“Luxury that has Grown Among the Women”: Rural Catholic Women, Daily Life, and Devotional Labor in the Pre-Confederation Canadian Maritimes

Abstract This article examines the day-to-day religious lives of Roman Catholic laywomen in the pre-Confederation Canadian Maritimes. Historical scholarship on the religious experiences of Atlantic Canadian women has been sparse and has addressed Protestants more often than Catholics. The rural Catholic Acadian laywomen of this study were builders of their spiritual experiences in both the private sphere of the home and the public sphere of the church. Using the concepts of devotional labor and lived religion, this article foregrounds women’s material production and healing practices. I examine in close detail women from two parishes in southwestern Nova Scotia for which records survive. Women there influenced public experiences of worship by creating or obtaining the materials necessary for liturgical observances. Some laywomen were midwives and, in the frequent absences of priests, regularly baptized newborn children. All these women made do with their less-than-perfect circumstances, working to reconstruct their community’s spiritual integrity during a tenuous period of resettlement following the Acadian deportation.