Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
[The Romans] created the cult of the Vestal Virgins, high-minded priestesses of the goddess Vesta, Guardian Angel of Mankind and Keeper of the Hearth. These priestesses were educated in special normal training schools, were forbidden to marry, were subjected to drastic moral codes, and were accorded social position of preeminence.
Spinster teachers were hired so frequently in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they eventually became an important part of the cultural landscape.
Single women seem forever to unnerve, anger and unwittingly scare large swaths of the population, both female and male.”
1 McColley, Walter S. “The Vestal Virgins of Education,“ Clearing House 11 (1936): 195.Google Scholar
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5 It is prudent to focus on the Ontario, Canadian case before larger, international comparisons can be made.Google Scholar
6 The oral history testimony used in this paper is taken from a larger teacher-life history project on Ontario woman teachers completed in the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Rebecca Coulter is the principle investigator and Sheila Cavanagh Helen Harper, Suzanne Majhanovich, Goli Rezai-Rashti, Aniko Varpalotai and Janice Wallace are co-investigators. Over 150 interviews have been completed with retired teachers who worked in both urban and rural school districts across the province, providing an exceptionally rich assortment of interview data on a number of topics relating to teacher life and workGoogle Scholar
7 Overt discussion about (homosexuality and masculine gender identifications by genetic females is often thought by former teachers to be inappropriate and so the interview data used comes from a small minority of teachers who talked openly about gender and sexual identity transgressions. This group of women tended to have personal friendships with former colleagues who were lesbian identified or to have had family members who were homosexual and were, thus, more thoughtful and vocal on the subject. The interview data has been supplemented with archival case studies, professional education and popular magazines articles, teacher federation reports, academic journals, and newspaper reports relating to teacher dismissal to ensure that the oral history testimony is compared to other primary source materials.Google Scholar
8 Vicinus, Martha Independent Women: Work and Community for Single Women 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 289.Google Scholar
9 Blount, “Spinsters, Bachelors, and Other Gender Transgressors in School Employment, 1850–1990,“ 87.Google Scholar
10 “The Woman Teacher in Twentieth-Century Ontario,” [hereafter Woman Teacher] a four-year oral history project, sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, transcripts held by the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.Google Scholar
11 Many women did not adhere to professionally enforced marriage bars and successfully hid their marital unions from school trustees.Google Scholar
12 Vicinus, Independent Women, 42.Google Scholar
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18 Ibid, (ACPID017)Google Scholar
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48 Ibid, (ACPID017).Google Scholar
49 Ibid, (ACPID017).Google Scholar
50 Ibid, (ACPID043).Google Scholar
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85 Ibid, (ACPID052).Google Scholar
86 Ibid, (ACPID004).Google Scholar
87 Ibid, (ACPID004).Google Scholar
88 Ibid, (ACPID005).Google Scholar
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124 Ibid, (ACPID072).Google Scholar
125 Ibid, (ACPID002).Google Scholar
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128 Ibid, (ACPID023).Google Scholar
129 Ibid, (ACPID014).Google Scholar
130 Ibid, (ACPID041).Google Scholar
131 Ibid, (ACPID041).Google Scholar
132 Ibid, (ACPID041).Google Scholar
133 Ibid, (ACPID041).Google Scholar
134 Ibid, (ACPID017).Google Scholar
135 Ibid, (ACPID042).Google Scholar