There is an unspeakable outside, an imagined asocial space, where something howls beyond the edges, prowls in anguish around the dark perimeter encircling the glowing campfire of the family.[i]

The asocial space housewives occupied in the 1950s and into the 1960s fostered widespread depression and a lack of fulfillment amongst women as the nurturers of the family. Their absent self-identity resulted in a sense of being nothing but a “doer” of monotonous tasks. As Canada emerged from the decade of the nuclear family and suburban sprawl, the 1960s focused on social unrest, revealing the unhappy housewife who previously existed at the margins of society. Feminists, psychologists, and journalists excavated the façade of the 1950s “perfect” housewife. Betty Friedan, an iconic leader of the 1960s women’s movement in the United States, published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, espousing the unhappiness and lack of self-discovery women felt in becoming “just housewives” defined as “John’s wife and Connie’s mother.”[ii] Masked as various ailments, such as “housewife’s fatigue” or uneasiness treated by dispensing tranquilizers,[iii] Friedan noted the connection between depressed women was “the problem that ha[d] no name.”[iv] Women described feelings of “desperation,” inexistence, shame, and not “feeling alive.”[v] Fearing that they were incapable mothers and wives—making them “unfeminine”—women convinced themselves that “there’s nothing wrong really. There isn’t any problem.”[vi] Friedan wrote,

 The core of the problem for women today is not sexual but a problem of identity—a stunting or evasion of growth that is perpetuated by the feminine mystique. . . .[O]ur culture does not permit women to accept or gratify their basic need to grow and fulfill their potentialities as human beings, a need which is not solely defined by their sexual role.[vii]

As her thesis expresses, Friedan contended that women were depressed because they were being oppressed by the cultural “definition” of who, or what, was a woman.

Scribed inside the front cover, publication information states that selections from The Feminine Mystique have appeared in Mademoiselle (1962), Ladies’ Home Journal (1963), and McCall’s (1963).[viii] Understandably, as Friedan was American, her book was partially printed in American women’s magazines to broaden her impact. Interestingly, the only Canadian women’s magazine approached by Friedan refused her request to print segments of her work over several issues.[ix] This journal was Chatelaine. Together, Doris Anderson—Editor-in-Chief for Chatelaine, 1957-1977—and Chatelaine’s managing editor Jean Wright rejected Friedan’s proposal because Chatelaine had already covered many of the topics Friedan discussed in Chatelaine issues dating back to 1950.[x]

Chatelaine was the avant-garde of the 1960s women’s movement in Canada,[xi] approaching controversial topics even before Friedan “discovered” the “problem that has no name” in 1957.[xii] True, Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was much more comprehensive than Chatelaine’s articles, but as even Friedan notes, most housewives did not have time to read a full book; magazines were much more manageable.[xiii] Furthermore, Chatelaine subscriptions ensured that the publication infiltrated the domestic sphere each month. With circulation[xiv] expanding from 480,000 in 1957 to 1.8 million by 1969, Chatelaine was read by approximately one of every three women in Canada.[xv] In comparison, the Ladies Home Journal (which had the largest circulation amongst American magazines in the 1960s) would have required a circulation of 16 million to match Chatelaine’s penetration in Canada; Ladies Home Journal had a circulation, at its peak, of only 7 million.[xvi] Also setting Chatelaine apart from Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was the magazine’s egalitarian liberal feminist approach to controversial topics.[xvii] Communicating with Canadian women through this liberal lens minimized the magazine’s risk of alienating its readers or of stemming more guilt in a woman who may not meet Friedan’s “new convention” of the working mother. Finally, Chatelaine provided a medium for women to discuss prevalent concerns, stemming conversation that represented the continuum of opinions. Women’s opinions garnered greater consideration when published in Chatelaine’s “The Last Word is Yours” page, a continuing column that reprinted letters to the editor. Before Friedan’s publication of The Feminine Mystique, Chatelaine was a proponent of the 1960s women’s movement in Canada, representing the diversity of female identity through egalitarian liberal feminism, connecting women with a female community to discuss concerns, and challenging stereotypes guised in Canada’s socialization as the “knowledge” of women’s nature—Chatelaine proverbially shattered the glass confinements imposed on women by society. Before demonstrating this thesis through Chatelaine’s feature articles, this paper will offer some context by establishing the understanding of “woman” that Friedan and Anderson challenged and by providing a profile of Chatelaine’s typical reader. This paper will then provide further analysis of how Chatelaine was a leader of the women’s movement by examining selected feature articles from 1959 to 1963, focusing on topics of reproductive rights, legal rights, child abuse, and alcoholism under the umbrella of unhappiness and guilt prevalent among women in 1960s Canada.

