Adelaide Hoodless: Domestic Crusader

Pauline Carey is an actor, playwright and librettist and author of the
children’s books Magic and What’s in a Name?

Adelaide Hoodless was considered a “new woman” in her time, but the young women of today may not look kindly on her lifelong crusade for the education of women in the domestic sciences. Nevertheless, the battle she started in the last century is not yet won since women’s work in the home is still not accorded its proper value.

Cheryl MacDonald has written a careful biography that sticks to the facts while giving us intelligent background material. Mrs. Hoodless, born in Ontario in 1857, was the initiator of Women’s Institutes, a founding member of the Victorian Order of Nurses, and active with the YWCA and Councils of Women both here and abroad. She badgered the Hamilton Board of Education until domestic science was introduced into the curriculum and she was the president of the first school in the country for domestic science teachers.

Adelaide Hoodless believed that women got what they wanted if they asked men nicely enough and that they had no business asking for the vote. Ironically, she learned late in her career that a woman is not taken seriously unless she asks for money and power. She was refused money when she needed it, was rejected for positions which she felt she had a right to hold, and was increasingly criticized for her lack of training. Having worked so hard to have housework recognized as a profession, she had failed to ensure that she herself was accepted as a professional.

Hoodless’s achievements are clearly spelled out here, but we learn more of the tedious meetings, reports, speeches, and correspondence of her campaigns than we do of the woman herself.