The Personal Is Political Analysis

The state plays a significant role in controlling and regulating women’s reproductive healthcare. The idea of “the personal is political” as a key feature of feminist politics is discussed in depth in Connell’s article. Connell mentions that the idea of the personal is political is “a link between personal experience and power relations,” these power relations can be found in personal life and matters that can be considered as private such as child rearing and reproduction. Connells idea of power relations controlling the private matters of citizens of the state is an important theme in this novel. Midwifery in the novel is a traditional means by which the majority of the women chose to deliver their children. Dr. Thomas is a male doctor working

for the state, who works tirelessly to convince the women of Scots Bay to deliver their children in the vicinities of his hospital, rather than allowing them to make their own personal judgement on what they would like to do about their reproductive health. The men in this novel hold an overwhelming amount of power over the women, the most obvious example of power struggle in this novel is between the state sponsored Dr. Thomas and Dora, a young female midwife. Sexuality for Connell is “organized by gender relations, and “sexual politics” is the contestation of issues of sexuality by the social interests constituted within gender relations” Connell’s idea of sexual politics is a crucial theme in this novel, because women’s reproductive health is a social interest for women, and is controlled by the state furthermore Dr. Thomas is working for the state to exert his control to end midwifery in the community. Dr.

Thomas is sent by the state to put an end to midwifery in the community, and turn women’s private sexual matters, particularly their reproductive health over to the state where it can be controlled and regulated. Kinsman points out the ways in which the state exerted their control over women’s sexual politics. He states that “state agencies, religious leaders, and many male workers all played a role in creating the image of the immoral women who worked outside the home. This provided justification for “protective” legislation – keeping women from competing with men in certain job categories, usually in the skilled and better paid areas” (Kinsmen 3) This can be seen directly in the character of Dr. Thomas, a doctor sponsored by the state, who views Dora and Ms Babineau as direct competition in his job as a doctor. Dora’s husband Archer even tries to get her to quit work and fulfill her obligations as a wife. According to Kinsman, sex and preproduction has been regulated in Canada throughout history, and the emerging idea of the Canadian nation brought an increase in interest for reproduction. Specifically because there was a 30% decline in birthrates at the

time. Women were having abortions, controlling their own reproduction and the state viewed this as an invasion of their obligations to make the state grow. Kinsman mentions the social purity movement as a campaign to raise the moral tone, a way that the state could pressure heterosexual women into engaging in reproductive sex while discouraging ‘sexual immorality’ in the state.

Kinsman describes this movement by stating that “Initiatives were launched against birth control and to get women out of the paid work force and into the home and institutionalized motherhood” (Kinsman 4) According to Kinsman “The purity movement – moral reformers, clergymen, doctors and members of the national council for women- focused their campaigns on the “social evil” usually referring to female prostitution but often referring to sexual immorality in general – masturbation, possibly same sex-gender sex, sex outside marriage as well as male sexual violence against women,” he adds that “the social purists advocated the prohibition of all non-matrimonial and non-reproductive sex” (Kinsman 7) It’s clear that social purists would have been opposed to any form of a women’s control over her own reproductive health, whether that be access to contraceptives to giving birth which midwifes were specialized in doing. The purity movement and the effects of religious institutions are made very apparent in this novel, and the church plays a central role for the women in the

community. Dr. Thomas, uses the church to convince the community to stop using midwifes and go to his hospital to give birth. McKay makes sure to show her readers that while this movement played a role in poorer, rural, religious communities, women were secretly engaging in the kinds of sexual immorality that were being frowned upon. Aunt Fran, the leader of the church’s White Rose Temperance society ends up engaging in non-matrimonial sex and even receives an abortion, the women who are members of the church jump at the opportunity to take Dora’s birth control, called “tea with mitts” so that they can engage in non-reproductive sex, and Grace Hunter is actively engaging in non-marital sex throughout the novel. While the state is actively trying to control women’s reproductive health care through the social purity movement Mackay demonstrates in her novel that the women involved and directly impacted by the movement are still using the midwife as a means of taking control of their own bodies, thus proving the midwife to be a threat to the state. Another way in which the state is able to control sexual politics is through repression, a technique that Foucault describes in his History of Sexuality.