PRICE COMPETITION
Of Heathens and Heroines: Constructions of Gender and Empire
in the Woman's Foreign Missionary Press, 1869-1895
Submitted to the
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
History Division
National Convention
August, 1997
Chicago, Illinois
by
Janet M. Cramer
Ph.D. student
University of Minnesota
111 Murphy Hall, 206 Church St. SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Ph: 507-583-2717
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Of Heathens and Heroines /
PRICE COMPETITION
Of Heathens and Heroines: Constructions of Gender and Empire
in the Woman's Foreign Missionary Press, 1869-1895
At their annual meeting in 1895, the women of the Woman's Foreign Missionary
Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church discussed whether to change the name
of their publication. At issue was the deletion of the word `heathen'. First
published in 1869, Heathen Woman's Friend was intended to provide "interesting
facts and incidents illustrating that [missionary] work furnished by those
laboring in heathen lands."[1] By 1895, however, some women in the organization
found the use of the term `heathen' objectionable. An alternate title of Woman's
Missionary Friend was suggested that would "retain the popular part of our
former name" but would avoid the "misnomer" that was considered a "hindrance" to
missionary work. The board was divided. Nearly half opposed the name change and
wanted to keep "the name that expresses so much and which is freighted with such
sacred associations." To change the name would be "unwise" and "work injury to
the [missionary] cause," these women argued.[2] After nearly 30 years, the
women of the Methodist Episcopal Church were questioning the use of a derogatory
term to describe women in other countries. Prior to 1895, the title, based on a
contradictory premise of superiority and friendship, was considered natural and
appropriate.
While missionary women called women in other countries "heathens," they
referred to themselves as heroines of a noble cause. Mrs. Frank Butler, editor
of Woman's Missionary Advocate, another Methodist Episcopal women's missionary
publication, wrote that her publication existed "to call attention to the great
fact that Christian women are trying to educate and bring to the knowledge of
Christ the women in heathen lands. It is calling to the women of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, and trying to prove to them ... that [they] are capable
of ... heroic endeavor."[3] The debate over the descriptive term `heathen' in a
publication of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal
Church coupled with the repeated assertions of missionary women's "heroism" and
other exalted qualities, highlights questions of women's role and images of
women in other countries. Such issues are at the heart of this study.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States was undergoing massive
sociocultural and political change reflected in social movements and debates
across all sectors of society. Central to this study are the debates over
woman's role in society and the role of the United States in the balance of
worldwide power. That is, two significant ideologies were in flux in the final
decades of the nineteenth century -- gender ideology and ideologies of nation,
specifically national expansion in the form of imperialism. The term "gender"
is used here to denote the socially constructed nature of gender roles where
social and cultural relations construct the meanings and definitions of these
roles. While such constructions are significant in themselves, they acquire
additional relevance when situated within an analysis of larger sociopolitical
power structures. The terms "imperialism" and "empire" are used interchangeably
in this study to refer to ideas and actions founded on one country's presumed
superiority over another as manifest in military, economic, or ideological
aggression. The desire to convert so-called "pagan" countries to Christianity
was, and is, a form of ideological aggression related to a sense of
internationalized Manifest Destiny and is thus associated with the ideas and
values of economic or political imperialism. This study is concerned with ideas
of empire as well as ideas of gender, as reflected in women's activities in the
church during the final decades of the nineteenth century.
During these years, women were emerging in greater numbers in public and
political spaces, seeking to transform politics and society on a variety of
levels, through suffrage agitation, temperance crusades, labor unions, women's
clubs, and in the church.[4] One arena in which women made a significant
contribution was the foreign missionary movement. Following the Civil War,
between 1868 and 1873, women founded their own foreign mission organizations,
which, though fragmented into different denominations, formed the largest
women's movement in the late nineteenth century.[5] Moreover, these missionary
groups actively used their publications to inform their membership, recruit new
members and inculcate a body of beliefs and values central to the missionary
effort.
The purpose of this research is to examine the role of women's missionary texts
in the construction of a gender ideology that may be linked to imperialist
thought and action: How are the ideologies of gender and empire linked and how
are they mutually reinforced and sustained? The interrogation of either
ideological formation requires inquiry into its overlap with the other,
especially if such inquiry reveals the origins and subsequent naturalization of
these formations; according to Anne McClintock, "No social category should
remain invisible with respect to an analysis of empire."[6]
THE WOMAN'S FOREIGN MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
Although missionary efforts had been established in denominations earlier in
the century, it was only after the Civil War that women split to form their own
missionary organizations.[7] Despite men's early involvement in the formation of
mission groups and their efforts at suppressing women's leadership, by 1870,
women comprised most of the staff of many foreign mission societies, and had
formed their own denominational boards independent of men's organizations.
