WOMEN IN ENGLAND 1870-1950:SEXUAL DMSIONS ANDSOUAL CHANGE

Jane Lewis. Brighton, Sussex: HarvesterPress and Bloomington, Indiana: IndianaUniversity Press, 1984.

Joy Parr

Jane Lewis calls her Women in England1870-1950 an "attempt to provide a briefreview of the issues and themes that haveemerged" in women's history in the pastten years. Her subtitle, "sexual divisionsand social change" specifies her interpre­tive agenda, "to make a contributiontowards our understanding of the chang­ing nature of the boundaries of women'slives and how their experience withinthem was constructed." The book hasbeen welcomed on both counts. Since IvyPinchbeck's Women Workers in the IndustrialRevolution published in 1930, we have hadno new synopsis of similar themes to offerundergraduate students. Social sciencescholars, visiting the terrain of the histor­ian, regularly cite Pinchbeck as theirguide, inattentive to the contradictionsbetween Pinchbeck's perspective and thattheir own theory might prescribe. We'veneeded a text which did not have as asubtext the notion that industrial changewas women's salvation, because it setthem snugly in the home, supported in

JTIlEY'RE STILL WOMEN AFfERALL": THE SECOND WORLD WARAND CANADIAN WOMANHOOD

Ruth Roach Pierson. Toronto: McOelland& Stewart, 1986.

Wendy Mitchinson

'They're Still Women After All": TheSecond World War and Canadian Womanhoodis a long awaited book. Much of the in­formation has been previously publishedin article form but by bringing the articlestogether, rewriting some, and addingnew ones, Professor Pierson has pro­duced a coherent monograph which willbe the standard against which furtherstudies of women in the 1940s will bejudged. The book consists of six majorchapters, four of which focus on womenin the armed services. These examine re­cruitment of women into the CWAC, con­cerns on the part of civilians over thatrecruitment, the so-called "whispering"

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 4

their child-rearing by a breadwinnerspouse, one which rather set young his­torical researchers and visitors to thinkingabout the past in ways which allowedthem to understand and appraise the bestof recent research.

The book is divided not by decade, in­dustry or region, but by class specificexperience within two broad categories,'Family, marriage and motherhood' and'Employment.' This organisational stra­tegy emphasises the class origins ofgender archetypes and highlights thedissonance of gendered lives across classboundaries. Lewis is attentive to regionalsectoral variation and to the essentialconnectedness of public and private life,but by developing her arguments aboutsexual divisions as reconfigurations ofclass hierarchies separately for paid workand life apart from paid work, she makesthe contingency and partialness of mate­rial explanations for the exercise of powerclear.

The study is strongest where Lewis'own contribution has been most consider­able, in the discussions of marital rela­tions, health and welfare and middle classintellectual and philanthropic concerns.Here the text is replete with telling firstperson accounts, and inadvertentmoments of candour culled from royalcommission testimony, which guidereaders expertly to the heart of the matter.Here the analysis is most nuanced and

campaign about the morality of suchwomen, and the treatment they receivedfrom the various military services whenthey transgressed the accepted limits ofsexual behaviour and contracted VD. Twoadditional chapters focus on women's in­volvement in civilian life, one on their re­cruitment into paid employmentand theirvolunteer work and the second on thevarious government supported job-train­ing schemes open to women.

Two major themes emerge from"They're Still Women After All." One is thatthe greatest contribution which womenmade was in unpaid work in the homeand in volunteer work outside the home.This is important to keep in mind for toooften historians have concentrated onthose women in paid employment per­haps seeing them as more independentthan their unpaid sisters. But as ProfessorPierson points out, the women in unpaidwork were dynamic, self-confidentwomen who were unwilling to allowothers to infringe in areas they considered

confident, and most eloquently expli­cated. Feminist analysis has not gone sofar in revising historical accounts of theEnglish formal economy as it has inreinterpreting sexuality, reproduction,domestic gender roles and voluntaryassociations in the past century. Thechapters on wage work are shorter, morestatistical, more suggestive on balance ofwhat is to be done than reinterpretive ofcompleted research.

The study will be especially valuable toNorth American students because thethesis literature and writing, which Lewisdescribed as 'unpublished or tucked awayin inaccessible journals' in Britain, oftenon this side of the Atlantic is utterly un­available rather than merely awkwardlylocated.

This is, I think, the first text I've read,writtenby a contemporaryabout a rapidlyexpanding field in which I work andteach. Looking past the physical artifactto the process of creating it, I am struck bythe arduousness of the task, the sheermass of material to be tracked down andassimilated, and the troubling hesitancywhich must have lingered through thewriting, one colleague trying accuratelyto capture the best of the toil and imagi­nation of her friends and peers over tenexciting years. It is a fine and useful bookwhich I am delighted to have on hand.

their special preserve. For example, at onepoint during the war the federal govern­ment decided to coordinate the work ofthe volunteer agencies which hademerged, especially that of the CanadianWomen's Voluntary Services. Wheninformed of this, the Ontario sectionbarraged the government with protests,pointing out that the government wasinterfering in their sphere and making thetelling point that the purpose of volun­teerism was to save money and havingto pay a government director somehowdefeated that purpose. The govern­ment, somewhat taken aback, eventuallyreached a compromise with the women.

