Family Life and Sociability in Upper and Lower Canada, 1780–1870

Elaine G. Porter is an associate professor of sociology at Laurentian
University.

Although Noлl sometimes refers to and treats her analyses as
“findings,” they mostly serve as verbal and pictorial illustrations
of various aspects of family life from pre-Confederation Canadian
history unearthed by others. In line with the new family history, the
content of the letters and diaries shave the corners off the notion of
separate spheres for husbands and wives. The family relationships are
portrayed as emotional and intimate and conforming to a companionate
ideal. The descriptions of the density of family and neighbourhood ties
are in keeping with social-historical studies that call into question a
linear path to the nuclear family. The significance of the qualitative
data, often presented in extended quotations, is in the poignancy of the
sentiments about family expressed by men. Noлl interprets these as a
sign of modernity, but we cannot be sure that their written expression
also applied to face-to-face interaction. Both husbands and wives were
spared the drudgery of household labour owing to hired help.

Noлl acknowledges the limitations of a study based on letters and
diaries written by members of the upper middle class and that subset who
had the time, education, and motivation to write. To overcome these
limitations, she examined a wide variety of archival collections and did
not differentiate time periods within the century studied. Passages from
letters and diaries are cut and pasted to illustrate a large variety of
characteristics of family life of the times, such as courtship, domestic
concerns, childhood, parent–child relations, and kin social networks.
Where collections were more complete, as in the case of the upper-class
Papineau family in Lower Canada, we can follow events across the family
lifespan.

The final chapters document the dizzying social calendar of social
relations among neighbours, friends, and kin for a wide variety of
families, indicating the openness of family life. Most convincing of the
idea that these families had less privacy than today’s families do is
the evidence that children were easily taken into the households of
family members and neighbours. These anecdotes and expressions about
family life buried in the archival correspondence examined add to the
authenticity of our interpretations of the past.