Women's prominence in the church was not a phenomenon that emerged only from
conditions in the mid to late nineteenth-century. Rather, it reflected the
continued emergence of feminine identification with religion, a process that
began after the American Revolution. According to historian Barbara Welter, U.S.
society increasingly divided along gender lines, with men assuming roles in
politics and business, and women as custodians of the home, morality, and
religious institutions.[8] Precursor and legacy of this split was a continued
division between the `hard' business of politics and commerce, and the `softer'
rewards of spirituality. Human agency and the drive to succeed were
counterweighted with submissiveness to divine power. Thus, weakness, morality,
charity and submission became both cornerstones of religiosity and exalted
feminine character. Religion and a particular brand of femininity reinforced
each other as "women ... took Christianity and molded it to their image and
likeness."[9] With their now `naturalized' and divinely-inspired inclination for
such service, women increasingly entered -- then led -- missionary endeavors,
effectively managing their own organizations, administering programs, collecting
funds, recruiting personnel, managing overseas operations, and publishing
mission newspapers.[10]
Due to a belief in the transformative potential of a text, missionary
publications were credible and meaningful vehicles.[11] In addition, the
publications were disseminated not only to subscribers, but also to participants
of religious reading and study groups. Consistent with their view that the act
of reading had a powerful impact on readers, many denominations and mission
organizations used reading programs as a means of education and included
religious newspapers and periodicals as part of a scheduled reading and study
plan.[12] Women's mission organizations published newspapers and other
literature to provide study materials for their membership. An organization's
newspaper was intrinsic to its operation, and readings from it were integrated
into mission meetings in the form of group study.[13] Harriet Merrick Warren,
editor of Heathen Woman's Friend, informed her readers that copies of that paper
would be furnished gratuitously to any society that needed them for special
meetings focused on its content or to any organization seeking to secure regular
subscribers to the publication.[14]
At the end of the nineteenth century, when women were redefining their roles in
social life, the United States was considering its role in the worldwide balance
of power, a debate that heightened at century's end with involvement in the
Spanish American War. Although Great Britain was considered the preeminent world
power in global political and economic relations, U.S. leaders sought productive
trade relations and political alliances through an international policy
influenced by the non-interference mandate of the Monroe Doctrine and the Open
Door policy that encouraged economic exchange advantageous to both importing and
exporting countries. Even though U.S. leaders preferred harmonious commercial
relations rather than "hazardous colonial acquisitions," they intervened
directly when economic interests were threatened, either by local insurgencies
or perceived violations of U.S. property rights in other countries, creating
rationale for more direct intervention and an internationalized manifest destiny
that suffused U.S. actions with the religious ideals of evangelism and
salvation.[15] The zeal to conquer, the energy to expand and the desire to
convert `others' to a better standard of life (measured in U.S. terms) was
reflected on many levels of U.S. life, including the missionary impulse. Thus,
missionary women were integral to two contested and changing ideologies -- the
ideologies of gender and nation -- that may have reinforced and sustained one
another but that were in formation and transformation at the close of the
nineteenth century.
CULTURE AND `PRODUCTIVE DISCOURSE'
Questions concerning the role of missionary texts in the construction of
ideologies of gender and empire require examination of these texts through a
conceptual lens derived from cultural studies of the media as well as colonial
discourse theory. Explication of specific themes used in this analysis are
described below, but conceptually, colonial discourse theory provides an
apparatus for uncovering the discursive strategies and conventions that
reinforce the idea of one nation's superiority over another. This ideological
function of texts is further reinforced by the notion that texts possess a
productive power through their presentation of a particular range of discourse.
In other words, media texts, through the selection and presentation of
information, perform an ideological function. Moreover, this repetition of
themes and ideas contributes to hegemony, whereby such ideas are accepted as
commonsensical.
Examination of the ideological and hegemonical role of media texts derives from
a critical cultural perspective of media discourse whereby media texts are
conceived as intertwined with sociocultural realities, shaping ideas of a
culture and of the world.[16] This study focuses on women's publications as
equally indicative of, and imbricated in, both women's culture and U.S. culture.
Among publications produced by women, for women, missionary publications enjoyed
a substantial circulation, and, as described above, these periodicals were
central to the missionary movement, instilled as a form of group study, and
freely distributed to any organization that used them for study purposes. Thus,
missionary periodicals exemplify the relationship between culture and media and
provide source material for uncovering links between media texts and ideas
prevalent in a given culture.
Critical cultural analyses of women's publications from the nineteenth century
are needed. Although some studies have examined how the content and format of
women's periodicals constructed and transmitted certain ideologies of womanhood,
research on publications from this time period has been conceptualized primarily
in terms of social movement theory; that is, these publications have been
considered in terms of their contribution to the sustenance and promotion of a
particular social movement, especially the suffrage movement.[17] Colonial
discourse and its ideas of empire have been noted in mainstream newspapers of
the late nineteenth century,[18] but the role of women's publications in this
construction has been unexplored. This study assumes that women were active
agents in the creation of ideologies of nation and national expansion; moreover,
it is assumed that evidence of this may be sought in the publications that
provided "social knowledge" for women in a way the mainstream publications of
their day did not.[19] It is significant that women in the missionary movement
crafted ideas of themselves and of their role in the church and society as they
related to women in other countries. But the women's foreign missionary press
has not been studied as a formative force in the creation of a gender ideology
and in ideologies of empire.
Women's missionary publications need to be examined for their role in
constructing a particular ideology of womanhood and as forms of colonial
discourse. As stated earlier, however, the purpose of this research is not to
locate the repetition or reinforcement of ideologies of empire (as would be
expected in a missionary publication), but to trace how these ideas may be
linked to ideas of womanhood -- that is, how is colonial discourse intertwined
with prescriptions of gender ideology in these publications?
