Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780-1870 (review)

Until well into the second half of the nineteenth century, family was one, if not the most important, institution in the lives of residents of the Canadas. As Françoise Noël persuasively illustrates in Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, although this period is usually 'associated with the rise of individualism and the ideology of the self-made man,' most settlers 'were nurtured and supported by a dense matrix of family, kin, and friends.' Moreover, the family was not the closed, domestic institution so often depicted in the prescriptive literature. Rather, it occupied and was lived within 'a much broader social space shared by people of both genders and all ages.'

Family Life and Sociability explores everyday life in the Canadas through, in the words of the subtitle, 'a view from diaries and family correspondence.' Although, as Noël acknowledges, the sources for the study privilege white, bourgeois, literate families, the author has consciously examined a relatively diverse group. There is, for example, the world of a young Amédée Papineau, the son of Louis-Joseph Papineau, and that of Abraham Joseph, the son of a relatively prominent Jewish merchant from Lower Canada. The Upper Canadian anglo family is examined through, among others, the writings of Susanna Moodie, during her time in the backwoods in the late 1830s, and of schoolteachers John Wells of Ingersoll and Jane Van Norman of Burlington, Upper Canada. Small town and rural life is explored, in part, through the diaries and letters of Alfred Stikeman, a farmer of Pointe Fortune, Lower Canada, and Eliza Bellamy of North Augusta. In short, Noël offers an intimate and sensitive look at family life of women and men of varying religions, political affiliations, ethnicities, language, and location. What is fascinating is how, despite significant differences, these colonists often shared similar concerns, experiences, expectations, and strategies of coping. Couples usually married for love; parents were always concerned about their children's physical and emotional welfare; and, regardless of age, individuals relied on and drew strength from their families.

Noël organizes her investigation around the life cycle of the family. Part One, 'The Couple,' explores the creation of families and the experiences and expectations of the new husband and wife. Perhaps the most innovative and fascinating chapter of the whole work is the first, 'Courtship and Engagement.' Noël presents, often in delightful detail, the varying social experiences of single men and women and their efforts to secure a wife or husband. Thus, we follow Abraham Joseph's somewhat checkered career as a young and eligible bachelor and his subsequent decision to marry young Sophia David. For Amédée Papineau, the situation was more complicated as he fell in love with a young Protestant American, Mary Wescott. Both sets of parents were, not surprisingly, hesitant about the engagement and, although language was not a barrier, the difference in their religion was a serious impediment. More than five years after Amédée first declared his intentions, he and Mary were married and she was welcomed as a member of the Papineau clan.

Noël argues that most middle-class couples in the Canadas married for love and that future mates were usually chosen from among acquaintances. The period of courtship gave the couple 'a chance to deepen their relationship and get to know each other better.' The result, she concludes, was that once married and a new home established, the relationship rested on companionship and mutual respect. It is here that one is increasingly conscious of the limitations of diaries and correspondence as sources for examining family life. Certainly, letters 'represent the writers' version of reality, and in that sense they are far superior to prescriptive literature for purposes of understanding the actual nature of relationships...