Nelly Mcclung Essay Research Paper NELLIE McCLUNG

Nelly Mcclung Essay, Research Paper

NELLIE McCLUNG

“She was spirited, she was amazing, she was effective,” a few commonly used words to describe Nellie McClung. She was a petit, pretty westerner with strong Christian values and a heart of gold. Nellie spent most of her life as a wife, mother, midwife, teacher, lecturer, legislator and writer. Throughout her long, diverse career she was a potent influence on Canadian society. From a young age Nellie was advanced far beyond her years. She read every book she could get a hold of, knew women should be treated as equals, and that she was against liquor. Nellie knew women deserved more rights and that someday she would devote her life to enforce those rights through activism and literature. “Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known.” While maintaining the role of a mother and writer Nellie was a strong and influential temperance worker and suffragist.

Nellie had a devotion to the significance of family life. As a teen Nellie was taught that a woman couldn’t be a mother and a wife and have a career, and she chose a career. “A woman had to decide early between ambition and family life: there was not so much as a hint that one might hope for both.” While teaching she boarded in with a Pastor and his Family and that is where she met Wes McClung. From the moment she met him she knew he would be her husband. After dating for a while the two got married in 1896. She said it was the best choice she had made. At that point she gave up teaching and learned how to cook and be a wife since a lady wasn’t allowed to be married and a teacher back then. By 1901 Nellie had three kids and motherhood suited her well. Nellie was the typical mother. She spent her days cleaning, baking, taking care of her children and entertaining her neighbours, but that wasn’t enough for Nellie.

I guess I felt like a lot of young mothers, that all children of the world were now my children…I wanted to do something about the inequalities of the world. I wanted to make other women feel their responsibility; organize their instinctive mother love to do away with evils that prey on childhood, like slums, undernourishment, child labour and drunkenness. I felt that women could abolish these if they wanted to. That’s why I started by joining the W.C.T.U. (Womens Christian Temperance Union) (Nellie McClung 1945)

While her children were in their early teens Nellie would tour around Canada and make speeches on temperance. While she was away she had to leave her children with their father and hired help. In those days a wife leaving her young children at home didn’t happen and the public made sure she knew their opinion on the matter with headlines like “Nellie’s Neglected Child.” Nellie never let it upset her, she even found it amusing. Once she caught a man trying to impress a few ladies with a story about how his sister has to watch Nellie’s children because she left them to roam the streets hungry. When the ladies had left Nellie’s reply to the man was “You know its only the truth that hurts, and your conversation didn’t show a trace of truth. It didn’t even impress the women you were talking to.” In her spare time Nellie always wrote. Writing was her first love. It was a way for her to express her self.

When Nellie’s literary education began and she really got into writing she decided she would be a novelist. She started with poems, then short stories, and then novels. Many times Nellie would only be able to fit an hour or two at the end of the day to write and during that time she would write short stories. In 1908 her first short story was published, “Sowing Seeds in Danny.” It became the best seller of the year in Canada, went into seventeen editions and eventually sold over 100, 000 copies. In 1910 she released the sequel, “The Second Chance.” Her success lead to her doing public readings as a money raiser for the W.C.T.U. With being so busy in Politics it took eleven years for her next book to be released. In her writing Nellie was able to voice her views and opinions on how life should be through the characters in her books. In the end she wrote sixteen books and in 1936 and 1937 she released two volumes of collected essays, Leaves from Lantern Lane and More Leaves from Lantern Lane. At least five of her books sold over 25, 000 copies each and it was estimated that her income from the books was close to

$60 000.

At the age of eight Nellie had a bad experience with an alcoholic and that was the start to her hate for the substance. “Back then ladies didn’t drink and their were two type of men the ones that never drank and those who were drunkards. Letitia Mooney, had always held that liquor was the devil’s device for confounding mankind.” Her husband’s mother, Mrs. McClung lead Nellie to the W.C.T.U as a place to conduct her temperance activities. “There we wore badges of membership, and we all took pledges of complete abstinence from alcohol and promised to crusade for prohibition.” Nellies work in the women’s Christian temperance union led her to the Political Equality League, which sought the vote for women in Manitoba.. Nellie felt that when women received the vote, prohibition would follow. Temperance, originally meaning “Moderation, ” by now had the meaning of “Total Abstinence.” The W.C.T.U. not only fought for temperance , but also operated as a place where wo