METHOD
In order to explore a link between a particular gender ideology and imperialist
ideology, the themes and discursive strategies employed in support of these
ideologies must be uncovered. Discourse is defined here as not only the textual
elements but also the social context in which they are uttered or produced and
where the production of meaning occurs. As Ernesto Laclau has defined the
discursive, it is "[not] conceived as a level nor even as a dimension of the
social, but rather as being co-extensive with the social...."[20] In addition,
discourse is conceived in a post-structuralist sense that describes its function
in the social construction of ideas and sociocultural phenomena.[21] Discourse
is then related to ideological formation, whereby texts disseminated and
consumed in a social context produce, define, or recreate a system of ideas and
meanings. Discourse analysis is a method that studies the ideological
underpinnings of a text by identifying recurring patterns in discourse, such as
the repetition of certain themes, phrases, rhetoric and so on.[22] This
discursive arena provides the boundaries and limits within which certain ideas
are expressed, and a given text is ideological to the extent that it conforms to
a particular set of themes -- what Michel Foucault calls "discursive formations"
and Stuart Hall defines as a "field of meanings."[23]
Colonial discourse theorists have identified discursive strategies -- or a
discursive arena -- that reinforce attitudes of dominance and subjugation. For
instance, Edward Said has noted that the process of identity formation or the
existence of an ideological, hegemonic, colonial discourse is a form of
projection, whereby qualities of oneself are displaced onto another, so that as
identity is crafted it produces a self-supporting discourse as well as a
discourse of the `other'. Said's concern is how representations of the Orient
reflect and reproduce the political and social systems in which they are
embedded, thus revealing how Orientalist discourse is more about the Western
mind than it is about the Orient. The "real" Orient is excluded in favor of a
representation that reproduces Western thought and power: "One ought never to
assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more than a structure of
lies and myths.... Orientalism is more particularly valuable as a sign of
European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is a veridic discourse about the
Orient."[24] Orientalist discourse, then, is produced in support of Western
culture at the price of excluding the `Oriental other'.
This notion of an `other' against which one is defined is central to colonial
discourse theory as framed by theorists such as Homi K. Bhabha, Ernesto Laclau,
Slavoj Zizek and Gayatri Spivak.[25] Bhabha draws on Jacques Lacan's idea of
the "Imaginary" as a product of the "mirror stage" of development whereby one
forms an ideal image of oneself, an image that, as a reflection, is both outside
of oneself but also reflects one's essence. As a result, a contradiction of
identification and alienation is imbued in this stage. Bhabha applies Lacan's
Imaginary to an analysis of colonial discourse, where identity is formed through
the image of an `Other,' outside oneself but also a projection of oneself
resulting in discursive constructions that are based on, and that reinforce, the
"recognition and disavowal of racial/cultural/historical differences."[26]
Bhabha identifies a four-part strategy in colonial discourse that incorporates a
mixture, or contradiction, of pleasure/displeasure, attraction/repulsion,
equivalence/difference, and so on. Therefore, what is postulated is that
colonial discourse incorporates, reproduces and reflects this notion of an
outside that is both attractive and a source of pleasure and mastery, yet
something to be abhorred and rejected.
Feminist theorists have been critical of theories that posit such dualistic
antagonism and erasure of the other as only constitutive of the colonizing
subject.[27] For instance, Gayatri Spivak is concerned about the "historically
muted" subaltern, a muting that occurs in the act of representing women in other
countries.[28] Indeed, analyses of colonialist rhetoric have identified
strategies by which this muting occurs as well as strategies that reflect the
contradictory states of attraction and repulsion that Bhabha identifies.[29]
The concern here is whether the content of women's missionary publications
conformed to colonial discourse themes and how a particular ideology of
womanhood was intertwined or incorporated with these themes. Four themes,
derived from colonial discourse theory and the studies of colonialist rhetoric
cited above, were used in this analysis: exploration, domestication, evaluation,
and exaltation. The themes represent rhetorical or discursive strategies that
perpetuate the idea of one nation's superiority over another, as well as notions
of an `other' against which self/nation is defined. Each thematic category is
described below, including examples of discourse that would be classified as
supporting each theme.
The theme of exploration refers to images and ideas related to the myth of
empty, open lands to explore and conquer, and of a people waiting for, or
needing, salvation. It is also related to "the gaze" of a colonizer. As David
Spurr writes, "The gaze makes possible an understanding of the non-Western world
as an object of study, an area for development, a field of action."[30] For
example, the following quote illustrates the use of exploration rhetoric: "[A]s
the South, and the East, and the isles of the sea have come within the range of
our vision, as there dawns upon our waking senses a realization of the fact that
eight hundred and fifty-six millions of human souls [sic] are wandering in
spiritual darkness ... our hearts are growing world-wide, and would clasp these
millions...."[31]
The domestication theme incorporates ideas and images of domestic purity,
including an abhorrence of dirt and filth as well as attitudes that nature must
be controlled and harnessed for human use. Anne McClintock, for instance,
analyzes the commodification of soap as a symbol of colonization. She observes
that the word "domesticate" is linked to the word "dominate" and so locates
domesticity as a marker that points to "social relations of power."[32] This
theme is evident in this description of the zenana, a segregated living space
for women in India: "One would scarcely have the heart to confine a respectable
dog in such wretched quarters.... How impossible to describe anything so gloomy
and horrible, so shockingly disgusting. ... Three small rooms opened into a
little filthy court."[33]
Evaluation is the act of classifying people in other countries along a
hierarchical continuum of civilization and savagery. This may result in
condemnation of a particular behavior perceived as savage or it may be indicated
in the celebration of behavior that reflects Western ideals. It is a discursive
strategy, as Spurr points out, dependent on a ranking that conforms to the logic
of the dominant power and that affirms one's own cultural values and
structures.[34] The example is taken from an article where a missionary woman
describes her frustration at teaching an Indian woman the skill of knitting and
delight at the "bright-eyed" women who learn the skill:
"The natural indolence of the Indian woman, with habits of
idleness, prevent unaided application of her mind to searching out
the principle of any new work. ... So, though we may show and explain
patiently twenty times a piece of knitting ... the next week we find
the needle rusting in the last stitch we saw finished [the week
before]. ...
