Gender, doctrine and pedagogy: Women and 'womanhood' in Methodist Sunday Schools in English-speaking Canada, 1880 to 1920

1880 to 1920 was a period of social, demographic, political and economic change in Canada. These changes were seen by some as threatening Canada's British identity and as displacing women as homemakers and mothers. One of the strategies for dealing with these "threats" adopted by reform and educational groups was the imposition of British hegemony and its ideological organization of "womanhood." "Womanhood" involved attributing to women natural qualities such as receptivity, patience and gentleness; assigning to women responsibility for maintaining and transmitting culture and values; and locating women primarily within the patriarchal family as homemakers and mothers.;This thesis explores the ways Methodist Sunday Schools both appropriated and were shaped by the labour of the women who participated as teachers, officers, writers, visitors, temperance workers and organizers. The thesis argues that such Schools and the women who worked within them, through pedagogical practices and teachings, participated in the development, transmission and monitoring of an Anglo-Saxon construction of "womanhood.".;A major section of the thesis examines the ways Sunday School work with non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants was intrusionary and assigned to women workers the task of dislodging immigrant family structures and practices and supplanting them with Anglo-Saxon ones. Next, the thesis identifies ways in which the Cradle Roll, a popular Sunday School program, provided an entry point for women workers and clergy into the defining and regulating of mothering. It describes the ways deaconesses (educational and social workers) were constructed as symbols of proper "womanhood" for young girls. A final section examines the development and role of Sunday School libraries in defining "womanhood.".;Sunday Schools were significant educational organizations in Canada from 1880 to 1920. Developed originally by laity, they were utilized by churches as the main strategy for the religious and social instruction of people of all ages. They were located or were indirectly influential (through periodicals, training and social events, and libraries) in most communities in Canada.