Working Girls in the West: Representations of Wage-Earning Women in Western Canada

Review

Using an innovative mixture of literary and historical technique, McMaster's book successfully straddles the genres of literature, history, and gender studies to present an engaging look at young women in western Canada during the turbulent years of its explosive population growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. -- Merle Massie, University of Saskatchewan ― H-Canada

Lindsey McMaster has made imaginative and innovative use of sources that include novels, magazines, the popular press, prescriptive literature, government policy, and court decisions in developing a compelling argument. She has situated her study within a broader context of Canadian and American research, both complementing it and adding a new dimension to it. -- Gail Campbell, Department of History, University of New Brunswick

This path-breaking study carves out new scholarly ground in its thematic and theoretical approach, filling an important gap in the literature on representations of women in Canada. -- Joan Sangster, Director, Frost Centre for Canadian Studies and Native Studies, Trent University

Product Description

As the twentieth century got under way in Canada, young wage-earning women – “working girls” – embodied all that was unnerving and unnatural about modern times: the disintegration of the family, the independence of women, and the unwholesomeness of city life. Long after eastern Canada was considered settled and urbanized, the West continued to be represented as a frontier where the idea of the region as a society in the making added resonance to the idea of the working girl as social pioneer. Using an innovative interpretive approach that centres on literary representation, Lindsey McMaster heightens our understanding of a figure that fired the imagination of writers and observers.

Review

"Lindsey McMaster has made imaginative and innovative use of sources that include novels, magazines, the popular press, prescriptive literature, government policy, and court decisions in developing a compelling argument. She has situated her study within a broader context of Canadian and American research, both complementing it and adding a new dimension to it."―Gail Campbell, Department of History, University of New Brunswick

Book Description

Examining the eager debate that followed women into the paid workforce in the early twentieth century, this volume uncovers the “working girl” heroines of western Canada’s poetry, prose, and fiction.

About the Author

Lindsey McMaster teaches at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario