"Whate'er the duty of the hour demands": The Work of Middle-Class Women in Halifax, 1840-1880

Abstract

In mid-nineteenth-century Halifax middle-class women performed a variety of work, both inside and outside their homes, and made important contributions to their household economies. Women’s economic contribution has been obscured by the prevailing gender ideology of separate spheres and a legal code which both limited their economic activities and made them nearly invisible to historians. An examination of women’s work and its relationship to gender and class ideology is essential, however, if we are to understand the ways in which women and men collaborated in the formation of the middle class.