Evolving Racial Identity and the Consolidation of Men's Authority in Early Twentieth-Century Quebec

This article explores the evolution of ‘racial’ identity in Quebec and the ways in which it was intertwined with considerations about manhood. It suggests that growing concerns about manhood in an urban and industrial environment, coupled with the suspicion that women were turning their backs on motherhood, led some French-Canadian men to redefine their racial identity in ways that would bolster their masculine and patriarchal authority. So long as blood was said to be central to French-Canadian racial identity, women, in their roles as child-bearers, and thus physical reproducers of the race, could expect to exert at least a symbolic influence over the direction of the race. But as traditional gender roles appeared to come under attack in the 1920s and 1930s, some men grew increasingly uncomfortable with the ‘revenge of the cradle’ ideology that tied men's political and economic influence to women's ability to produce as many children as possible. Anxious about becoming too dependent on women's bodies and armed with international developments in race theory, French-Canadian men began to downplay the role that biology played in one's racial identity and to promote a cultural definition of racial belonging. In this way, men diminished women's role in racial regeneration, and in the process regained control over their economic, political, and ‘racial’ destinies.