The 1960s “humble housewife” was considered the “normal” and natural role of women. Beginning at an early age, the educational system taught girls that domestic tasks created a home that would inevitably bring her fulfillment. Just Like Mommy, Just Like Daddy was one of many materials used to reinforce sex roles. A young girl reflects on the domestic tasks that she completes with her mother and dotingly waits for the men to return home at dinner. She ends the day dreaming that she will soon be “just like Mommy”—a phrase often repeated in the passage to reinforce the girl’s “natural” desire to become a mother.[xviii] Just as this girl described her role-playing with Mommy, the married woman was to be the family’s seamstress, cook, laundress, nurse, mother, and wife; being a member of a women’s club or association nursed a woman’s femininity as well. The woman who fully filled these roles would have a happier family that, in turn, fostered her happiness and self-fulfillment. Essentially the woman’s happiness depended on others. A quotation originally published in an article in the Globe and Mail, May 20, 1964, comprehensively sums up a woman’s duties that would further her virtue:

To be successful, [the humble housewife] must be a dietician as well as a cook, to preserve the health of her family. Speaking of health, she is one nurse who doesn’t stop at an eight-hour day! She must keep her home neat and clean, be a social secretary, bookkeeper and economist for women do most of the saving as well as the spending. She must be an expert seamstress as well as an interior decorator. She is still the reliable laundry where Dad can send his shirts and get them back in less than a month. Sometimes, too, she’s the family painter, gardener and chauffeur. If there are children, her responsibilities are multiplied. She must then be teacher and psychologist, and sometimes judge and jury.[xix]

This description of “the humble housewife” lists all the musts of the ideal woman’s role. “Must” reinforced the notion there was one way to be a woman and homemaker; when a woman did not fulfill a “must,” she became something less than a woman. It was this single role as the ideal homemaker that the readers of Chatelaine felt was compulsory to maintaining her happiness and femininity.

As Canada’s only women’s journal by 1958, Chatelaine attracted a diverse group of readers. Readers were likely to be married as daughters were raised to become homemakers. Women began to marry younger at a mean age of 22.9 years at the time of marriage (compared to 24.4 in 1941) and only 11% of women aged 25-44 remaining unmarried in 1961 (compared to almost 20% in 1921).[xx] However, working wives were also common readers of Chatelaine as 50% of all women in the labour force were married by the 1960s.[xxi] Compared to American periodicals, Chatelaine’s service pieces and advertisements prioritized women of the lower middle class who had a limited disposable income and an average standard of living.[xxii] This was the socioeconomic background of the magazine’s target reader. Finally, in studying letters published in each issue, the majority of women who read Chatelaine had at least two children, lived in suburbia or more rural areas, and sometimes shared poignant articles with their husbands—some men even wrote letters in support and dissension of the journal’s feature articles.

Confronting readers with a social taboo, Chatelaine published Joan Finnigan’s “Should Canada Change Its Abortion Law?” in 1959 to great controversy.[xxiii] In her article, Finnigan argued that Canada’s abortion law[xxiv] entrenched “tragedy and human anguish” in legislation as it limited a woman’s autonomy and exposed the child to a negative atmosphere.[xxv] While Finnigan’s argument was to legislate rape as “justifiable grounds” for performing an abortion, she debunked “ideals” by explicitly stating information usually concealed in fear of offending, such as spousal rape, desertion, and mental or marital instability.[xxvi] Finnigan overtly stated that not all women match the prototype of the happy housewife as society bars them from personal autonomy. Furthermore, Finnigan suggested that with help from the state to alter legislation, women would be given the ability to choose how to react to an injustice that had resulted in impregnation.

In October’s “The Last Word is Yours,” Anderson wrote that the magazine published a “fair sampling” of letters that they had received in support and in condemnation of Finnigan’s article, noting that as they sent the issue to press there seemed to be equal support for both sides.[xxvii]  Finnigan’s article prompted women to react to and discuss a sensitive issue in a community where their opinions would not be dismissed as “shrill” or “emotional,” which were euphemisms for illogical or illegitimate. L.M. Sullivan from Kitchener, Ontario represented the prominent argument against abortion and the critical analyses by women who read the piece and maintained their personal opinion, writing “Rape or incest are detestable crimes but adding murder to the score doesn’t make the crime more palatable.” Furthermore, Mrs. H. C. Walshaw’s letter expressed the impact that the article had on discussions amongst friends and family, noting that it “occasioned some thoughtful discussion.”[xxviii] While Finnigan’s article did not prompt legislative changes, it did spur thoughtful discussion on a previously veiled topic that concerned the readers’ freedom.

