineage” family. Stone, for example, likened this type of family to “a bird’s nest” in which the emotions and affections between its members were stunted, while Ariès described pre-seventeenth-century families as resting upon a hopeless conflation of childhood and adult roles that functioned according to a rather mercenary calculus of moral and social prestige, instead of the education and self-realization of individuals.66 In Stone’s case, the closed domesticated nuclear family was the central prop of AngloSaxon political freedoms, its rise in the 1640s marking the passage from “the hierarchical, authoritarian and inquisitorially collectivist society of Early Modern England,” dominated by Roman Catholicism and medieval modes of social organization, to the age of incipient democracy.67 This historical privileging of the privatized nuclear family had the effect of marginalizing the history of the family in relation to other forms of social history, because it arbitrarily, in the words of Ariès, cut off the family from an immense terrain of institutions and “density of social relations.”68 By assigning such an early point of origin to the rise of the nuclear, individualistic, and affectional family and by identifying it with desirable forms of political and social democracy, such discourse summarily relegated other types of family structure and dynamic to the status of mere historical curiosity. However, the way in which these historians of the early modern world in fact reduced the history of the family to the study of irrelevancy was their wholesale incorporation of the post-war social science language of family psychopathology, which ultimately assigned the terrain of the family to the world of bizarre psychological states ruled by frustrated, emotionally disturbed women. Writing in the early 1960s, Philippe Ariès evoked

400

Michael Gauvreau

subtle fears of “Momism” by observing that the privatized nuclear family, formed ostensibly to nurture individual identity, in fact frequently repressed it in a stifling atmosphere of conformity.69 However, it was Lawrence Stone who was perhaps the principal culprit, for his magisterial The Family, Sex, and Marriage concluded with a centrifugal image of pathological individuals whose quest for self-gratification was in fact in the process of destroying the family and the liberal democracy that was co-extensive with it. In this respect, the “Closed Domesticated Nuclear Family,” dominated by “affective individualism,” bore an uncanny resemblance to the unhappy families of the early 1960s. Troubled by the youth culture and the rise of more assertive forms of feminism in the 1960s, Stone began his jeremiad by observing that the increased autonomy of wives and children affirmed by the nuclear family had led to a loss of respect “previously accorded elderly males.” “The frustrated and lonely housewife, the over-possessive mother and the oedipal relationship with the son” were in fact “pathological types” that had characterized the nuclear family as early as the eighteenth century. Coupling female loneliness and emotional frustration with permissive child-rearing practices among the middle and upper classes, he denounced the existence of “ill-disciplined and poorly-socialized children who grew up to be adults with demands for instant gratification which could not be satisfied.” “Some,” declared Stone, “wasted their lives in life-long dissipation, while others eventually found a solution in the conversion experience of Evangelical religion.”70 If the family was inhabited by these twin historical archetypes of the addictive personality and the politico-religious fanatic, was it indeed any surprise that the study of this entity would, until very recently, be regarded as a somewhat distasteful human quagmire, that would swallow alive any historian so unfortunate as to venture there?

no tes 1 René Raymond, “La famille americaine,” Le Service social (SS) 12 (jan.–sept. 1963): 148–54: “le mouton noir de la vie sociale,” “laicisation des valeurs,” “les libertés croissantes données aux aspects de la sexualité,” “le don de l’affection.” 2 For the construction of the “normal” nuclear family as a post-war ideal, see Mona Gleason, Normalizing the Ideal: Psychology, Schooling and the Family in Postwar Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999). For the definition of heterosexuality as “compulsory” and therefore marginalizing homosexuality, see Mary Louise Adams, The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (Toronto:

