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Frances Swyripa has written a new kind of history. Wedded to the Cause attempts to the bridge the gap between immigration history and gender history. In this book, Swyripa has embarked on a journey of perceptions of Ukrainian women held by the greater Anglo-Canadian society. Her main thesis explores the "impact of Ukrainian Canadians' self-image as Canadians and their continued involvement with Ukraine on one segment of the group--women." This study does not do actual Ukrainian women's history in the traditional sense: we are not told a story of these women's lives. Instead, Swyripa uses a "top down" approach to show how Ukrainian women were depicted and what they were thought of by the greater Anglo-Canadian society and by the different Ukrainian immigrant political factions, the nationals and the progressives.
The first two chapters of Wedded to the Cause deal with the negative stereotypes of immigrant peasant women. The peasant woman was viewed as unassimilable, unfeminine, and as the most backward element of the Ukrainian community. These views were held by the dominant culture, the Ukrainian community elites,...