In the March 1963 issue—four years after Chatelaine published Finnigan’s article—the topic of abortion was revisited. Rev. Ray Goodall’s “Is Abortion Ever Right?” sustained discussion in “The Last Word is Yours” for five months, with letters even being addressed to one reader from another. Goodall approached abortion through a wider interpretation of the mother’s well-being: “preserving the life of the mother” had to acknowledge the well-being of her whole self, considering physical, emotional, and psychological impacts—a view that countered the biological determinism of the ideal woman.[xxix] Furthermore, Goodall contested that the pregnancy of a  “foolish” woman who did not meet the ideal should not be justified as a “punishment” for her actions, bringing a child into the world under the pretense of just deserts.[xxx] This suggests that Goodall acknowledged the pressure on young women to capture a husband early and saw a woman as a complete person rather than the biologically determined ideal.

While many readers condemned Goodall for his religious position and “mockery of faith,”[xxxi] readers in support of reform felt comfortable enough to share personal experiences through “The Last Word is Yours.” One 68-year-old expressed the unhappiness that she felt and the pressures of raising more and more children, leaving her in such physical and emotional pain that she became suicidal at the thought of becoming pregnant.[xxxii] Goodall’s public stance on abortion removed her guilt and encouraged her to speak of her experiences, feeling they were received as legitimate.

Seventeen-year-old Diane Hameluck’s letter in Chatelaine’s June edition sparked direct dialogue between readers concerning a feature article for the first time since Anderson’s editorship. Hameluck’s letter was representative of many women’s opinions for maintaining the existing law—if women behaved “properly” and with faith as the ideal woman should, abortions would not be necessary:

I read your grubby article on abortion. . . . If a woman does not intend to bear children, she has no business indulging in the sacred act of sexual intercourse. In doing so, she is only satisfying her animal lust. You tell the big sob story of broken homes, etc., and then to escape the girls get pregnant. Hogwash! It’s all in the will power. If they ask God for help, He’ll surely never refuse an honest plea for help. Your little Susie[xxxiii] deserves all the punishments she gets because of her “foolishness, curiosity, and ignorance.”[xxxiv]

According to this argument, if women who did not act according to the ideal then they deserved to be punished for exploring “improper” lifestyles outside of their predetermined role.

Readers in later issues attacked Hameluck mainly on the basis of her age; however, Lorna Sadler of Calgary replied directly to Hameluck’s argument with a clear counterpoint that expressed the unrepresentative nature of the ideal to the actual:

Does Miss Hameluck really consider death from a kitchen abortion a just punishment for one misdemeanor? . . . If only people would realize that abortions are being performed despite the risks involved. And what if the girl chooses not to take the risk on her life? Far too little has been said for the child she will bear. . . . Unfortunately, many people seem to be unwilling to face reality. They would rather believe that it is possible to have society ‘improve’ to a state where it would follow the old laws without any trouble at all, if only enough preaching is done in favor of ‘cleaning up our morals.’ If these people would only take an open-minded perceptive look at life as it really is, they would see how deluded they are. P.S.: I am not pregnant, and I have never been.[xxxv]

In contrast to Hameluck, Saddler contended that legislation should be separated from religion to address the actual rather than reinforce the ideal. Sadler, also 17 years old, was unopposed in the final comments of the September issue, which suggests support for her criticism of an unattainable construction.  As demonstrated through the letters page, Chatelaine printed material that challenged its readers and prompted discussion—“A magazine should have a purpose in publishing and that is to point out the problems that should be brought to the attention of the public.”[xxxvi] Chatelaine pointed out the problems, sometimes offering direction towards a solution, but the publication never offered a full solution—that was up to the readers. Chatelaine respected and trusted the intelligence of its readers, allowing women to participate in a conversation necessary to come to an insightful and representative solution.

