Social Science Women's Studies
Working Girls in the West
Representations of Wage-Earning Women
- Publisher
- UBC Press
- Initial publish date
- Jul 2008
- Category
- Women's Studies, Post-Confederation (1867-), British Columbia (BC)
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780774814560
- Publish Date
- Jul 2008
- List Price
- $34.95
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780774814553
- Publish Date
- Dec 2007
- List Price
- $95.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780774855808
- Publish Date
- Jul 2008
- List Price
- $34.95
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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.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Lindsey McMaster teaches at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario.
Editorial Reviews
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.
H-Canada