A Course for Victory: Gender, Class and Nation Depicted Through Food in Chatelaine Magazine

This thesis explores the Canadian experience of the Second World War on the home front through the discourse concerning food that appeared in Chatelaine magazine. It posits that the magazine’s food content variously constructed, defined and contested class and gender identities, and that the war years present an ideal opportunity for understanding how this process took place. Proof of this argument includes analysis of advertisements, recipes, editorial and advice columns, and government propaganda that appeared in the magazine. This weight of textual and illustrative material demonstrates that during the war years an idealized depiction of women’s food roles arose that encouraged the adoption and performative reproduction of food habits most consistently defined by conspicuous production and conspicuous non-consumption. The magazine’s national reach made it the ideal medium for government and corporate actors to communicate to Canadians modern ideas about food that sought to destabilize culturally and geographically distinct local foodways.