Turn-of-the-century Canadian women writers and the "New Woman".

Abstract

This study examines the literature written by the generation of women who come between pioneering women writers such as Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie and contemporary women writers such as Alice Munro and Margaret Laurence, literature which helps us to understand the tradition of New Woman writing present in Canada at the turn of the century. This thesis examines selected texts published between 1895 and 1910, a period of rapid urban and industrial expansion in Canada when women began seeing themselves and their roles in society in "new" ways. The first chapter of this thesis examines the concept of the "New Woman" in terms of its original connotations. The second chapter focuses on the representations of the "New Woman" in Lily Dougall's The Madonna of a Day. Sara Jeannette Duncan's A Daughter of Today is the subject of the third chapter. The final chapter examines short stories written by Canadian women journalists Kit Coleman, Ethelwyn Wetherald, and Jean Blewett. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)