Creating This Place

Women, Family, and Class in St John's, 1900-1950

The twentieth century witnessed both the formation of Newfoundland as a self-conscious national entity and the construction of distinct and self-aware middle and upper classes in its capital city. This interdisciplinary collection examines the key roles played by women in the creation of this state and society, and the essential influence that gender, ethnicity, and religion played in class relations. Shifting class relations were formed in the salient political events of the first half of the twentieth century in Newfoundland: the First World War, the suffrage movement, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and finally Newfoundland's contested entry into the Canadian Confederation. Creating This Place shows how upper-, middle-, and working-class worlds were established in the everyday work of women, as well as the ways in which the complex social boundaries of the period were constructed. Individual chapters explore issues such as women's work in religious and voluntary institutions, their struggle for voice, suffrage, and political change, work of domestic servants, and the construction of "proper" women and mothers through denominational education. Creating This Place adopts an innovative perspective on Newfoundland and Labrador that focuses on the often overlooked lives of urban women. Contributors include Sonja Boon (Memorial University), Linda Cullum (Memorial University), Margot Duley (University of Illinois at Springfield), Vicki Hallett (Memorial University), Jonathan Luedee (doctoral candidate, University of British Columbia), Bonnie Morgan (doctoral candidate, University of New Brunswick), Marilyn Porter (emerita, Memorial University), Karen Stanbridge (Memorial University), Helen Woodrow (Educational Planning and Design Associates and Harrish Press Publications).