I delight to visit ... a group of bright-eyed women, who have
won my heart by their gentle, pleasant manners, eagerness and aptness
to learn. ... Some of them ... have been so diligent and patient with
their knitting."
The theme of exaltation refers to one's own self-aggrandizement. Notions of
superiority are included in this theme as well as the attendant fear that comes
from seeing the Other as a threat to that superiority.[35] An example:
"`Woman's work for women,' in its missionary significance, develops and
engrosses every high and holy impulse belonging to womanhood."[36]
Using these themes as a lens, the colonial discourse of the `other' in women's
foreign missionary periodicals may be categorized and analyzed with respect to
ideas of gender. The study includes the missionary publications of the Methodist
Episcopal Church: Heathen Woman's Friend and Woman's Missionary Advocate. The
Methodists were the largest group within the women's foreign missionary
movement. After its first year of operation, the Woman's Foreign Missionary
Board of the Methodist Church had 218 societies and nearly 6,000 members; by
1895, they had a combined membership of 150,000, and fifteen years later, that
number rose to 267,000.[37] Although the Methodists served several countries
(such as China, India, Africa and Mexico) and areas within the United States,
this study focused specifically on China and India. The content of 197 issues,
from the years between 1869 and 1895,[38] was categorized according to the above
themes in order to answer the following research questions:
1. What are the ideas and images of U.S. women in these publications?
2. What are the ideas and images of Chinese and Indian women in these
publications?
3. How are these ideas and images conveyed with respect to the colonial
discourse themes of exploration, domestication, evaluation and exaltation?
A discursive analysis of these texts accomplishes the main purpose of this
study: interrogating the role of the women's missionary press in the
construction of a gender ideology that may be linked to an ideology of empire.
FINDINGS
Content in the two missionary publications studied did conform to colonial
discourse themes, with exaltation being the most frequent theme invoked and
domestication the least frequent. Through the use of these themes, missionary
women crafted a gender ideology suited to their missionary role and that
justified their efforts at converting women in other countries to Christianity.
In other words, the gender ideology of missionary women was infused with the
religious mission of evangelism. The keynote of the missionary movement's gender
ideology was the heavy emphasis on religious doctrine and the divine mandate and
sanction of a particular role for women. Necessarily, in support of this
self-image, missionary women crafted images of women in other countries based on
perceptions of their degradation, their heathen religious practices, and the
evil of social customs that kept women secluded and therefore prevented them
from realizing their true destiny as women through religious, moral and social
influence on others. Religiosity infused the ideology of womanhood: a
missionary's concern for the salvation and uplift of women in other country
cemented the links between gender ideology and the ideological expansion of
Christianity and, thus, between gender and ideas of imperialism and empire.
Exploration
The exploration theme was conveyed in a variety of ways, through seed and
planting images and in rhetoric that presented native lands as "wide open" to
missionary conquer. Butler frequently wrote editorials presenting the missionary
conquest: "The whole world has opened its gates, and Christianity is marching in
with steady steps," and "This is the true mission-work, at home or abroad. It
comprehends within its scope the whole world as its object."[39] Images of
planting and harvesting were also used: missionaries "plant a vital force in the
midst of heathenism," and "heathen lands" were depicted as "fields ... ripe for
the harvest."[40] Women missionaries were praised for their roles in an
enterprise that would "conquer the world for Christ."[41] In passages such as
these, the people of China and India are portrayed as available subjects for the
missionary project of conversion.
The women's missionary societies saw their mission of Christian conversion as a
form of "progressive Christianity," akin to nationalist ideals founded on a
principle of expansion. At the close of the nineteenth century, historians,
notably Frederick Jackson Turner, were proclaiming that the United States was
able to realize progress because it was able to expand westward. In other words,
the acquisition of new territory secured for the country its democratic nature
and its future.[42] This "manifest destiny" became internationalized at the end
of the century, and missionary women subscribed to the belief that the United
States would find its new frontier in the missionary activity in foreign lands.
Seeing themselves as an extension of the country, missionary women believed
their work would only thrive "while it advances," and that "forward movement"
would be realized in obeying "God's holy command to `go and teach all
nations'."[43] Such beliefs are consistent with messages of exploration, and
therefore, of empire.
In the format of the missionary publications a sense of exploration is conveyed
as well. The content of these publications included reports of the missionary
societies, editorials, pleas for funds and new recruits, and letters from
missionaries in the field. These accounts convey a sense of exploration through
the technique of "the gaze," whereby missionaries send reports of their travels
to U.S. readers, imparting themselves with the authority of an omniscient
observer. These accounts served to create a "definition of reality" for
supporters of the missionary cause who remained in the United States. As Tony
Bennett observes, this power of defining reality "is attributable largely to the
service [a publication] perform[s] in making us the indirect witness to events
of which we have no first-hand knowledge or experience."[44] The exploration
theme is evident in Heathen Woman's Friend and Woman's Missionary Advocate in
the sense that their content, through use of `the gaze', defined `reality' and
spoke with authority on matters of the church, foreign lands, missionaries and
the religious nature of women.
