Carefully crafted from oral interviews, diaries, letters, written recollections, census data, and other historical sources, Obligation and Opportunity opens a window into the world of the women who moved from the Maritimes to New England for work. Urged to stay through tales of danger and woe in the newspapers, they still left by the thousands, and in numbers larger than those for men. Beattie examines the rural families they left, the urban environment they entered in Boston, and the different occupations they filled. She sheds new light on the response of rural families to economic change and the effects of gender on choices for young women. She demonstrates that first-generation emigrants, who left out of a need to find work and send money back home, eased the way for second-generation emigrants, who left to seek opportunities in the big city. Obligation and Opportunity offers new insights not only for everyone interested in the history of the Maritimes and Boston but also for scholars and others interested in family history, women's studies, labour history, and migration studies.

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"A wonderful book that fills an important gap in both the regional literature on out-migration from the Maritimes and on the larger context of rural-urban migration at the time of industrialization. Beattie skilfully weaves together statistical data from the nominal census with individual and personal stories against a backdrop of well chosen and carefully distilled material. This is an important piece of work." Patricia Thornton, Department of Geography, Concordia University
"Obligation and Opportunity is based on a profound insight: that women's particular experience of leaving home is an important key, an interpretive centrepiece, to understanding the political economy and culture of out-migration which are at the core of post-Confederation Maritime history." Gary Burrill, author of Away: Maritimers in Massachusetts, Ontario, and Alberta.

"A wonderful book that fills an important gap in both the regional literature on out-migration from the Maritimes and on the larger context of rural-urban migration at the time of industrialization. Beattie skilfully weaves together statistical data from the nominal census with individual and personal stories against a backdrop of well chosen and carefully distilled material. This is an important piece of work." Patricia Thornton, Department of Geography, Concordia University "Obligation and Opportunity is based on a profound insight: that women's particular experience of leaving home is an important key, an interpretive centrepiece, to understanding the political economy and culture of out-migration which are at the core of post-Confederation Maritime history." Gary Burrill, author of Away: Maritimers in Massachusetts, Ontario, and Alberta.