1. Objectifs

Intentions :
« This essay aims to offer a more nuanced assessment of the experience of women in New France » (p. 35) through a « [...] study [that] approaches the survival strategies of widows and widowers. » (p. 36)

Questions/Hypothèses :
« What type of mutual assistance was established between widowed person and their children as a function of the sex and age of each during widowhood or widowerhood? What family strategies or sources of assistance were most often resorted to? What does ’gender’ — that is the way in which male and female roles were conceptualized — play in that process? » (p. 35)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
« The marriage contracts of those persons orphaned of either a father or a mother (128 acts) and all the wills, deeds of gift, division of property, and other declarations and agreements involving widows and widowers (155 acts in total, of which 36 deal with widowers) form the basis of the present analysis. » (p. 53) The author used notarial registers from the « Archives nationales du Québec » and family record files taken from the « Registre de population du Québec ancien ». She also used « la banque Parchemin » that contains analytical inventory of the notarial archives of the colony, as well as examined transcripts of the censuses of 1716 and 1744 in Quebec.

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse de contenu

3. Résumé

« During the first half of the eighteen century, very few widows and widowers in the town of Quebec found themselves alone, most sharing their mourning with one or more orphaned children. At times, the presence of these children served as a support network for the surviving spouse, but frequently they posed a problem, as caring and raising them had been a task that had devolved upon the now-departed spouse. Widowers generally found themselves saddled with young children who required a wet nurse or at least a minimum care and attention, and frequently they had young daughters who needed to be instructed in their duties as future mothers and housekeepers. For them, the situation constitute an impasse, because these were tasks explicitly assigned to women. Widows were somewhat better situated to look after the toddlers that nearly half of them had, even though they had to take on the economic and occupational responsibilities attendant upon their new status as head of family. By contrast with widowers, they were often able to turn to a daughter who was old enough to assist them with household tasks, although daughters of marriageable age posed an added burden because widow had to ensure that they were properly established in life. » (p. 51)