Growing a Race : Nellie L. McClung and the Fiction of Eugenic Feminism

Cecily Devereux reconsiders the extent to which McClung's enduring legacy of crusading for women's rights is founded on the ideas of British eugenicists such as Francis Galton and Caleb Saleeby and implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada. In a critical study of Painted Fires, the Pearlie Watson books, and several short stories, Devereux attempts to understand McClung's fiction in terms of its engagement with a politics of "race" and nation and constructions of specifically "racial" impurities that many women saw themselves as uniquely able to "cure." "In recent scholarship, the extent to which Nellie McClung was implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada has created ambivalence around her legacy as one of the most popular figures in early twentieth-century women's rights activism. Cecily Devereux situates McClung's fiction within the context of her social reform work and the ways in which that work can be understood to be broadly eugenic or concerned with the preservation of race."--Résumé de l'éditeur "In recent scholarship, the extent to which Nellie McClung was implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada has created ambivalence around her legacy as one of the most popular figures in early twentieth-century women's rights activism. Cecily Devereux situates McClung's fiction within the context of her social reform work and the ways in which that work can be understood to be broadly eugenic or concerned with the preservation of race."--Jacket

In recent scholarship, the extent to which Nellie McClung was implicated in the passage of eugenical legislation in Canada has created ambivalence around her legacy as one of the most popular figures in early twentieth-century women's rights activism. Cecily Devereux situates McClung's fiction within the context of her social reform work and the ways in which that work can be understood to be broadly eugenic or concerned with the preservation of race.

Growing a Race challenges the traditional reading of the fiction of Nellie McClung (1873-1951), revered author and pioneering feminist, situating it within a discourse of eugenical feminism that sought a racially homogenous "white Dominion." A controversial study of the alleged racism in the fiction of Nellie McClung