Female-Teacher Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Ontario, Canada

[The Romans] created the cult of the Vestal Virgins, high-minded priestesses of the goddess Vesta, Guardian Angel of Mankind and Keeper of the Hearth. These priestesses were educated in special normal training schools, were forbidden to marry, were subjected to drastic moral codes, and were accorded social position of preeminence.Spinster teachers were hired so frequently in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that they eventually became an important part of the cultural landscape.Single women seem forever to unnerve, anger and unwittingly scare large swaths of the population, both female and male.”