Length: 2,000 and 2,500 words

Due: 16 November

For this first assignment you are asked to analyze an excerpt from J.B. Jeffries, Search Lights on Health, Light on Dark Corners (Halifax, N.S., l905). (Pgs. 1-32, 144-193 and 382-407.) Multiple copies of this excerpt will be placed on reserve. In particular, I would like you to consider in what ways this prescriptive guide reflected broader societal concerns about the "proper conduct" of young women and men at the turn of the century. To aid you in your assessment of this primary text, you are required to identify and locate relevant secondary literature on this topic. At least four secondary sources are necessary.

In the process of analyzing the source materials and in formulating a central argument for your paper, it would be beneficial to keep the following issues/questions in mind:

What purpose is this guide supposed to serve?

How does Jeffries differentiate between the proper conduct of young women and young men? What is the larger significance of this differentiation?

In what ways are the issues raised by Jeffries similar to or different from that of others concerned with "moral uplift" during this period?

You will find references to relevant secondary sources in the following bibliography: Diana Pedersen, Changing Women, Changing History, Second Edition (Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1996).

***Please consult history department guidelines for proper method of citation.

 Karen Dubinsky, "'Maidenly Girls' or Designing Women'?: The Crime of Seduction in Turn-of-the-Century Ontario," in Gender Conflicts, edited by Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, l992), 27-66. (RESERVE)

Carolyn Strange, "From Babylon to a City Upon a Hill: The Toronto Social Survey Commission of l915 and the Search for Sexual Order in the City, in Patterns of the Past: Interpreting Ontario's History, R. Hall, W. Westfall and L. MacDowell eds. (Toronto: Dundurn, l988), 254-277. (CP)

Christabelle Sethna, "Men, Sex, and Education: The Ontario Women’s Temperance Union and Children’s Sex Education, l900-1920," Ontario History, Vol.88, No.3 (September l996) 185-203. (RESERVE)

Mariana Valverde, "Moral and Social Reform," The Age of Light Soap And Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991), 44-76. (RESERVE)