Alternatively, Ron Kenyon’s exposé on the birth control pill, “The Pill Nobody Talks About,” was more informative than argumentative, explaining to readers how the pill works, its possible side effects, and alternative forms of contraception. By offering the information and not challenging women to do something, Kenyon provided women with an informed view and a choice concerning what will meet their needs—Kenyon even stated that Envoid, the first widely dispensed birth control pill, had been used to enhance fertility,[xxxvii] establishing a basis where contraception may aid women in becoming pregnant. Kenyon’s article implicitly reflects the diversity of women, respecting their freedom to choose what will fulfill their individual. Due to its respectful tone, Kenyon’s article did not receive a lot of criticism from readers, but Anderson did receive a letter from Newfoundland that requested further information on birth control mentioned in the article:

 Our religion forbids any birth control measures except the rhythm method and it was with great pleasure I read of the new discovery made by Fertility Tester Inc. of Illinois [of fertility papers]. However, I’m sure you realize that in this . . . place these things are widely unavailable except by mail. Is it possible to advise me where they could be bought?[xxxviii]

While the author of this letter acknowledged that she was asking for a great favour from the publication, considering the legal grey area surrounding the Criminal Code’s prohibitions on birth control advertising and sale, Anderson did not balk at the woman’s request for assistance and her right to this information. Anderson’s written response gave this reader the address and purchasing information she requested.[xxxix] The written communication between these three persons—Kenyon, the unnamed reader, and Anderson—demonstrates the dialogue that Chatelaine prompted and the support that its articles gave women, offering them options that might be compatible with their diverse beliefs and lifestyles, and respecting their reproductive rights by not enforcing an ideal.

In addition to women’s reproductive rights, Chatelaine acknowledged the inadequacies of women’s legal rights through a critical piece on divorce by Christina McCall Newman in 1961, “The Hypocrisy of Our Divorce Laws.” While Friedan gave mention to divorce in The Feminine Mystique, she focused her analysis on the sexual aspect of a marriage, stating that the “devouring wife” leads her husband to infidelity and citing that one of every two married men over 55 years old in America was engaging in adultery because of the wife’s faults.[xl] In comparison, Chatelaine did not blame one sex more than the other regarding the breakdown of marriages. Chatelaine proposed amendments that would allow for further reasons for divorce beyond adultery, such as abuse, desertion, or sustained mental illness. To overtly state her argument and the inadequacies of legislation concerning divorce, McCall Newman cites Sir A. P. Herbert, a British law reform activist, who contended that “more importance [was] attached to ten minutes of fleshly infidelity than to three years’ desertion or a lifetime of cruelty.”[xli] Furthermore, McCall Newman provided personal accounts of women who could not obtain a divorce and who, as a result, had suffered from depression and helplessness. These personal accounts further question the “happy housewife” façade gave legitimate public representation to silenced and subjugated women. One case given was the experience of a Brantford woman whose husband was declared “incurably insane” and had, to the point of the article’s publication, been in a mental institution for ten years.[xlii] No longer recognizing her, his wife felt oppressed and lifeless under Canada’s divorce laws: she stated, “I feel as though the rest of my life will be just a dragging out of existence.”[xliii] This woman did not meet the requisites of an ideal woman as she was unable to care for her husband or bare children. The absence of a happy family and her inability to forge a new relationship barred her from self-fulfillment and happiness, placing her alone at the margins of society. McCall Newman’s article displayed the detrimental effects of enforcing an ideal by representing and arguing for the legal right of previously silenced women.

One year prior to the publication of McCall Newman’s article on divorce, Dorothy Sangster wrote an article on child abuse that stemmed from unhealthy relationships between married partners. “Can’t We Put a Stop to Cruelty to Children?” provided equal accounts of the physical abuse of children by mothers and fathers, while also considering exposure to emotional abuse or neglect within an unhappy family. As Sangster cited, Judge Havley S. Mott of the Toronto Juvenile Court argued that the law’s description of unlawful abuse as “unreasonable cruelty” was highly subjective and expressed the court’s powerlessness when confronted with the parents’ freedom to exact discipline.[xliv] Mott stated, “Every law we pass takes away a piece of somebody’s freedom.”[xlv] Sangster countered this argument with the “reasons” for abuse—usually a “psychopathic personality” or overwhelming stress—and suggested that child abuse may be prevented if parents’ mental health was treated.[xlvi] Basically, Sangster argues that while not all cases of child abuse result from unhealthy marriages, the emotional devastation of women who feel inadequate affects the mental health of the husband and child, also becoming a danger to the child’s well-being if the mother is overwhelmed by frustrations and/or resentment towards being “just” a housewife and mother. Sangster argued that a woman’s freedom of self-identity and expression was already in pieces and was further affecting men and children. In response to her article, readers’ letters made appendages to her argument, expanding the circumference of child abuse to include personages in public institutions, including educators and law enforcers.  Miss Y. D. Perkins metaphorically summed up Sangster’s contentions of society’s façade of the happy housewife as being released from its containment and confronting the readers with a non-idealized reality: “you have again opened yet another doorway into the darkened world and will thus bring the evil goblins tumbling out.”[xlvii] Free of repression, Chatelaine’s readers gained the ability to express the inadequacies of society’s legitimation of the ideal.