Domestication
The domestication theme was the least represented of the four themes used in
this analysis. Women missionaries placed more emphasis on the role of women in
society (categorized as `evaluation' and `exaltation') rather than on distinctly
domestic injunctions. References to filth and darkness, however, do predominate
in the discourse, thus echoing McClintock's observations regarding support for
the imperialist effort through the analogy of soap as a cleansing influence in
dirty/impure countries.[45] Instead of soap, however, missionary women
proclaimed themselves and their religion as the cleansing and brightening
influence to the "night of heathenism," "darkened souls" and the "filth" of
harem life and other Chinese and Hindu customs.[46] Women missionaries used
such images to distinguish themselves from native women. For instance, Elsie
Maude Sites, a missionary to China wrote of the "heathenism" and the "low, dark
houses" in the "filthy streets" of China, but she kept herself removed and
privileged to what she witnessed by assuring readers that in traveling to these
places, she, "of course, rode in a sedan chair carried upon the shoulders of
chair-bearers, or coolies."[47]
References to filth and impurity were also used to justify the establishment of
The Woman's Friend, a publication distributed in four Indian languages to women
in zenanas -- segregated living areas for women in India. Upon teaching Indian
women to read, missionary women decreed that these women be supplied with
"appropriate" reading material as an alternative to the "filthy and impure"
literature previously available to them. The Woman's Friend was hailed as "pure
literature" and a "light [that] shall shine ... until all India is lit up by the
very light of heaven."[48] By using images of filth or dirt to support the
infusion of missionary literature into Indian zenanas as a cleansing presence,
missionary women were invoking images of domestication as domination.
Evaluation
Upon traveling to other lands to convert `heathen women,' missionary women
discovered practices and customs that appalled their sense of true, Christian
womanhood. Idol worship, "superstitions," and the seclusion of women in harems
and zenanas were frequent targets.[49] Idol worship and superstitions were seen
as directly counter to Christian teaching and thus received ample criticism. The
seclusion of women was contraposed to education and a belief that women should
be present in a society in order to exert a beneficial influence. Indeed,
positive evaluations were given native women who were educated, who could read
and write, and who had, through Christian example, encouraged others in their
homes or social circles to convert to Christianity. Moreover, education was
praised as creating "desirable wives and mothers."[50] If, as Spurr suggests,
such evaluations reinforce the values and logic of the dominant nation, then
these evaluations suggest an ideology of womanhood based on the virtue of
education and the power of woman's influence, specifically on the home front.
This is particularly evident when evaluations of women in other countries are
compared to the qualities exalted in women missionaries, described in the
section below.
The evaluations most often noted of missionary women toward women in other
countries are criticisms of vapidity or laziness, the oppression and seclusion
of women, religious practices, women's clothing, and the use of adornments such
as jewelry, which was observed to be excessive. The dress of Indian and Chinese
women was described in detail, especially the jewelry. Usually, after writing
about the profusion of bracelets and nose rings, missionaries implored U.S.
women to be more modest in clothing and accessories, exhorting them to use their
money in support of the missionary cause instead: "If Christian women would lay
aside this custom, borrowed from the heathen, of making a display of silver and
gold, how much money they might save to aid in efforts for the redemption of
their lost sisters in heathen lands."[51]
The seclusion of women was fiercely criticized as missionaries determined that
such seclusion prevented a woman's education and, therefore, her conversion and
ultimate influence on her country. Often included in this condemnation were
criticisms of male privilege and cruelty: "Among the higher castes, women spend
their time, apart from what is devoted to their husbands and household duties,
in listless idleness, rendered painful ... by the narrow seclusion into which
they are thrust."[52] Indian women in zenanas were said to be "in a state of
perpetual childhood," and in this "social inferiority" and "total ignorance,"
"everything noble and pure in her character" had been "destroyed."[53] Chinese
women in harems were described as being in a state of "imprisonment."[54]
Husbands were depicted as indifferent or unconcerned, at best, and, at worst, as
cruel, violent and oppressive. Often, a curious woman was contraposed with her
domineering husband. One Indian woman was reported to have told a missionary
that she condemned the custom of living in seclusion, but that if she broke the
custom, it would disgrace her husband.[55] Husbands were "not to be trusted"
and could disrupt a missionary's work, according to a missionary who wrote that
a woman in India was "much interested" in her Christian teachings, but the
lessons were interrupted by the arrival of the woman's husband.[56]
Criticisms of a woman's ignorance or laziness were often used to support the
need for education, both for women in other countries and for women in the
United States. Anger over the seclusion of zenanas and harems was motivated by a
belief in the value of education. If women were secluded, they could not be
taught, hence the attacks on "ignorance" and "darkness of mind." An article that
praised the education of women in India as opening "the dungeons" and lifting
"countless millions of ignorant women from the pit of degradation," was
accompanied by an article on missionary reading circles and the importance of
education for U.S. women.[57] Thus, the rhetoric of evaluation is used not only
to disparage customs and lifestyles of women in other countries, but as Spurr
maintains, to reflect and reinforce one's own values and beliefs as well.
Exaltation
Whether to uplift themselves, to convince the men of the Methodist Church
hierarchy of their suitability for missionary work, or to raise money and
recruit converts, missionary women were skilled at the art of self-exaltation.
Of the four themes, exaltation was the most frequent rhetorical strategy.
