Education and Work in Service of the Nation

Abstract

Canadian and Australian girls’ fiction of the early twentieth century contains surprising differences in feminine ideals with respect to education and work. In Chapter 4, Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver explain that the question of a young women’s career in post-federated Australia ‘saw a convergence of narratives that each competed for relevance along very specific lines of argument: to do with propriety... job security, reasonable rates of incomes and expectations of career advancement, working conditions, and, in each case, the impact or effect these things might have on femininity and the role it plays in the nation’s future’.¹ This same question remains central to girls’ fiction in both Canada and Australia in this period. Girls’ fiction in these white settler colonies has many similarities, containing strong ideals related to domesticity, education, employment and femininity. The question of a girl’s occupation and the skills she needs to become a successful young woman is central to these texts. The important differences are based on education, in which the Canadian attitudes towards women’s higher education and employment are generally much more positive. Although Canadian girls’ texts also typically conclude with marriage (and presumably motherhood), Canadian girls like L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Nellie McClung’s Pearlie Watson are offered the opportunity to pursue higher education and use this education to teach others.