‘A career in christian charity’: women's benevolence and the public sphere in a mid-nineteenth-century canadian city

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the relationship between women's charitable work and the public sphere, focusing on the Hamilton Ladies Benevolent Society which operated in nineteenth-century Ontario. It argues that although women were barred from participation in the public sphere by patriarchal notions of ‘reason' and ‘independence,’ charitable associations offered political schooling wherein women internalized and problematized ‘publicness.’ An investigation of the annual reports of the Hamilton Ladies Benevolent Society and Orphan Asylum reveals that charitable women used particular discursive tactics and techniques of display to make claims upon the public sphere. In their attempt to appear public – universal, rational, and in pursuit of an objective, common good – these women rejected the tropes of true womanhood and evoked Christian metaphors to justify their activities. For these women, Christianity provided the language with which they claimed universality, rationality and even citizenship