Conclusion

3

4 5 6

7

8

9

401

University of Toronto Press, 1997). For a recent study of single mothers in post-war Ontario, see Margaret Jane Hillyard Little, ‘No Car, No Radio, No Liquor Permit’: The Moral Regulation of Single Mothers in Ontario, 1920–1997 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998), 107–38. A number of articles have explored aspects of the post-war moral regulation of delinquent youth. See Mariana Valverde, “Building Anti-Delinquent Communities: Morality, Gender, and Generation in the City,” in Joy Parr, ed., A Diversity of Women: Ontario, 1945–1980 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), 19–45; Franca Iacovetta, “Parents, Daughters, and Family Court Intrusions into Working-Class Life,” in Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 312–37. For a critique of “master narratives” that stress the hegemonic aspects of post-war Canadian social history, see Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau, “Introduction,” in Cultures of Citizenship in Post-war Canada, 1940 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming). Everett C. Hughes, French Canada in Transition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), 5. Horace Miner, St. Denis: A French-Canadian Parish (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939), xiii–xiv, 63–6. Guy Rocher, “Le père,” Food for Thought 14 (Nov. 1954): 6; Rocher, “La famille dans la ville moderne,” SS, 4 (printemps 1954): 81: “La famille urbaine s’est isolée de la parenté. Nous avons perdu dans la ville le sens de la parenté ... dans la société rurale traditionnelle ... la parenté à été, avec la paroisse et le voisinage, l’épine dorsale de notre organisation sociale.” Gérald Fortin, “Socio-Cultural Changes in an Agricultural Parish,” in Marcel Rioux and Yves Martin, eds., French-Canadian Society, vol. 1 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1964), 104. For a thorough analysis of these policies, see Nancy Christie, Engendering the State: Family, Work, and Welfare in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000). The notion of the “interdependent” family was first posited in the Canadian context by Bettina Bradbury, Working Families: Age, Gender and Daily Survival in Industrializing Montreal (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993). For an analysis of the impact of the concept of the “democratic” family in two different contexts, see Michael Gauvreau, “The Emergence of Personalist Feminism: Catholicism and the Marriage-Preparation Movement in Quebec, 1940–1966,” in Nancy Christie, ed., Households of Faith: Family, Gender, and Community in Canada, 1760–1969 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002); and Michael Gauvreau, “The Protracted Birth of the Canadian ‘Teenager’: Work,

402

10 11

12

13

14 15

16

17

Michael Gauvreau

Citizenship, and the Canadian Youth Commission, 1943–1955,” in Christie and Gauvreau, Cultures of Citizenship. The nature of the wartime rhetoric that defined the war as a decisive point of rupture between past and present has been discussed in Christie and Gauvreau, “Introduction,” in Cultures of Citizenship. John R. Seeley, R.A. Sim, and Elizabeth Loosley, Crestwood Heights (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956), 67. Ibid., 165. It should be noted in this context that two of the authors of the Crestwood Heights study, John Seeley and R.A. Sim, were at the forefront of promoting a post-war vision of participatory citizenship. Seeley had earlier contributed to the discussions of the Canadian Youth Commission, and R.A. Sim was a leading figure in the Canadian Association for Adult Education. Georges P. Vanier, “The Crisis in the Family: Inaugural Address Delivered Sunday Afternoon, June 7 1964, at Rideau Hall,” in Jean Morrison, ed., The Canadian Conference on the Family: Proceedings of Sessions held at Rideau Hall and at Carleton University, Ottawa, June 7–10, 1964 (Ottawa: Vanier Institute of the Family, 1965), 4, 8. See also National Archives of Canada [na], mg 28, i 117, Canadian Conference on the Family, vol. 8, file 8–32, “La famille considerée comme centre et agent de culture, mémoire prépare par l’Association des femmes diplomées des universités, section française de Québec ... ,” Québec, juin 1964; F.G. Vallee, “Commentary,” in Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Department of Public Affairs, The Real World of Women (Toronto: Canadian Association for Adult Education, 1962), 15. na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 6, file 12b, “Roles-Relationships,” Round Table no. 14: “Communication between Generations”; Frederick Elkin, The Family in Canada (Ottawa: The Vanier Institute of the Family, 1964), 87–9. Simone Paré, “Participation d’une population de banlieue à ses groupes de famille, de parenté, d’amitié et de voisinage,” SS, 9 (jan. 1960): 36–7. na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 10, file 13, “A Family Life Project in a Downtown Neighbourhood, undertaken by St. Christopher House, Toronto, 1964”; Frank E. Jones, “The Newcomers,” Food for Thought 14 (Nov. 1954): 62–7. W.F. Ogburn and M.F. Nimkoff, Technology and the Changing Family (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955), 15. For the influential role of the Chicago sociologists and Parsons’s appropriation of Freudian psychology in post-war definitions of the family, see the critical account in Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World: The Family Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 29–33, 35–7, 39, 112–13. na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 9, file 9–3, N.B. Epstein, “Inner Life of the Family,” June 1964.

