Still the story is not yet completely told, for there were then and have been ever since outlying posts of womanhood in the Dominion, where there has been preserved a certain individuality of type. The Gallic blood runs almost uncontaminated, giving impulse of Gallic thought and custom, in the veins of those who are called the habitants the French-Canadians of olden type. Their very title is suggestive; it tells of "unreconstructed" alliance to the spirit of their original country, that "pleasant land of France." They are but inhabitants, not citizens in truth of the land over which floats the banner of England; they are French at heart as in origin.
So we can still find in Canada an individual type of womanhood, though to do so we must go somewhat far afield. Even so, the type is not of pronounced peculiarity; it touches and even blends with other types of the Latin countries of Europe and meets at certain points even the lines of our own Teutonic culture. But this latter meeting is brought about by circumstances rather than inherent tendency and is not racial. It is indeed a remnant of the old conditions of pioneer life, which imposes upon Latin as well as Teuton certain fixed and imperative needs, to be met only by equally fixed methods.
If we go into the French-Canadian villages, where alone we can find an individual womanhood in the Dominion, we shall find conditions that do not exist in exactly similar form elsewhere, and which have been brought about by racial modification of accepted circumstances. The woman of the habitants is in many respects primitive in the sense of the primitive culture of America while still in its infancy of Caucasian settlement. It is true that with the growth of towns and the development of the railway systems there is constantly coming change in the conditions of the habitants, and that it is becoming more and more needful to extend our pilgrimage to the remoter quarters of the country if we would find the more primitive conditions; but they still exist. Some of these enduring customs are peculiarly connected with womanhood. The use of the loom, for example, is still known in some of the far-away villages of the French-Canadians, and in those villages little is worn that is not the product of home toil. It may be that this is the only quarter of the western hemisphere where the hand loom is not a thing of the past; but here it exists, and with it as its natural accompaniment some of the more old-fashioned traits of womanhood. The wife of the habitant is industrious, thrifty, cleanly, and simple in ideas and manners. She is economical to a degree that is rarely found among the Latin races, and she has other virtues that are not common among those of like racial origin. She is moral and religious; indeed, in the latter quality she may be excessive in one way, being entirely under the dominion of her spiritual pastor. But then she has good reason for this filial obedience, for the relations of the French-Canadian bishop or priest with his flock are in all ways commendable. She is fond of innocent gaiety and not averse to adornment of person when this does not conflict with her love of economy; but when, as sometimes happens, the bishop issues a pastoral in which he commands the relinquishment of certain modes of amusement, such as the waltz, or reprehends certain named frivolities of costume, she abandons the forbidden thing with a quiet obedience which may be unmodern in spirit, but which is pleasant to see in its cheerful submission to an authority which she considers as the highest that can be evoked and one which it were sin to despise or disobey.
The wife of the habitant has also a virtue which is not in high esteem among her sisters of a higher culture, but which is still held in respect among the more primitive communities: she is highly prolific. Families of fifteen children are common among the French-Canadians, and the mother of but a paltry half-dozen feels that she has not done her duty to humanity and her country. Early marriages are the rule among the habitants, being wisely encouraged by the priests in the interests of morality. It is a sociable race, and the women vie with each other in promoting the innocent gaiety which makes up a large part of their lives. Because of this love for social merriment as well as of their religious feeling, the fêtes of the Church are celebrated in French Canada as nowhere else in northern America, and the industry of the women is tempered by the frequent holidays which call for enjoyment. Their dress is as a rule simple and, in the further outlying communities, which are chiefly referred to here, frequently entirely of homespun material, the fruit of their own labors.
One of the chief traits of the French-Canadians, male and female, is their love of music; yet to the cause of music the women of French Canada have furnished but one noted contribution, Madame Albani, the famous opera singer, who owns birth as one of this people, though hardly as a true habitante, in the more limited sense of the word. But music is the greatest passion of the French-Canadians, and the violin holds an honored place in all their communities. It is in the simple pleasure of listening to the music of the violin, or of dancing to its merry strains, that the woman of the habitants finds her chief respite from the toils of her daily life.
Such is the most characteristic type of womanhood of the Canada of to-day. It is a good type and a comely; but it is not fitted to endure before the changes which our present culture brings about where it enters. The habitants form the nearest approach to a peasantry, as found in European lands, that this country can show; and peasantry is doomed to extinction, be it sooner or later. In the case of the simple people of French Canada, it would seem that it will be sooner.
In the history of her women, Canada need veil her face before the claims of no other country of the globe. No land has been graced by nobler types, either by birth or adoption, than the Dominion; yet she has failed to produce a racial type, and it may be that her lot is the happier that it is so. It is enough for her that she can point to such daughters, whether of their own wills or by birthright, as Madame de la Peltrie, Mother Marie Guyard, Jeanne Mance, Marguerite de Bourgeoys, and others who labored in the cause of degraded humanity. With such names inscribed upon her banner, we may well forgive her such as the infamous Angelique de Pean and forget the madness that came upon her when Bigot lorded it in Quebec and virtue and honor were looked upon by most of the women of that city as encumbrances to pleasure or ambition. To-day her women worthily sustain the standard which has been left them as a legacy by their noble sisters of the past; so Canada may well be content in this wise, even though she has furnished no leaders in the march of present-day womanhood toward its desired goal.