“Have your heard the news? Dame Gossip is wed,”
One evil spirit to another said,
“Tell me about it,” the listener cried;
And, in reply, said the friend of the bride;
“She wore Mrs. Envy's garment of green,
And the smile of Malice, that you have seen;
The bridesmaids were Misses Liar and Hate;
No best man was present, sad to state, Who is the groom? Who else can it be But Gossip‘s true love, Sir Devil, he Whom she‘s revered all the days of her life. All hail to Satan, and Gossip his wife!”

DAME GOSSIP’S WEDDING, Maurice Perkins 1


It is interesting how rumors and gossip are personified as female: Madam or Lady Rumor and DAME GOSSIP. Marina Warner attributes the word 'gossip' to meaning 'a baptismal sponsor, godmother or-father' in 1014. By 1362, it came to denote a 'friend' and applied almost exclusively to female friends invited by a woman to the christening of her child. In fact a 'gossiping' is an old word for a christening feast. However she notes that the word gossip has gone into a free fall, and come to mean 'a person, mostly a woman, especially one who delights in idle talk; a newsmonger, a tattler.' 2

“Elisabeth Rasy, the contemporary Italian novelist, offers some pungent observations on the prejudice against the chiachierra, the traditional chatter of women in the street in Italy; gossip carried knowledge of secrets, of intimate matters — including illicit information about sex, contraception and abortion which threatened the official organs of the Church, law and science.” 3

Though this feminine networking of information falls under the term gossip, gossip can also encapsulate societal control of women through group dynamics: the ostracization, the labeling, the 'singling out' and the 'casting aside' of those who did not FOLLOW THE RULES.

"Dame gossip has sent many young lives to perdition after ruining them socially, that might have been BRIGHT STARS in society and a POWER in the world of usefulness HAD THEY BEEN SHIELDED from gossip when they made a mistake." 4

This advertisement for the IDEAL MATERNITY HOME — an illegally run home for unwed mothers in East Chester, Nova Scotia — perfectly illustrates how the owners used the desire of unwed women for secrecy (to avoid the social stigma of illegitimate pregnancies) to their financial advantage. The Youngs were only too aware how much DAME GOSSIP acted as a threat to unwed pregnant women. Disclosure of their secret could mar their future career and marriage prospects and bring SHAME to their families. Nor was abortion an accessible or safe alternative, having minimal public acceptance. 5 Adoption was seen as an acceptable solution to 'a mistake' on one hand, while filling a demand for adoptable babies on the other.

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1 DAME GOSSIP'S WEDDING, Maurice Perkins in The Century; a popular quarterly. Volume 41, Issue 3, The Century Company, New York, Jan 1891 (pp. 480)

2 FROM THE BEAST TO THE BLONDE, Marina Warner, Chatto & Windus, London, 1994 (p. 32)

3 Ibid. (p. 42)

4 SURVIVORS OF DARK EPISODE IN CANADA'S HISTORY TRACE THEIR PAST, Susan K. Livio

5 HISTORY, VALUES, AND PLACEMENT POLICY ISSUES IN ADOPTION, Elizabeth S. Cole and Kathryn S. Donley in Psychology of Adoption, Edited by David. M. Brodzinky & Marshall D. Schechter, Oxford University Press: New York, 1990 (p.285 )

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