Conclusion

403

18 Sir Geoffrey Vickers, chairman, Research Committee of the British Mental Health Research Fund, “What Do We Owe the Children?” in B.W. Heise, ed., New Horizons for Canada’s Children: Proceedings of the First Canadian Conference on Children (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 8. 19 Eric Hutton, “The Future of the Family,” Maclean’s Magazine (MM), 26 May 1956. 20 For the link between the excesses of individualism, the erosion of the family, and the entry of increasing numbers of married women into paid employment, see Robert Fulford, “The Second Revolt of ‘Modern’ Women,” MM, 25 July 1964. The cultural consequences of the arrival of a new type of consumerism in Canada in the late 1950s have been suggested by Christie and Gauvreau, “Introduction,” Culture’s of Citizenship. 21 Lawrence Lynch, “Comments on Dr. Garigue’s Paper,” in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 42. While the full extent of this shift needs to be more fully assessed in the context of post-war Canadian culture, see in particular the stimulating discussion by Nancy Christie of post-1955 transitions within the United Church that decisively weakened evangelical traditions in favour of the individual conscience in the matter of premarital sex and divorce: “Sacred Sex: The United Church and the Privatization of the Family in Post-war Canada,” in Christie, Households of Faith. 22 Vanier, “The Crisis in the Family,” 5. 23 na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 10, file 13, “A Family Life Project in a Downtown Neighbourhood.” 24 Philippe Garigue, “L’Église et la politique familiale” (conference prononcée devant les Évêques de la Conference catholique canadienne at Ottawa, le 7 avril 1970), in Garigue, Famille et humanisme (Montréal: Lemeac, 1973), 211–13. For the intersection between personalism and Quebec Catholic notions of family and the social role of religion, see Gauvreau, “The Emergence of Personalist Feminism,” and Michael Gauvreau, “From Rechristianization to Contestation: Catholic Values and Quebec Society, 1931–1970,” Church History 69 (Dec. 2000): 803–33. 25 Garigue, “Introduction,” in Famille et humanisme, 15–16: “‘découpage’ des relations familiales.” 26 “Panel Discussion,” in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 72. On the need for balance between democracy and patriarchy, see Elkin, The Family in Canada. 27 na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 6, file 4, Lillian Thomson to Miss Anne Furness, School of Social Work, University of British Columbia, May 1964; ibid., Raymond Doyle, dir.-general adjoint, à Mlle Marguerite Mathieu, École de Service Social, Université de Montréal, 20 mai 1964.

