Pursuing Play
eBook - ePub

Pursuing Play

Women’s Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870–1914

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Pursuing Play

Women’s Leisure in Small-Town Ontario, 1870–1914

About this book

Levelling the playing field

Life in the Canadian countryside at the turn of the twentieth century is often generalized as insular, backwards, and arduous. These assumptions are redressed in Rebecca Beausaert's Pursuing Play, which highlights the complexity of small-town culture through a lively examination of women's efforts to negotiate space for themselves and their leisure pursuits.

Amply illustrated, Pursuing Play draws on diaries, letters, newspapers, and census records to investigate women's recreational activities in three southern Ontario towns—Dresden, Tillsonburg, and Elora—between 1870–1914. Though women's recreational choices were restricted by pervasive ideas about propriety, Beausaert reveals how they increasingly spearheaded both formal and informal clubs, events, and social gatherings, and integrated them into their daily lives.

In telling the story of what small-town women did for fun while navigating social hierarchies, nurturing ties of kinship and friendship, and advancing community development, Pursuing Play adds a new dimension to Canadian histories of gender, leisure, and popular culture. Encompassing public and private pastimes, the growth of sports, the phenomenon of "armchair travelling," and the ease with which recreation can slip from reputable to disreputable, this rich study uncovers how gender, class, and ethnicity shaped the nature and scope of women's leisure in small-town Ontario and beyond.

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Yes, you can access Pursuing Play by Rebecca Beausaert in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Social History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
University of Manitoba Press
Year
2024
eBook ISBN
9781772840803
Topic
History
Subtopic
Social History
Index
History

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. List of Tables and Figures
  7. Introduction
  8. Chapter One: Situating the Small Town: Dresden, Tillsonburg, and Elora from Foundations to 1914
  9. Chapter Two: A Reconnaissance of Recreation: Leisure in Public Spaces
  10. Chapter Three: Safeties, Skates, and Sleds: Sports and Physical Recreation for Women
  11. Chapter Four: Crazy Teas and Christmas Trees: Leisure at Home
  12. Chapter Five: Armchair Tourists: Fictitious Travel in Tillsonburg
  13. Chapter Six: Vacationers and “Staycationers”: Leisure Out of Doors
  14. Chapter Seven: Bad Girls in the Country? When Leisure Slipped from Reputable to Disreputable
  15. Conclusion
  16. Acknowledgements
  17. Notes
  18. Bibliography
  19. Index