THE DOUBLE BED: SEX, HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE AND THE BODY IN POSTWAR ENGLISH CANADA, 1946-1966

View/ Open
Date
2013-12-11Author
Stanley, Heather
Type
ThesisDegree Level
DoctoralMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Sex and sexuality are embodied experiences that are highly constructed by society. Sexual acts are subject to varied historical meanings, both dominant and subversive, which change over time and space. This dissertation explores how embodied heterosexual married sexual experiences were constructed for, and by, women in the immediate postwar era (1946-1966) and how that sexuality interacted with related social paradigms such as gender roles, motherhood, and femininity within English Canada. Using the body as a lens, this dissertation explores how three main sites of authoritative discourse attempted to police postwar sexual bodies through the creation of ideal, or Leviathan, bodies and associated systems of encoded knowledges and mores called “body politics.” The first case study examines the medicalized body, using the Canadian Medical Association Journal demonstrating how mothers were constructed as the keystones of their families; it reveals the intimate ties between familial gender and sexual role deviance and reproductive illnesses in women’s bodies. The second case study examines how the Anglican, United and Roman Catholic Churches reframed sex as sacramental for English Canadian married couples encouraging them to engage in sexual coitus to both strengthen their marriages and renew their spiritual connection to God. The third case study uses I Love Lucy to interrogate how mass media created and reflected postwar sexual and gender norms while simultaneously subverting them, generating a carnivalesque situation of tightly contained deviance. This dissertation then moves on to examine how the discourses of the previous three chapters affected actual women as demonstrated by a series of eighteen interviews with women who married between 1939 and 1966. The oral histories establish that actual corporeal bodies were at best distorted, or “fun house,” mirrors that only ever reflected imperfect copies of the ideal bodies they were supposed to emulate. In addition to making significant contributions to the historiographies of each of the case studies contained therein, this dissertation adds new knowledges about the ways that “normal” bodies work throughout history, creating simultaneous continuity and change, as well as how sexuality and gender norms are intimately connected within the realm of the body.
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)Department
HistoryProgram
HistorySupervisor
Korinek, Valerie J.Committee
Dyck, Erika; Meyers, Mark; Waiser, Bill; Stephanson, Ray; Strong-Boag, VeronicaCopyright Date
November 2013Subject
sexuality
history
gender
history of medicine
history of religion
media history
oral history
femininity
discourse
body
baby boom
Canada
sex
marriage
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Making Histories and Narrating Things: Histories of Handmade Objects in Two Indigenous Communities
MacDonald, Katya Claire 1984- (2017-09-28)Building on and deepening my existing community-engaged research relationships with community members in Sliammon, B.C. and Ile-a-la-Crosse, SK, this dissertation is, as I described it to community members, a history of ... -
At the edge : the north Prince Albert region of the Saskatchewan forest fringe to 1940
Massie, Merle Mary Muriel (2010-12)Canadians have developed a vocabulary of regionalism, a cultural shorthand that divides Canada into easily-described spaces: the Arctic, the Prairies, the Maritimes, and Central Canada, for example. But these artificial ... -
Middle Parks: Development of State and Provincial Parks in the United States and Canada, 1890-1990
DeWitt, Jessica M 1986-; 0000-0003-2725-0563 (2019-03-15)This dissertation is a comparative study of the development of state parks in the United States and provincial parks in Canada from 1890 to 1990. The study focuses on four park system cases studies: Pennsylvania and Idaho ...