404

Michael Gauvreau

28 See Philippe Garigue, “La famille canadienne-française dans la société contemporaine” (texte d’une contribution au Congrès de Caritas-Canada, le 24 mai 1957), 51, 59: “institution universelle”; “Chez les Canadiensfrançais il n’a pas eu lieu de crise dans la famille. Il y a un trait d’unité entre la famille du xviiie siècle et celle d’aujourd’hui qui est du au fait que les extremes du changement sont moins forts.” For his views on the continuing importance of extended kin, paternal authority, and intergenerational solidarity, see Philippe Garigue, La vie familiale des Canadiens français (Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1962), 31, 34–5, 93. 29 Philippe Garigue, “Permanence and Change in Ideas Regarding the Family” (principal address delivered 7 June 1964, Carleton University), in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 26, 30. 30 Thérèse Gouin-Décarie, “Panel Discussion,” in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 68; Gerard Pelletier, “The Major Themes,” ibid., 142. 31 Stuart Rosenberg, “Comments on Dr. Garigue’s Paper,” ibid., 44–5. 32 Gonzalve Poulin, “Enjeux et fonctions de la famille canadiennefrançaise,” in La prevention de la desintegration familiale: Compterendu des conferences données à la Commission “Famille et enfance” (Montréal: Caritas-Canada, 1956), 12: “un competiteur des parents dans l’education de la jeunesse, dans la transmission de l’héritage culturel, des ideaux et des modes de comportement”; “elle reflete de plus en plus l’ensemble de la société ou elle fonctionne.” 33 It should be noted that while Garigue identified this shift as particularly characteristic of Marxist ideology, he feared that it was occurring in Canada under the rubric of the modern welfare state. See “Permanence and Change in Ideas Regarding the Family,” in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 31. 34 Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 100–1. 35 On the notion of the 1960s as a “cultural revolution” in Western society that accentuated the diversity of “lifestyles” and caused upheavals in race, class, and family relationships, see Arthur Marwick, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States ca. 1958–ca. 1974 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 17–20. 36 na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 8, file 8–32, “La famille considerée comme centre et agent de culture” (mémoire preparé par l’Association des femmes diplomées des universités, juin 1964): “ne peut de nos jours assumer seule la tache primordiale de former les enfants et d’assurer leur propre epanouissement.” See also ibid., vol. 6, file 12, “Family Life and Mass Media.” 37 Kaspar D. Naegele, “The Family and Society: Some Questions,” in

Conclusion

38 39 40 41 42

43

44

45 46

405

Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 96. This emphasis on the generational ties of young people, rather than on family relationships, was particularly evident in federal government initiatives of the 1960s. See It’s Your Turn: A Report to the Secretary of State by the Committee on Youth (Ottawa: Information Canada, 1971), 3–4. Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1951), 208. Marie-Suzanne Blais, “Famille ‘traditionnelle’ et famille ‘nouvelle,’” SS, 12 (nov.-déc. 1963): 52–74. Epstein, “Inner Life of the Family,” in Morrison, The Canadian Conference on the Family, 52–3. Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 162–3. Jean-Charles Falardeau, Roots and Values in Canadian Lives: Alan B. Plaunt Memorial Lectures, Carleton University, Ottawa, March 24, 26, 1960 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961), 12–14. For the American context of the social science critique of the “organization man,” see Richard H. Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper & Row, 1985); and for the application of these categories by a group of Canadian intellectuals, see Michael Gauvreau, “‘The Presence of Heroism in Our Lives,’” chapter 1 of a forthcoming book on the relationship between Catholicism and Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. Naegele, “The Family and Society: Some Questions,” 91; Blais, “Famille ‘traditionnelle,’” 73; Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 54; Poulin, La prevention de la desintegration familiale, 15; Frank P. Fidler, “Spotlight on the Family,” Food for Thought 14 (Mar. 1954): 3; na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 8, file 25, Marjorie Harris, Canadian Home Economics Association, to Lillian Thomson, May 1964. Philippe Garigue, “Une politique familiale pour le Quebec” (conference prononcée devant les membres de la Fédération des unions de familles à Montreal, le 3 oct. 1969), in Garigue, Famille et humanisme, 273; “Introduction,” ibid., 18. Seeley, Sim, and Loosley, Crestwood Heights, 221. For examples of this genre, see Roderick Haig-Brown, “Problems of Modern Life and Young Offenders,” Saturday Night (SN), 28 May 1955; W.E. Macdonald, “The Law and the Sexual Offender,” SN, 20 Aug. 1955; Gilbert D. Kennedy, “Canadian Divorce Laws: Changing Views,” SN, 20 Dec. 1952; J.A. Davidson, “Our Squalid Handling of Divorce,” SN, 5 March 1960; J.D. Morton, “Let’s Make Adultery a Legal Fiction,” SN, 6 Aug. 1960; Jack Batten, “The Homosexual Life in Canada,” SN, Sept. 1969; Sidney Katz, “The Lonely Children,” MM, 21 Jan. 1956; McKenzie Porter, “The Unmarried Wives,” MM, 27 Jan. 1962; Sidney Katz, “The Homosexual Next Door,” MM, 22 Feb. 1964.

