Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong, 1859 and 1869, and: The Life Writings of Mary Baker McQuesten: Victorian Matriarch (review)

Seven Eggs Today: The Diaries of Mary Armstrong, 1859 and 1869 and The Life Writings of Mary Baker McQuesten: Victorian Matriarch are welcome additions to the Life Writing Series from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Each offers a glimpse into the life of a Victorian middle-class woman, but from quite different vantage points. The centrepiece of Seven Eggs Today is two relatively short diaries. The Life Writing of Mary Baker McQuesten offers a selection of private letters and public addresses that Mary gave to various missionary societies over the years. More significant, however, is that these two volumes tell quite different stories. Although both are Victorian narratives and the centre of each woman's life was her family and her household, their experiences and concerns varied, often significantly. As the wife of a butcher-tradesman, Mary Armstrong was a member of the petit bourgeoisie of mid-nineteenth-century Toronto. Mary McQuesten was not only of a later generation, but as the wife and soon widow of a relatively prominent professional Hamilton family, she was also a respectable middle-class Canadian matron who, like other many other women at the turn of the century, was committed to social activism and reform.

Seven Eggs Today began as part of a family project in genealogy. It has been transformed into a delightful account of two periods of editor Jackson Armstrong's great-great-great-grandmother's life at Rosehill, the family home just outside Toronto. In Part One of the Introduction, Jackson Armstrong skilfully traces Mary's life from a London suburb to Upper Canada in the mid 1830s, through her marriage at the age of eighteen to widower Philip Armstrong, to the family's growing financial and social security that was evident when the first diary begins in 1859. As Jackson Armstrong notes, Mary's story is 'A Canadian's Story,' and he skilfully weaves his account of his grandmother's life into the larger narrative of the Rebellions, the union of the Canadas, the arrivals of tens of thousands of Irish migrants in 1847 and 1848, and the growing impact of industrial capitalism on the colony and the family's fortunes. The first diary begins when, at the age of thirty-nine, Mary decides to 'take stock' of her life. Almost six months of often lengthy entries immerse readers in the daily concerns of a colonial wife, mother, and housekeeper. One such entry, aptly captured in the volume's title, is an almost ritualistic tallying of the number of eggs Mary's hens laid each day. The diary abruptly ends on May 24, 'The Queen's Birthday.' Ten years later, Mary began another. This diary is much shorter, the entries are sporadic, and it is followed by a record of needlework completed and a few accounts. What is fascinating is the very ordinariness of the diaries. There are no heroic battles here, but, as Jackson concludes, Mary's reflections on the world around her, and her record of her daily tasks and accomplishments take us into the intimate domestic world and are an invaluable source for social and women's historians. The diaries were never intended for publication; Mary did, however, reread and edit her entries, perhaps in hopes that her children and grandchildren would find them interesting. Many modern readers will, particularly when they read Mary's story in light of Jackson Armstrong's well-grounded and illuminating introduction.

Jackson Armstrong notes that although his grandmother almost never commented on political or public affairs, she was keenly interested in the prices of goods at the market, public lectures being offered in Toronto, and activities at the family church. In many ways, her diaries also reflect the changing economic, political, and social temper of...