Jan Noel. Along a River: The First French-Canadian Women.

It can be a challenge to surmount the image of nineteenth-century women as cosseted, corseted, and confined. When Jan Noel confronted the women of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Great Britain, France, Canada, and the American colonies, she found that while these women did not enjoy equality with men, they were much less confined by a concept of their proper sphere than were their female descendants. They participated in business, property management, and the direction of social institutions. In France and in New France, the particular subject of this book, they enjoyed great civil and property rights within the ancien régime system of clientage politics. It goes without saying that a fur-trade outpost would never have become a settlement colony without women. In the case of Canada, single women sent out by the crown, les filles du roi, played a fundamental role. Some outstanding women who migrated to Canada in the seventeenth century were financially supported by powerful grandes dames in France. Marie de l'Incarnation, founder of the Canadian Ursulines; Jeanne Mance, co-founder of Montréal; Marguerite Bourgeoys, founder of the Sisters of the Congregation; and many hospital nuns established much of the infrastructure of New France. Further, Noel introduces us to women who were active in the import/export and fur trades, the running of sealing stations, a weaving establishment and sawmills, the supply of lumber and foodstuffs to crown enterprises, the building of small ships, and more. Such business opportunities would become closed to women as ancien régime ways faded. This was as late as 1840 in French Canada, much later than in more “advanced” societies. Noel does an outstanding job of placing women in the context of familial fur-trade enterprises and within noble military families, which were themselves enterprises spanning the generations. In both cases, husbands, sons, and brothers were at the colonial periphery, either trading for furs or fighting the enemies of New France or both. A wife with power of attorney could look after the Montréal or Quebec City end of a business and maintain useful connections with influential government officials in Canada and France. The key to trust was family connection, which trumped gender. In such a setting, widows and even single women thrived as businesspersons, estate managers, and lobbyists. Noel provides an example from 1716 of women who were among the signatories of a merchant petition. The social recognition inherent in their inclusion in such a select group is well worth noting. An example of a very successful woman in business is Marguerite Bouat, daughter of a Canadian innkeeper. She married Antoine Pascaud, a French merchant in Canada, in 1697 and as a widow came to run the significant La Rochelle business Veuve Pascaud et fils. While lobbying the high and mighty was not exclusively the domain of Canadian military and noble families, it was especially vital to them. Frequently, it was women who drew the attention of the governor, the intendant, or the minister himself to the merits of male relatives, who were either under arms or ardent for military placement. The prime example is Louise-Elizabeth de Joybert, the Acadian-born daughter of a Canadian mother who became the wife of Governor Philippe de Rigaud de Vaudreuil. She spent much of her life at Versailles, where she represented the interests of her husband and family, proving herself to be an adept at clientage politics. The many illuminating examples of female endeavor in this book can only be hinted at in this short review. The examination of convents and of their perpetuation after 1763 in the face of British laws and prejudices is exceptional. The study of laws of property (which included voting rights) that favored women and that the nineteenth century abolished makes us rethink the rise of liberalism. What one looks for in Along a River is greater attention to class differences. In New France, poor women worked, as poor women still do. Their participation in the public sphere by selling vegetables in the local market, for example, does not seem to differentiate them from women of other chronological periods. Their street demonstrations in Montréal in times of war, on the other hand, may be significant—although in a crisis, societal rules are often momentarily suspended. One looks forward to seeing women's history and a complementary history of the gender construction of men merge into a reconstructed total history. The considerable strides made in the history of women in New France is evident from this well-written book, with many an observation or turn of phrase that will enlighten or provoke a smile.

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