Hearts and Minds: Canadian Romance at the Dawn of the Modern Era, 1900–1930 by Dan Azoulay (review)

Canadians had plenty to say about their quest for love and marriage at the beginning of the twentieth century. The challenge is finding their words. Dan Azoulay offers us a window into love in his new book, Hearts and Minds: Canadian Romance at the Dawn of the Modern Era, 1900–1930. Tapping over twenty thousand letters to correspondence columns in Montreal’s Family Herald and Weekly Star and Winnipeg’s Western Home Monthly, a range of archival sources, and pictures, Azoulay details the criteria men and women used to select their mates, how they struggled with the dos and don’ts of romance and courtship, and how the First World War shook up their world. He rounds his discussion off by looking at how concepts of romance, already in flux at the beginning of the war thanks to urbanization and industrialization, turned from courtship and marriage to dating and companionship in the 1920s.

Azoulay correctly critiques previous histories of romance for being focused on the views and perspectives of the cultural elite and giving short shrift to the experiences of the working class (8). Fortunately the correspondence column letters allow men and women from a wide range of work and class backgrounds to speak and argue in their own words about what romance meant to them. The result doesn’t upend previous discussions on romance – the whims of the elite are echoed in these letters and the patterns remain the same – but it does complicate them. Yes, “proper” behaviour still mattered and women and men were expected to – and Azoulay argues, for the most part, did – follow a complex set of etiquette rules for romance. But practical matters were also considered; men sought potential wives who could cook and clean but also might be “cultured companions” (39). Appearance, while not ignored, was far down the list of attributes that men sought in women, a reminder that notions of beauty are culturally constructed (40). Women wanted men who were morally upright, fit, race-minded, and socially conscious, but they also demanded that their mates be kind and considerate, and if not handsome then at least neat and clean (89).

Gender was also being policed as men and women searched for love prior to the First World War. Suffragettes were eyed with suspicion by male suitors and even some women, as were working women, suggesting how women faced pressure across different class bases as they extended their political and economic reach in the twentieth century (49). The historical record and even a casual glance at popular culture after the war tell us that the rules of courtship were changing. But Azoulay adds to that portrait by drawing from sources that make clear that the old laundry list of requirements for future mates had been simplified.

Appropriately, Azoulay adds a visual component to his book by using archival photographs from across Canada. While some do little to move the narrative along, others provide a sense of how men and women carried themselves when together in the early twentieth century. The sexes literally drew closer to one another as the years passed (107, 232).

This book is accessible to a general readership. The prose is easy to follow. The theoretical discussions are clear and succinctly explained and, from the perspective of non-academic readers, blissfully short. Academic readers may find the theoretical brevity frustrating and may yearn for more discussion on the changing concepts of masculinity and femininity and fewer poems from letter writers. They can find some solace in the footnotes, where Azoulay leads a more nuanced discussion of some historians, like Peter Ward, who have grappled with questions of romance and agrees with them or pokes holes in their arguments in equal measure. Similarly, the percentage of letters that comes from each source is spelled out in detail, thus providing a clear sense that region mattered when pouring out one’s hopes...