{"product_id":"9781442692152","title":"The Age of Light, Soap, and Water: Moral Reform in English Canada, 1885-1925","description":"\"\u003cp\u003eBACK IN PRINT WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe turn of the last century saw a great\u003cbr\u003e wave of moral fervour among Protestant social reformers in English Canada.\u003cbr\u003e Their targets for moral reform were various: sex hygiene, immigration policy,\u003cbr\u003e slum clearance, prostitution, and “white slavery.”\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMariana Valverde's groundbreaking \u003ci\u003eThe Age of Light, Soap, and Water\u003c\/i\u003eexamines the work and the ideas of moralist clergy, social workers, politicians, and bureaucrats who sought to maintain - or create - a white Protestant Canada. The morality idealized by evangelical, feminist, and medical activists was not, as is often assumed, completely repressive and puritanical. On the contrary, the self-defined social purity movement at the centre of this book talked endlessly about sex in order to create a healthy sexuality among both native-born and immigrant Canadians. Sexual health was linked to racial purity, and both of these were in turn linked to efforts to abolish urban slums by means of symbolic as well as physical \"light, soap, and water.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis study uncovers a little known dimension of Canadian social history and shows that moral reform was not the project of a marginal puritanical group but was central to the race, class, and gender organization of modern English Canada.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47123803930864,"sku":"9781442692152","price":33.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781442692152_p0.jpg?v=1763815311","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781442692152","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}