Missionary women exalted themselves in their "women's work for women," in their
religious superiority (both as compared to women in other countries and to men
in the missionary effort), in their expressions of true love and altruism, and
in their sacrificial surrender and devotion to Christ's work. Missionary women
compared themselves to women of the Bible and thus presented themselves as
chosen and blessed. They described their service to women in other countries as
a form of love and proclaimed themselves the "noblest women of the land."[58]
The most frequent use of self-exaltation rhetoric was in the invocations that
women were best suited for missionary work because they could reach the women in
other countries. Women, it was believed, were powerful and beneficial
influences; if they could be converted, then the country could be saved.
Because of cultural custom and the fact that many women were secluded in harems
and zenanas, men could not visit or speak with them. Therefore, missionary
women fulfilled a unique and special role, one they invoked repeatedly and
frequently. References were made to the "benighted women" in other lands "who
can only be reached by women," and missionaries exalted themselves claiming to
be "the heathen woman's only chance to obtain a knowledge of the gospel" and
thus be "saved." [59] Woman's special gift, it seems, was her ability to
influence others, and this exalted role was not reserved for U.S. women. Women
in other countries were seen as powerful conduits of Christianity if they could
be converted. As one Methodist minister was quoted, "You cannot evangelize a
country until you convert the women."[60] This was also reflected in editor
Warren's writings: "An educated woman in China is like a bright star ... an
educated woman is a power to enlighten, to reform, and to bless the community to
which she belongs." Warren believed that Chinese customs and traditions limited
a Chinese woman's influence for good, but she still considered these women, and
all women, as "fostermother[s] of religion and of religious ideas. Whether the
stream of moral influence be great or small ... here is its fountainhead the
world over."[61]
Missionary women were praised and honored in these publications, but editors
Warren and Butler occasionally wrote editorials accusing U.S. women of
indifference, idleness or extravagance in an effort to raise more money or to
encourage women to become missionaries. In one editorial, Butler observed that
heathen women possessed more religious zeal than Christian women in the United
States.[62] Other efforts were made to shame U.S. women into donating more
money to the missionary cause or accused them of spending money unwisely on
personal indulgences. The preference, of course, was that U.S. women would
wholeheartedly support the missionary effort through contributions, soliciting
new members for the missionary society, and encouraging women to become
missionaries. Each issue read for this study contained a plea for new
subscribers to the publication as well as treatises on the need for more
missionaries.
Editorials cautioning U.S. women against inappropriate behavior, in addition to
the laudatory articles by and about missionary women, craft a clear picture of
the gender ideology espoused by the woman's missionary movement. Women were to
be modest, patient, loving, dutiful and modest. They were to "resist
sensuousness" and aspire to enjoyments that were "higher, nobler and more
rational."[63] But this goodness and patience were to be coupled with
determination, force of character, endurance and a well-trained mind. A
missionary woman was to be strong, "not given to fanatical, hysterical, or
emotional views of things," and she should be an educated woman, "vigorous,
faithful, patient, and practical, who [can] grasp things with a strong
hand...."[64]
In sum, missionary women crafted a gender ideology consistent with their
Christian mission and recreated it through their missionary publications using
themes of colonial discourse. This ideology was founded on a belief in woman's
morality and in woman's special gift of influence, as well as on a belief in the
values of education and action driven by one's conviction. Women in other
countries were subject to this same view of womanhood, but due to conditions in
their country of filth, heathenism, and oppressive social custom, missionary
women were commissioned to convert them so that they may realize their true
roles as women in society. Thus, missionary women could speak of gentility as
well as strength, of patience as well as perseverance, and of heathenism as
requiring one's heroism.
DISCUSSION
The gender ideology espoused by missionary women was not reserved for U.S.
women; it formed the interpretations, evaluations and exhortations toward women
in other countries as well. Cataloguing missionary evaluations of women in other
countries reveals the ideology of womanhood to which these women were
subscribing. It is also a projection of their own conflicts within a particular
gender identity. That is, missionary writings contain rhetoric that may be
interpreted as a critique of the ideology of U.S. womanhood that conformed to
what Barbara Welter, and other historians, have termed "true womanhood."
Missionary women in the late nineteenth century transgressed the sphere of
domesticity in order to fulfill their calling to evangelical church ministry.
Historians have noted that Victorian ideology was based on a notion of separate
spheres -- that women should tend to the home and the moral rearing of children,
while men tended to the public sphere of business and politics.[65] The highest
role for a woman was her role as wife and mother. Missionary women were both
unmarried and operating in the public sphere, albeit a public sphere sanctioned
by its religious character. Still, they were rejecting the seclusion of the
American home, the vapidity of female culture based in domestic pursuits and
idleness, and the oppression of an androcentric society. Yet they were
conflicted because of their religious character. In other words, religious
women, specifically missionary women, confronted a deep contradiction: they
believed in the Victorian ideals of religiosity and purity, but in pursuing
their call to service, they transcended the domestic sphere prescribed by these
ideals. Their discourse on zenanas and harems -- the seclusion of women to a
particular sphere -- may have served to craft an ideology they could embrace, an
ideology that was both a mixture of Victorian womanliness and what would later
be termed the "New Woman."[66]
The "New Woman" was educated, often unmarried, or married at a later age, and
active in the public spheres of business, medicine or academia. Although such a
position left women vulnerable to ridicule, or worse, attacks on their moral
character, church women could comfort themselves in their morally exalted nature
and public role. Thus, though they transgressed their proper sphere, missionary
women were comforted by the idea that this transgression was divinely mandated,
an idea reinforced by articles in these publications, such as a reprint of an
address by a Methodist minister, who asserted that "the missionary vocation, of
all others, is that which most successfully develops the highest virtues in the
character of women."[67] This may also explain why the rhetoric of
domestication appeared less often than other themes, especially that of
exaltation -- specifically moral self-exaltation. Clinging to their Christian
identity and their moral virtue was central to the social acceptability or
rationalization of the woman missionary's occupation. Thus, missionary women
embraced and upheld that which preserved their exalted Christian natures.
