Canadian Women in Print, 1750–1918

4. The Business of a Woman’s Life

While it is impossible to enumerate all the Canadian women who published books before 1918, we can gather useful data from a few inclusive sources. “Canada’s Early Women Writers,” a database that now resides on the website of the Simon Fraser University library,1 contains files on several hundred women who authored an English-language book of fiction or poetry before 1918 and about whom some biographical information has been found. Anne Innis Dagg’s compilation of Canadian women authors of non-fiction books in English identifies another 125 from the same period.2 One of the first questions posed by this accumulation of more than three hundred names is: Why? In a society not distinguished for its hospitality to literary activity, why did so many women put so much effort into presenting and preserving their writing in the form of a book? As demonstrated in the previous chapter, only a small proportion announced their motives in prefaces. In other instances, the author’s purpose is evident within her text. Few openly admitted that they wrote to earn money. Some, like Catharine Parr Traill, wrote to instruct children, while others supported specific causes such as Sarah Anne Curzon’s commitment to both feminism and patriotism, and Annie Charlotte Dalton’s promotion of sympathy for the deaf. Advancement of moral reform motivated Margaret Murray Robertson. Agnes Maule Machar and Marie Joussaye both sought to improve the working and living conditions of the poor, while animal welfare inspired the stories of Marshall Saunders and Annie Gregg Savigny. But the majority of Canada’s early women writers published their volumes and booklets, in many cases paying the costs themselves, without a deliberate reformist purpose and with little hope for financial reward. 65 four
The Business of a Woman’s Life A different situation obtained in Quebec, where, as in France, women began to publish significantly only when journalism became an acceptable way to earn money toward the end of the nineteenth century.3 In the middle of the century, the popularity of translated versions of Rosanna Leprohon ’s social fiction demonstrated French-Canadian women’s desire to read stories of their own culture in their own language. Following the positive reception of Laure Conan’s Angéline de Montbrun (1884) and subsequent serious fiction, several Québécois women turned to novels, long established internationally as the most lucrative genre for anglophone women. In the 1880s Adèle Bibaud drew on the literary heritage created by her illustrious grandfather, poet and historian Michel Bibaud, when she issued several full-length historical romances as well as a number of shorter stories published in the pamphlet format known as the feuilleton. Across the border, in Fall River, Massachusetts, Anna Duval-Thibault’s novel, Les deux testaments, was published in 1888 by L’Indépendant, the newspaper run by her husband. While a few other women wrote poetry and drama, fully half the Québécois women writers of the 1895–1918 period were described as journalists, in contrast to just 12 percent of the men, whose major genres included poetry, fiction, theatre, criticism, history, and scholarly writing.4 Unable to progress in the traditional hierarchy of the masculine press, a number of women founded their own periodicals, beginning with Joséphine Marchand Dandurand’s Coin de feu (1893–96) and followed by Robertine Barry’s Le Journal de Françoise (1902–09) and Georgina Bélanger’s Pour vous mesdames (1913–15). Extremely conscious of “the very slight part played by French Canadian women in the domain of literature,” which Robertine Barry attributed to “a condition of intellectual society which is hostile to women in literature,”5 these journalists cautiously advocated improvements in women’s education to enable them to become discerning readers and capable writers.6 Journalism was not only appealing in its own right, but could also be a springboard to successful book publication. Barry’s well-received Chroniques du lundi (1895) inspired other francophone women to publish collections of their periodical writings. The genre known as the chronique, similar to the English sketch or column in brevity and flexibility, and belletristic in tone, was popular in this period, which saw the publication of some twenty collections (by men as well as women) in Quebec between 1895 and 1918. Four of these were volumes of the Lettres (1914, 1915, 1916, 1918) of Fadette (Henriette Dessaules),7 drawn from her enduring weekly column in Le Devoir. Viewed as particularly suitable for women, the...