Agnes Maule Machar (1837-1927)
MIL OSI Translation. Canadian French to English
Source: Government of Canada – MIL OSI Regional News
An influential social commentator for Victorian Canada, Agnes Maule Machar articulates thoughtful views on a range of social, scientific, and religious topics at a time when women were excluded from most professional and intellectual activities. In penetrating essays she publishes in leading literary journals, she engages key intellectuals on a wide range of topics, advocating for temperance, labor reform, and women's rights, including women's rights. access to higher education. Agnes Machar is a prolific writer. His didactic novels, poems, biographies and historical works are in keeping with his time. She is inspired by her strong commitment to Christian social reform and Canadian nationalism, and produces writings that reflect an imperial sentiment.
Agnes Machar was born on January 23, 1837, in Kingston, Upper Canada. She is the daughter of Dr. John Machar and Margaret Sim. His father co-founded Queen's College, later Queen's University, and was its director from 1846 to 1853. Agnes studied Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, literature , mathematics, drawing, music and science. She also enjoys a lively social environment, her parents receiving political, scientific and literary personalities. As a young woman, Agnes began to participate actively in charitable organizations within ecclesiastical and missionary organizations. Over the course of her career, she has remained faithful to the public cause by being active in the Canadian Women's Press Club, of which she is a founding member, the National Council of Women, and the Young Women's Christian Association.
Agnes Machar began her prolific career as a writer by writing religious materials, including Sunday School, before writing about the Reform movement. A profoundly religious woman of the upper middle class, she avoids, on the advice of her family, the celebrity by first publishing under the pseudonym "Fidelis". Her first novel, Katie Johnson's Cross: A Canadian Tale, was published in 1870. Her growing reputation became a major contributor to leading Canadian intellectual and literary journals. In her essays, she defends Christianity against scientific rationalism, refutes arguments against higher education for women, and is one of the few women to defend in these journals the cause of temperance, which advocates moderate consumption , if not the complete elimination of alcohol in society. Fully committed to the Social Gospel movement, which seeks to apply Christianity to a society in the process of industrialization to remedy all its ills, Agnes Machar uses her pen to propose reforms to alleviate the suffering of the urban poor. to improve the working conditions of women, to recognize workers' organizations and to create charitable organizations.
She writes other books – biographies, stories, historical novels, and poetry – to teach morality to her readers. His patriotic work is guided by his belief that the nation and the British Empire have a high moral purpose. These texts, including Stories of the British Empire (1913), Heroes of Canada (1893) and For King and Country: A Story of 1812 (1874), are representative of imperial sensitivity and Canadian nationalism. She is also committed to environmental causes, her poetry reflecting a dedication to nature that was characteristic of her time.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is a translation. Apologies should the grammar and / or sentence structure not be perfect.