Moreover, missionary women cemented this identity for themselves by applying
this ideology to women of other countries, as they did in their treatises on
zenana and harem life. To attack the seclusion of the zenana and the harem was,
perhaps, to confront the ideology of separate spheres and to observe a woman's
mental lethargy and indolence was to support woman's education, in India and
China as well as in the United States. It was the light of Christian education,
the saving influence of the Gospel, that would allow Chinese and Indian women to
realize their true destiny and calling as moral guideposts for the home and the
nation -- surely an ideal to which missionary women themselves aspired. In other
words, one could fight the oppressive conditions that limited women, that kept
them confined to the domestic sphere and at the mercy of a domineering husband,
by clinging to the teaching of the Gospel and the role of Christianized
womanhood -- a state that could allow transgressing one's sphere as woman with
assurance of divine sanction. Thus, as heathen women were converted to
Christianity, U.S. women were converted to a gender ideology consistent with
their actions, their beliefs and their aspirations.
CONCLUSION
The purpose of this research was to examine the role of women's missionary
texts in the construction of a gender ideology that may be linked to imperialist
thought and action. It sought to address an overarching question of whether
ideologies of gender and imperialism were linked or were mutually reinforced and
sustained. In the two publications studied, Heathen Woman's Friend and Woman's
Missionary Advocate, content conformed to themes of colonial discourse described
as exploration, domestication, evaluation and exaltation. In addition, the
content that comprised these discursive themes also projected a particular
vision of womanhood based on woman's morality and a belief in her power to
influence others in beneficial ways. This role was dependent on a woman's
education as well as her conviction to serve others. Missionary women exalted
themselves as unique vessels for the missionary endeavor and sought to encourage
a woman's intellectual, as well as religious, development.
This gender ideology was uniquely suited to the missionary vocation. Women in
the nineteenth century, as today, were not a monolithic group. Suffragists,
working women, upper-class club women, women in the temperance movement, and
women in the professions were each encountering conflicts between their goals
and aspirations and how it may have clashed with social and cultural
prescriptions for `appropriate' gender behavior. Missionary women negotiated
these terms by balancing `public-sphere' activity with invocations of morality
and religiosity. It was an ideology that upheld woman's advancement, education,
and role in the church and the world, while heralding woman's gentility,
morality, and special influence on family members and society.
Finally, as indicated by the discourse in missionary publications, this gender
ideology was exported to women in other countries. They were expected to convert
to Christianity and educate and improve themselves so that they, too, may
influence others in beneficial ways. Missionary women, who believed that Indian
and Chinese women were oppressed by religious and social customs and thus
prevented from realizing their true role in society, saw themselves as saviors
and heroines. Content in these publications, then, supported an ideology of
womanhood, an ideology that was linked to the missionary endeavor, and thus, to
the U.S. endeavor for supremacy in other countries. Whether in religious terms,
or in political and economic terms, this endeavor was the quest for empire.
ENDNOTES
[1] H.M. Warren, "Prospectus of The Heathen Woman's Friend," Heathen Woman's
Friend, May 1869, 5.
[2] "Resolution," Heathen Woman's Friend, December 1895, 157-161.
[3] "Editorial Notes," Woman's Missionary Advocate, February 1882, 1; emphasis
in original.
[4] Histories that explore this notion include: Nancy F. Cott, The Bonds of
Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England, 1780-1835 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1987); Sara M. Evans, Born for Liberty:A History of Women in
America (New York: The Free Press, 1989); Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle:
The Woman's Rights Movement in the U.S. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1975); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics
and Class in Nineteenth-Century U.S. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990);
Charles E. Rosenberg, "Sexuality, Class and Role in Nineteenth-Century America,"
in The American Man Eds. Elizabeth and Joseph Pleck (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1980), 219-254; Sheila M. Rothman, Woman's Proper Place: A
History of Changing Ideals and Practices, 1870 to the present (New York: Basic
Books, 1978); Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida
County, New York, 1790-1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Mary
P. Ryan, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1992); Anne Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's
Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991);
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Hysterical Woman: Sex Roles and Role Conflict in
Nineteenth-Century America," Social Research 39 (Winter, 1972): 652-78; Barbara
Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood," American Quarterly 18 (Summer, 1966):
151-74.
[5] Patricia Hill, The World Their Household: The American Woman's Foreign
Mission Movement and Cultural Transformation, 1870-1920 (Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1985), 54-55.
[6] Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the
Colonial Contest (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 9.
[7] Joan Jacobs Brumberg, "Zenanas and Girlless Villages: The Ethnology of
American Evangelical Women, 1870-1910," The Journal of American History 69:2
(September, 1982), 350.
[8] Barbara Welter, "The Feminization of American Religion," in her Dimity
Convictions (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1976), 83-84.
[9] Welter, 84.
[10] Hageman, 168; Joan Jacobs Brumberg, Mission for Life (New York: The Free
Press, 1980), 80.
