Gender, sexuality, and nationalism in J.W. Bengough's verses and political cartoons

Canadian Historical Review

Volumn 83, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 505-554

  Burr, Christina ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33845386597     PISSN: 00083755     EISSN: 17101093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3138/CHR.83.4.505     Document Type: Article

References (101)

1. Uncle Thomas, 'The Regenerators,' Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art and Literature 1, 1 (1893): 64-7. 'Uncle Thomas' was probably Toronto journalist Sam Wood, also known as 'Single Tax' to his friends.
2. Ramsay Cook, The Regenerators: Social Criticism in Late Victorian English Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1985), 122-51;
3. Christina Burr, Spreading the Light: Work and Labour Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Toronto (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999), 56-97
4. P.B. Waite, 'Sir Oliver Mowat's Canada.' Reflections on an Un-Victorian Society,' in Donald Swainson., ed., Oliver Mowat's Ontario (Toronto: Macmillan 1972), 28-9
5. Cook, The Regenerators, 150
6. Burr, Spreading the Light, 56-97
7. Carman Cumming, Sketches from a Young Country: The Images of Grip Magazine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1997), 179-92
8. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso 1983), 13-16
9. Stuart Hall, 'The Question of Cultural Identity,' in Stuart Hall, David Held, and Anthony McGrew, eds., Modernity and Its Futures (Cambridge: Polity Press 1992), 291-95;
10. Catherine Hall, '"From Greenland's Icy Mountains ... to Afric's Golden Sand": Ethnicity, Race and Nation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England,' Gender & History 5, 2 (1993): 215-16
11. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 47-9
12. See, for example, the special issues on colonialism and nationalism published by the following journals: History Workshop Journal 36 (autumn 1993),
13. Gender and History 5, 2 (1993)
14. and Feminist Review 44 (1993). The international literature is vast.
15. My thinking on the issue has been influenced also by the following works: Andrew Parker, Mary Russo, Doris Sommer, and Patricia Yaeger, eds., Nationalism and Sexualities (London: Routledge 1992);
16. Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri, eds., with the assistance of Beth McAuley, Nation, Empire and Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 1998);
17. Clare Midgely, ed., Gender and Imperialism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press 1998);
18. Catherine Hall, ed., Cultures of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Routledge 2000);
19. Mrinalini Sinha, 'eading Mother India: Empire, Nation, and the Female Voice,' Journal of Women's History 6, 2 (1994): 6-44;
20. Dina Georgis, 'Mother Nations and the Persistence of "Not Here,"' Canadian Woman Studies 20, 2 (2000): 27-34;
21. Antoinette Burton, ed., Gender, Sexuality, and Colonial Modernities (New York: Routledge 1999).
22. There has been much lamenting among male, anglophone, neo-conservative historians, most notably by Michael Bliss and Jack Granatstein, about the 'sundering' of national history with the emergence of what they termed specialized 'private histories,' including women's history, working-class history, ethnic history, and regional history. This group of historians has issued a call for the restoration of 'national history,' as opposed to the 'private history' of women, the working class, and non-Anglo peoples. Implicitly, this is a call for the reinstatement of the approach used by English Canadian 'consensus' historians. See Michael Bliss, 'Privatizing the Mind: The Sundering of Canadian History, the Sundering of Canada,' Journal of Canadian Studies 26, 4 (1991-2): 5-17;
23. J.L. Granatstein, Who Killed Canadian History? (Toronto and New York: HarperCollins 1998).
24. Canadian social historians have countered by arguing that we need a national history that incorporates all its diverse dimensions. See Veronica Strong-Boag, 'Contested Space: The Politics of Canadian Memory,' Journal of the Canadian Historical Association (1992), 3-17;
25. Gregory S. Kealey, 'Class in English-Canadian Historical Writing: Neither Privatizing, Nor Sundering,' Journal of Canadian Studies 27, 2 (1992): 123-9;
26. Linda Kealey, Ruth Pierson, Joan Sangster, and Veronica Strong-Boag, 'Teaching Canadian History in the 1990s: Whose "National" History Are We Lamenting?' Journal of Canadian Studies 27, 2 (1992): 129-31;
27. John A. Dickinson, 'Canadian Historians - Agents of Unity or Disunity?' Journal of Canadian Studies 31, 2 (1996): 148-53;
28. Ken Osborne, '"Our History Syllabus Has Us Gasping": History in Canadian Schools - Past, Present, and Future,' Canadian Historial Review 81, 3 (2000): 404-35;
29. A.B. McKillop, 'Who Killed Cnadian History? A View from the Trenches,' Canadian Historical Review 80, 2 (1999): 269-99.