Finally, Chatelaine directly attacked the 1960s feminine mystique in multiple issues prior to 1963. Even under the editorship of John Clare in 1957, Chatelaine was printing articles of women who were struggling to meet the ideal, albeit they also established advice on how to fix this “problem.” To reassure depressed women that they were normal, Chatelaine often printed articles written by doctors and psychiatrists who were seen as figures giving authority and legitimation to the lack of fulfillment women. Both printed in 1960, “Doctor, Why Am I So Tired?” written by Dr. Marion Hilliard and “What Makes Women Unhappy?” by Dr. Margaret Mead argued that the demands of “modern life” subsumed the individual woman, leaving her tired, frustrated, self-rejected, and unfulfilled. The ideal of the 1960s feminine woman was determined by the biological ability of the female to produce children; thus, the women who were no longer raising children felt depleted and useless, while many who were raising children felt guilt and shame from their boredom. The symptoms that Dr. Hilliard mentions in her article are classic symptoms of depression: fatigue, loneliness, unhappiness, and no vision for the future.[xlviii] These feelings were at the root of Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique and Dr. Hilliard, three years prior to Friedan, prescribed a change in lifestyle: “Some need to slow down; others need to speed up. . . . Each person has to find her own ways.”[xlix] Thus, Hilliard rejected the view of a single, natural ideal role for women and promoted the acceptance of diversity in female roles through liberal feminist reflections.

In contrast, Dr. Mead’s article criticized the list of “oughts” that society imposed on women, forcing them to focus on fulfilling the ideal rather than fulfilling the self. Dr. Mead explained that women are unhappy because the things that were supposed to be making them happy were “non-progressive,”[l] meaning that they were temporal:

In a society like ours, oriented toward the future, toward progress, toward the next generation, it is a sad paradox that we are asking women to expect to live looking backward at biological achievements instead of forward to increasingly spiritual ones.[li]

While Dr. Mead stated in this quotation that society is asking women to fulfill the role of mother and housewife, she implied throughout the article that women have no choice when being asked; there was one answer and that was to fulfill the role or live on the margins as “unfeminine” and “abnormal.” Dr. Mead assured readers there was no universal role for women.

Addressing women who felt oppressed or misplaced, David Fulton’s “The Woman Alcoholic” also demonstrated the effects of enforcing a single, immutable definition of “woman.” Offering a statistical framework for his contentions, Fulton stated that one in five alcoholics in 1962 were women,[lii] the majority being in their forties.[liii] Furthermore, Fulton stated that the public viewed female alcoholics as “repulsive,” carrying over the Victorian notion that “women and alcohol do not mix.”[liv] However, Fulton proposed that society pushed women to boredom and depression, so alcoholism became a coping strategy in accepting an idealized role that lacked fulfillment. Alcoholism, Fulton argued, also resulted in further isolation, hiding the woman’s illness within the confines of her home. The alcoholic wife became an embarrassment to her husband; her husband supervised her and further isolated her; the woman felt disempowered and inadequate; and finally, further harm was caused to the alcoholic wife as she did not receive the professional help she required nor the ability to experience self-fulfillment through self-identification and independence. Through his article, Fulton exposed the publication’s readers to what was beneath the façade of the “happy homemaker” and stressed the damage that the feminine mystique had caused to women.

While its feminist message was clear, Chatelaine did not champion a replacement for the ideal housewife role as Betty Friedan had in The Feminine Mystique. Chatelaine recognized the diversity between women—their interests, joys, and familial values—and promoted an egalitarian liberal feminism that encouraged women to ally with the state in acquiring personal autonomy, freedom from societal constructions and a “normal” and “abnormal” role dichotomy. While the movement would have all women question their identity, Chatelaine urged them to find their selfhood apart from comparisons to other women. Chatelaine represented housewives and working women equally and addressed them both as respectful occupations. The publication also published readers’ letters, legitimizing their opinions while acknowledging that the publication ultimately belonged to the readers. Chatelaine pointed out the problems of society to women and represented the individuals who were silenced by Canadian society’s idealization of sex roles in the 1950s. While the general public, women included, would have regarded women’s journals as “pap” or sheer “fluff,” Chatelaine printed a strong statement in a deceptive package that easily snuck into the domestic sphere and changed life for millions of marginalized women, bringing them out of the shadows and into the centre of society.