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Growing a RaceNellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism |
eBook Available
A controversial study of the alleged racism in the fiction of Canadian icon Nellie McClung.
Growing a Race challenges the traditional reading of the fiction of Nellie McClung (1873-1951), revered author and pioneering feminist, situating it within a discourse of eugenical feminism that sought a racially homogenous "white Dominion."
Cecily Devereux reconsiders the extent to which McClung's enduring legacy of crusading for women's rights is founded on the ideas of British eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Caleb Saleeby and implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada. In a critical study of Painted Fires, the Pearlie Watson books, and several short stories, Devereux attempts to understand McClung's fiction in terms of its engagement with a politics of "race" and nation and constructions of specifically "racial" impurities that many women saw themselves as uniquely able to "cure."
Cecily Devereux reconsiders the extent to which McClung's enduring legacy of crusading for women's rights is founded on the ideas of British eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Caleb Saleeby and implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada. In a critical study of Painted Fires, the Pearlie Watson books, and several short stories, Devereux attempts to understand McClung's fiction in terms of its engagement with a politics of "race" and nation and constructions of specifically "racial" impurities that many women saw themselves as uniquely able to "cure."
Details
182 Pages, 6 x 9
ISBN 9780773529373
February 2006
Formats: Cloth, eBook
"Meticulously researched and energetically written, this book makes an informed and timely argument about McClung's eugenical feminism." Misao Dean, English, University of Victoria, and author of Practising Femininity: Domestic Realism and the Performance of Gender in Early Canadian Fiction
Cecily Devereux is associate professor, Department of English, University of Alberta.
Growing a Race
Cecily Devereux
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
McClung in the Third Wave: Revisiting the “Legacy” 3
PART ONE “TO SERVE AND SAVE THE RACE”:
McClung, Maternal Feminism, And The Principles Of Eugenics
1 Changing Perspectives of Maternal Feminism: Reconsidering the New Woman and the Mother of the Race 19
2 “Motherhood on the Eugenic Basis”: How the Anti-Feminist Principles of Selective Breeding Became “One with the Woman Question” 30
3 Locating McClung’s Eugenic Feminism: Didactic Fiction and Racial Education 44
PART TWO READING MATERNALISM IN MCCLUNG’S FICTION: THE CULTURE OF IMPERIAL MOTHERHOOD
4 “Finger-Posts on the Way to Right Living”: Mothering the Prairies 53
5 Pearlie Watson and Eugenic Instruction in the Watson Trilogy: How to Be a Maternal Messiah of the New World 63
PART THREE EUGENIC PLOTS: FEMINIST WORK AND THE “RACIAL POISONS”
6 “The Great White Plague” in “The Last Best West”: Tuberculosis, Temperance, and Woman Suffrage in Purple Springs 77
7 “In a Chinese Restaurant, Working at Night”: Painted Fires, White Slavery, and the Protection of the Imperial Mother 89
PART FOUR EUGENIC FEMINISM AND “INDIAN WORK”
8 Re-Forming “Indianness”: The Eugenic Politics of Assimilation 113
9 “Called to [the] Mission”: Interpellating Métis Mothers in “Red and White” and “Babette” 125
Epilogue 137
Notes 141
Bibliography 159
Index 171
Cecily Devereux
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
McClung in the Third Wave: Revisiting the “Legacy” 3
PART ONE “TO SERVE AND SAVE THE RACE”:
McClung, Maternal Feminism, And The Principles Of Eugenics
1 Changing Perspectives of Maternal Feminism: Reconsidering the New Woman and the Mother of the Race 19
2 “Motherhood on the Eugenic Basis”: How the Anti-Feminist Principles of Selective Breeding Became “One with the Woman Question” 30
3 Locating McClung’s Eugenic Feminism: Didactic Fiction and Racial Education 44
PART TWO READING MATERNALISM IN MCCLUNG’S FICTION: THE CULTURE OF IMPERIAL MOTHERHOOD
4 “Finger-Posts on the Way to Right Living”: Mothering the Prairies 53
5 Pearlie Watson and Eugenic Instruction in the Watson Trilogy: How to Be a Maternal Messiah of the New World 63
PART THREE EUGENIC PLOTS: FEMINIST WORK AND THE “RACIAL POISONS”
6 “The Great White Plague” in “The Last Best West”: Tuberculosis, Temperance, and Woman Suffrage in Purple Springs 77
7 “In a Chinese Restaurant, Working at Night”: Painted Fires, White Slavery, and the Protection of the Imperial Mother 89
PART FOUR EUGENIC FEMINISM AND “INDIAN WORK”
8 Re-Forming “Indianness”: The Eugenic Politics of Assimilation 113
9 “Called to [the] Mission”: Interpellating Métis Mothers in “Red and White” and “Babette” 125
Epilogue 137
Notes 141
Bibliography 159
Index 171
Finalist
Wifred Eggleston Award
Best Non-Fiction Work by an Alberta Author (2007)
Wifred Eggleston Award
Best Non-Fiction Work by an Alberta Author (2007)