A second theme which emerges is theunwillingness of Canadians in general tocope with women doing non-traditionalwork. When faced with this the reactionwas to attack the morality of the womenso engaged. This reluctance to see womenin non-traditional areas is linked toPierson's main thesis which is that wwnwas not a major turning point for women

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and that it was not a particularly liberatingperiod. For those familiar with Pierson'searlier work this will not come as a sur­prise but for those who are not, they willbe unable to see wwn in quite the sameoptimistic light again. What has to be keptin mind, however, is that women them­selves were primary supporters of tradi­tional careers for women. As Piersonpoints out, "middle to upper-classwomen's organizations, recognized bygovernment as the representatives of

TRADmONALISM,NATIONALISM, AND FEMINISM:WOMEN WRITERS OF QUEBEC

Edited by Paula Gilbert Lewis. Westport,Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Jeannette Urbas

This book is a collection of seventeenessays on women writers of Quebecconsidered, as the title indicates, withinthe framework of three categories: tradi­tionalism, nationalism and feminism.It combines a historical perspectivewith contemporary analysis ranging fromthe end of the nineteenth century with adiscussion of Laure Conan's Angeline deMontbrun to the creative production of theearly 1980s.

In her introduction Paula Gilbert Lewisstresses the unique situation of Quebec, atthe crossroads of both American andFrench thought. The essays fall into threetime periods, each corresponding with aparticular outlook, from the pre-1960swhen traditionalism is most evident, tothe 1960s when nationalism is central, tothe 1970s and 1980s when feminism comesto the fore. Inevitably, there is an over-

WATER AND LIGHT:GHAZALS AND ANTI GHAZALS

Phyllis Webb. Toronto: Coach HousePress, 1984.

Heather Murray

The title of Water and Light: Ghazals andAnti Ghazals lures the reader with theseductions of the exotic and the obliquelyoppositional. (If we wonder what is aghazal, still less can we imagine its anti­part). The mirrored pairings of water andlight, ghazal and anti ghazal, suggestmultiple inter- and cross-relationships,

women's interests, placed their influencebehind the prevailing inclination of publicpolicy to preserve sex-typed occupations,the sexual division of labour, and theclass-based occupational structure."(p.63)

"They're Still Women After All" is nowthe major source for those interested inCanadian women in the 194Os. It is ele­gantly written and interspersed withexcellent photographs and cartoons. Theresearch is prodigious, and as a result

lapping of categories in the study of indi­vidual authors. In addition, the close linkbetween nationalism and feminism inQuebec has never been abandoned.

Some women writers have been omit­ted because of a lack of current research ontheir writing but those who are includedoffer a good representation, as well asconsiderable variety. The only writer whois not specifically Quebecoise is theAcadian, Antonine Maillet, whose work,however, fits into the overall context andthe themes of the book. All but three of theauthors are still living.

As the essays move into the more recentperiod, issues particularly pertinent tofeminist writing are explored, e.g. theemphasis on the power of language, thesearch for expression in a specific femalediscourse, the use of myth and a newlydiscovered female mythology. Therelationship between lesbian feminism asa way oflife and as a revolutionary force inliterature is also examined. Approaches tochange vary from the belief that the libera­tion of each individual must come fromwithin and the fundamental struggle forwomen must be against a patriarchal soci­ety (Nicole Brossard) to concern with thesocial conscience of Quebec and skeptic-

counterings and encounterings. Thecover photo by Gordon Robertson for thishandsome volume, of water lilies andpond grasses, inmixes indistinguishablythe reflected and reflecting, as will theverse itself. And ''Webb'' on the covercompletes the reader's ensnarement - forher production is as spare as the poemsthemselves, and a new book by her is anevent.

The table of contents shows a five­section division to the book: "SundayWater: Thirteen Anti Ghazals," "TheBirds," "I Daniel," "Frivolities," ''MiddleDistance." These too, intrigue, for theirrelationship is not easily ascertained. An

Professor Pierson has uncovered a wealthof information for historians to feed onand has provided new and exciting leadsfor future research. wwn may not havebeen a lasting experience for women, butit did teach one lesson which we shouldnot forget - where there is political will thegovernment and society can change anddo change. It would be comforting if wecould rediscover that political will withouthaving it coincide with another WorldWar.

ism of any discourse urging women towage war indiscriminately on their malecompatriots (Madeleine Gagnon). The fi­nal essay is an update on women's theatrein Quebec and its attempt to replace un­acceptable female stereotypes on thestage.

The essay on Louky Bersianik points toa paradox faced by feminist authors intheir desire to communicate: "the moreshe speaks the phallic language, thebetter understood she makes herselfL'Eugelionne); the more she speaks in thefemale (fluidity, polysemy, etymologies,babble), that is, the more she subverts thenormative code (especially inMaternative),the more restricted becomes the group towhom she addresses herself and whounderstands her."

This collection is designed to appeal toboth specialists familiar with the authorsdiscussed and non-specialists who seekan introduction to a fascinating new areaof knowledge. Specialists, like myself, willdisagree with individual researchersabout some points, such as the interpreta­tion of the ending of Anne Hebert'sKamouraska, but the book as a whole isthought-provoking and informative.

accompanying series of cryptic dublets("No one denied you your memory ofwings: / those clouds, although faces, arenot your own.") adds complexity to per­plexity. On the facing page, an acknow­ledgement to Ghazals of Ghalib: Versionsfrom the Urdu, edited by Aijaz Ahmad,with translations by W.S. Merwin,William Hunt and, most intriguingly,Adrienne Rich, encourages the reader tolearn more about Webb's poetic projecthere.

The ghazal, writes Ahmad, providesthe basic poetic form in Urdu from thebeginning of the language until themiddle of this century. Itis composed ofat

116 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME