
Making and Breaking the Rules
Women in Quebec, 1919-1939
Andree Levesque(Author)
University of Toronto Press
Published on 9. February 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
170 pages
978-1-4426-1138-2 (ISBN)
Description
During the interwar period, Quebec was a strongly patriarchal society, where men in the Church, politics, and medicine, maintained a traditional norm of social and sexual standards that women were expected to abide by. Some women in the media and religious communities were complicit with this vision, upholding the "ideal" as the norm and tending to those "deviants" who failed to meet society's expectations. By examining the underside of a staid and repressive society, Andree Levesque reveals an alternate and more accurate history of women and sexual politics in early twentieth-century Quebec. Women, mainly of the working class, left traces in the historical record of their transgressions from the norm, including the rejection of motherhood (e.g., abortion, abandonment, infanticide), pregnancy and birth outside of marriage, and prostitution. Professor Levesque concludes, "They were deviant, but only in relation to a norm upheld to stave off a modernism that threatened to swallow up a Quebec based on long-established social and sexual roles."
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
12 illustrations; 5 graphs; 4 tables
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 132 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
227 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4426-1138-2 (9781442611382)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Previous edition

Book
04/1994
McClelland & Stewart Inc.
€47.27
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Persons
AndrEe LEvesque is a professor emeritus in the Department of History at McGill University.
Yvonne M. Klein is a retired professor of English and a professional translator and editor.
Yvonne M. Klein is a retired professor of English and a professional translator and editor.