30. Susan Mann Trofimenkoff, The Dream of Nation: A Social and Intellectual History of Quebec (Toronto: Gage 1983), 115-21.
31. Cecilia Morgan, '"Of Slender Frame and Delicate Appearance": The Placing of Laura Secord in the Narratives of Canadian Loyalist History,' in Joy Parr and Mark Rosenfeld, eds., Gender and History in Canada (Mississauga: Copp Clark 1996), 103-19
32. Colin M. Coates, 'Commemorating the Woman Warrior of New France, Madeleine de Verchères, 1696-1930,' in Parr and Rosenfeld, Gender and History in Canada, 120-36
33. H.V. Nelles, The Art of Nation-Building: Pageantry and Spectacle at Quebec's Tercentenary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1999);
34. Veronica Strong-Boag and Carole Gerson, Paddling Her Own Canoe: The Times and Texts of E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake) (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2000), 178-217;
35. Colin M. Coates and Cecilia Morgan, Heroines and History: Madeleine de Verchères and Laura Secord (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2001).
36. See also Adele Perry, On the Edge of Empire: Gender, Race, and the Making of British Columbia, 1849-1871 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2001);
37. Karen Dubinsky, The Second Greatest Disappointment: Honeymooning and Tourism at Niagara Falls (Toronto and New Brunswick, NJ: Between the Lines 1999).
38. Biographical information on J.W. Bengough is taken from Cook, The Regenerators, 123-6;
39. Cumming, Sketches from a Young Country, 26-39;
40. Stanley Paul Kutcher, 'John Wilson Bengough: Artist of Righteousness' (MA thesis, McMaster University 1975);
41. Henry Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of the Time (Toronto: Wm. Briggs 1912), 90-1;
42. Hector Charlesworth, The Canadian Scene (Toronto: Macmillan 1927);
43. W.W. Withrow, 'An Artist of Righteousness: J.W. Bengough, Canadian Caricaturist and Humourous Poet,' Canadian Methodist Magazine and Review 46 (September 1897): 202-16;
44. Fraser Sutherland, The Monthly Epic: A History of Canadian Magazines (Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside 1989), 69-79;
45. Thomas Bengough, 'Life and Work of J.W. Bengough, Canada's Cartoonist, by His Brother,' address to the Bell Club, Toronto, 20 Jan. 1937, J.W. Bengough Collection, box 3, McMaster University Library;
46. J.W. Bengough, Bengough's Chalk Talks (Toronto: 1922), 3-39;
47. J.W. Bengough, 'Recollections of a Cartoonist,' The Westminster, 14, 2 (1909): 73-9; (March 1909): 183-9; (April 1909): 249-55;
48. J.W. Bengough 'Reminiscences of a Chalk-Talker,' The Canadian Magazine, 60, 3 (1923): 295-305;
49. Walter Blackburn Harte, 'Canadian Journalists and Journalism,' The New England Magazine, 5, 4 (1891), 411-41.
50. Withrow, 'An Artist of Righteousness,' 202-16
51. For discussions of masculinity and the gendered language of religion in nineteenth-century Ontario see Cecilia Morgan, Public Men and Virtuous Women: The Gendered Languages of Religion and Politics in Upper Canada, 1791-1850 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996);
52. Lynne Marks, Revivals and Roller Rinks: Religion, Leisure and Identity in Late Nineteenth-Century Small-Town Ontario (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996).
53. For an analysis of social and moral reform in English Canada, see Mariana Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1991).
54. Bengough, 'Reminiscences of a Chalk-Talker,' 298
55. Bengough, Chalk Talks, 11-12
56. Elizabeth Hulse, A Dictionary of Toronto Printers, Publishers, Booksellers and the Allied Trades, 1798-1999 (Toronto: Anson-Cartwright 1982), 20-1, 113; Grip, 8 March 1884
57. Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (reprint; London: Penguin Books 1973), 99. Bengough remained a fan of Dickens's writings for his entire life. For several years he was vice-president of the Dickens Fellowship of Toronto. He also wrote several dramatic plays that were inspired by Dickens's writings. In 1922 the Dickens Fellowship staged Bengough's popular play 'The Trial of Bardell vs. Pickwick.' A memorial cot dedicated to Bengough was endowed at the Toronto Sick Children's Hospital with the proceeds from the performance.
58. See Hector Charlesworth, 'J.W. Bengough: Pioneer Cartoonist,' Saturday Night, 13 Oct. 1923. See Bengough Papers, box 1, McMaster University Archives, for a copy of the manuscript of the play.
59. Bengough, 'Life and Work of J.W. Bengough.'
60. Cumming, Sketches of a Young Country, 26
61. Russell G. Hann, 'An Early Canadian Labour Theorist,' Bulletin of the Committee on Canadian Labour History 4 (autumn 1977): 38;
62. Gregory S. Kealey and Bryan D. Palmer, Dreaming of What Might Be: The Knights of Labor in Ontario, 1880-1900 (Toronto: New Hogtown Press 1987), 303-4;
63. Russell Hann, 'Brainworkers and the Knights of Labor: E.E. Sheppard, Phillips Thompson, and the Toronto News, 1883-1887,' in Gregory S. Kealey and Peter Warrian, eds., Essays in Canadian Working-Class History (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1976), 35-57;