406

Michael Gauvreau

47 For the idea of middle-class discourse as “moral panic,” see Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885–1925 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991). 48 Betsy Mosbaugh Mackay, “Women Drug Addicts,” SN, 18 Jan. 1949. 49 Hugh Garner, “What Doctors Can Do for the Alcoholic,” SN, 26 Oct. 1957. 50 Dorothy Sangster, “The Trouble with Middle-Aged Men,” MM, 4 June 1960. 51 Kenneth G. Gray, “Sexual Deviation: Problem and Treatment,” SN, 26 Nov. 1955. 52 Franklin Russell, “Clinic to Curb Sex Crimes before They Happen,” MM, 23 Sept. 1961. 53 Ibid.; Gray, “Sexual Deviation.” 54 na, mg 28, i 117, “A Family Life Project in a Downtown Neighbourhood.” 55 Ibid. 56 Seeley, Sim, and oosley, Crestwood Heights, 79, 97, 103, 200. See also na, mg 28, i 117, “Round Table 12a. Roles and Relationships”; ibid., vol. 9, file 2, “The Fragmented Family.” 57 Rocher, “La famille dans la ville moderne,” 83; Michelle Lasnier, “Pourquoi se séparent-ils?” Chatelaine: La revue moderne, sept. 1963, 34–5, 84–90; Fortin, “Socio-Cultural Changes in an Agricultural Parish,” 94. 58 John Nash, “It’s Time Father Got Back in the Family,” SN, 12 May 1956; Sidney Katz, “The Secret Tragedy of the Alcoholic’s Wife,” MM, 5 Dec. 1959; John McMurtry, “Argument,” MM, 14 Dec. 1964; Michelle Lasnier, “Trop parfaites, nos memères sont-elles esclaves ou tyrans?” Chatelaine: La revue moderne, jan. 1962, 26–7, 54–5. 59 Elkin, The Family in Canada, 168; It’s Your Turn, 66; “The Scientific Search for the ‘Normal’ Canadian Family,” MM, April 1969. 60 na, mg 28, i 117, vol. 9, file 9–22, Dr Idris M. Griffith, “The Study of the Family on a Three-Generational Basis,” Windsor, 6 Nov. 1964; Alice Parizeau, “La famille québécoise est-elle depassée par les problèmes de l’enfant moderne?” Chatelaine: La revue moderne, jan. 1966, 47, in which she quotes a statement by the Montreal psychiatrist Dr Camille Laurin. 61 Garigue, “Permanence and Change,” 39; Rosenberg, “Comments,” 48. 62 For this terminology, see Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 4–8. 63 Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, translated by Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), 369. 64 Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (London: Methuen, 1965), xi, 21, 89.

Conclusion

407

65 Ibid., 5, 11. It should come as no surprise that one of Laslett’s mentors was the sociologist Edward Shils, one of the main popularizers of Talcott Parsons’s notion of small-group dynamics. See The World We Have Lost, xiii; and for Shils, Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World, 112–13. 66 Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage, 7; Aries, Centuries of Childhood, 368–9. 67 Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage, 653. 68 Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, 375, 398. 69 Ibid., 415. Laslett (5) also evoked a world of intense, repressive, emotional families in his work. 70 Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage, 683–4. Stone’s preface recorded a debt of thanks to the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who was one of the first to denounce the tyranny of the adolescent peer group and “Momism.” See Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World, 73.

408

Michael Gauvreau