64. Gregory S. Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism 1867-1892 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1980), 273, 275-84;
65. J.W. Bengough, 'Recollections of a Cartoonist,' The Westminster, March 1909, 189
66. Peter Desbarats and Terry Mosher, The Hecklers: A History of Canadian Political Cartooning and a Cartoonists' History of Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart 1979), 239-40
67. Ralph E. Shikes, The Indignant Eye: The Artit as Social Critic in Prints and Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to Picasso (Boston: Beacon Press 1969), xxiv.
68. Nast exposed the group of corrupt officials under Tammany 'Boss' William Marcy Tweed, who had gained control of New York City and milked the treasury for millions of dollars. The Radical Republican Nast became Bengough's 'beau ideal.' Nast created or popularized several of the symbols that became mainstays of contemporary American political culture, including the Republican elephant, the Tammany tiger, the Democratic donkey, the working man's paper cap and dinner pail, the Rag Baby of inflationist sentiment, and the image of the Native 'princess' and the 'squaw.' See Morton Keller, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast (New York: Oxford University Press 1968);
69. Shikes, The Indignant Eye, 311-17;
70. Charles Press, The Political Cartoon (East Brunswick, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press 1981), 24-54, for descriptions of the career of Thomas Nast.
71. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality;
72. Maurice Agulhon, Marianne into Battle: Republican Imagery and Symbolism in France, 1789-1880 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press 1981), 1-10; Grip, 12 July 1890
73. Agulhon, Marianne into Battle;
74. Madge Dresser, 'Britannia,' in Raphael Samuel, ed., Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, vol. 3: National Fictions (London and New York: Routledge 1989), 26-41;
75. Press, The Political Cartoon, 93.
76. Desbarats and Mosher, The Hecklers, 49
77. Peter Bailey, 'Ally Sloper's Half-Holiday: Comic Art in the 1880s,' History Workshop 16, (autumn 1983): 4-31;
78. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian Canada (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1992), 43-4;
79. John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America (New York: Noonday Press 1991), 118
80. See also Raymond N. Morris, Behind the Jester's Mask: Canadian Editorial Cartoons about Dominant and Minority Groups, 1960-1979 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1989), 72.
81. Joy Parr, The Gender of Breadwinners: Women, Men, and Change in Two Industrial Towns, 1880-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1990), 140-2
82. Flapdoodle: A Political Encyclopedia and Manual for Public Men, ed. an Ex-Minister, illus. J.W. Bengough (Toronto 1881), 14, 17, 19.
83. Grace Irwin, Trail-Blazers of American Art (New York: Kennikat Press 1971), 204;
84. Keller, The Art and Politics of Thomas Nast, viii-ix
85. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge 1995), 174-5
86. Grip, 3 Nov. 1883. In 1889 Joseph Keppler protested the dominance of the US Senate by the trusts, by depicting its members as monstrously bloated moneybags. See Kasson, Rudeness and Civility, 195-201.
87. Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1970), 49
88. Mariana Valverde, 'The Love of Finery: Fashion and the Fallen Woman in Nineteenth-Century Social Discourse,' Victorian Studies 12, 2 (1989): 169-88.
89. Palladium of Labor, 13 Sept. 1884, 16 May 1885
90. Bengough, In Many Keys: A Book of Verse (Toronto: Wm. Briggs 1902), 68
91. Bengough's allusion to 'Greater Britain' may have been borrowed from the book by C.W. Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries (1868). In his travel narrative, Dilke refers to the grandeur of the British race, destined, perhaps, eventually to cover the earth. My thanks to Leslie Howsam for the reference.
92. Kealey, Toronto Workers Respond to Industrial Capitalism, 115-23
93. Trofimenkoff, The Dram of Nation, 15-21
94. Parker et al., Nationalisms and Sexualities, 6;
95. Beverly Boutilier and Alison Prentice, eds., Creating Historical Memory: English-Canadian Women and the Work of History (Vancouver: UBC Press 1997)
96. See Beverly Boutilier, 'Women's Rights and Duties: Sarah Anne Curzon and the Politics of Canadian History,' in Boutilier and Prentice, Creating Historical Memory, 51-74.
97. S.A.C., 'The Sweet Girl Graduate,' in J.W. Bengough, ed., The Grip-Sack: A Receptacle of Light Literature, Fun and Fancy (Toronto 1882), 43-54
98. J.S. Bengough, 'Mr Stotenbottel on Woman Suffrage,' in Bengough, ed., The Grip-Sack (Toronto 1883), 53-5
99. Boutilier, 'Women's Rights and Duties,' 65-7.
100. See also Valverde, The Age of Light, Soap, and Water.
101. J.W. Bengough, A Caricature History of Canadian Politics, intro. Rev. Principal Grant (Toronto 1886), x.