[11] Journalism historian David Paul Nord has noted the links between the
religious press and a belief in the power of the printed word to perform
evangelical functions. According to Nord, religious publishers believed that
"reading, even cursory reading, could have powerful, direct, instantaneous,
almost magical effects on the reader." David Paul Nord, "Teleology and the News:
The Religious Roots of American Journalism, 1630-1730," The Journal of American
History (June 1990): 9-38; David Paul Nord, "Religious Reading and Readers in
Antebellum America," Journal of the Early Republic 15 (Summer 1995), 246.
[12] Ibid., 74.
[13] Brumberg, "Zenanas and Girlless Villages," 352-353.
[14] H. M. Warren, "A word to Western women," Heathen Woman's Friend, July
1869, 14.
[15] Tony Smith, The Pattern of Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), 145; Frank H. Tucker, The White Conscience (New York: Frederick
Ungar Publishing Company, 1968), 152.
[16] Discussion of the ideological function of the media, as explored within
the framework of critical cultural studies, may be found in the following works:
Peter Golding and Graham Murdock, "Ideology and the Mass Media: The Question of
Determination," in Ideology and Cultural Production, Michele Barrett, Phillip
Corrigan, Annette Kuhn and Janet Wolff, eds. (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1979); Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, David Forgacs and
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, eds., William Boelhower, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1985), 386-425; Stuart Hall, "Culture, the Media, and the
`Ideological Effect'," in Mass Communication and Society, James Curran, Michael
Gurevitch, Janet Woollacott, eds. (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1979);
Stuart Hall, "The Rediscovery of `Ideology'" Return of the Repressed in Media
Studies," in Culture, Society and the Media, Michael Gurevitch, Tony Bennett,
james Curran and Janet Woollacott, eds. (New York and London: Routledge, 1982);
Stuart Hall, "Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the
Post-Structuralist Debates," in Critical Perspectives in Media and Society,
Robert K. Avery and David Eason, eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991);
Hanno Hardt, Critical Communication Studies: Communication, history and theory
in America (New York: Routledge, 1992); John B. Thompson, Ideology and Modern
Culture: Critical Social Theory in the Age of Mass Communication (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1990), 28-67; Raymond Williams, Marxism and
Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).
[17] Literature about the suffrage press includes: Martha Solomon, Ed., A Voice
of Their Own (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991); Lana F. Rakow
and Cheris Kramarae, Eds., The Revolution in Words, Righting Women 1868-1871
(New York: Routledge, 1990); Marion Marzolf, Up From the Footnote: A History of
Women Journalists (New York: Hastings House, 1977); Lynne Masel-Walters, "To
Hustle with the Rowdies: The Organization and Functions of the American Suffrage
Press," Journal of American Culture 3 (Spring 1980), 166-183; Masel-Walters, "A
Burning Cloud by Day: The History and Content of the Woman's Journal,"
Journalism History 3:4 (Winter 1976-77), 103-110; Masel-Walters, "Their Rights
and Nothing More: A History of the Revolution, 1868-1870," Journalism Quarterly
53 (Summer 1976), 242-251; Anne Mather, "A History of Feminist Periodicals, Part
I," Journalism History 1:3 (Autumn 1974), 82-85; Linda Steiner,
"Nineteenth-Century Suffrage Periodicals: Conceptions of Womanhood and the
Press," in William S. Solomon and Robert W. McChesney, Eds., Ruthless Criticism:
New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History (Minneapolis, MN: University of
Minnesota Press, 1993).
[18] For example, George W. Auxier, "Middle Western Newspapers and the Spanish
American War, 1895-1898," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 26 (1940):
523-34; Allen Kellar, The Spanish-American War: A Compact History (New York:
Hawthorn, 1969); Frederick Merck, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American
History (New York: Knopf, 1963); Joyce Milton, The Yellow Kids: Foreign
Correspondents in the Heyday of Yellow Journalism (New York: Harper & Row,
1989); Brigitte Lebens Nacos, The Press, Presidents, and Crises (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1990); Mark Welter, "The 1895-98 Cuban Crisis in
Minnesota Papers," Journalism Quarterly 47 (1970): 719-24; Marcus M. Wilkerson,
Public Opinion and the Spanish American War (New York: Russell, 1967); Joseph E.
Wisan, "The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895-1898,"
Columbia University Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law 403 (1934):
455-60.
[19] Stuart Hall, "Culture, Media and the `Ideological Effect'," in Mass
Communication and Society, Eds. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet
Woollacott (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1984), 340.
[20] Ernesto Laclau, "Populist Rupture and Discourse," Screen Education 34
(1980), 87.
[21] See Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, Michael Holquist, ed.,
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1981); Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1992); Norman Fairclough, Media Discourse (London and New York: Edward Arnold,
1995); Klaus Bruhn Jensen, Social Semiotics of Mass Communication (Sage
Publications, 1995); V. N. Volosinov, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language,
Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1973).
[22] This approach is described in works such as, Clifford Christians and James
Carey, "The Logic and Aims of Qualitative Research," in Research Methods in Mass
Communication, 2nd edition, Guido Stempel and Bruce Westley, eds. (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989); Lawrence Grossberg, "Strategies of Marxist
Cultural Interpretation," in Critical Perspectives on Media and Society, Robert
K. Avery and David Eason, eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991); John Paul,
"A Beginner's Guide to Doing Qualitative Research in Mass Communication,"
Journalism Monographs 125 (February 1991), 14.
[23] Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on
Language, A. M. Sheridan Smith, trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 64-70;
Stuart Hall, "Signification, Representation, Ideology: Althusser and the
Post-Structuralist Debates," in Critical Perspectives on Media and Society,
Robert K. Avery and David Eason, eds. (New York: The Guilford Press, 1991), 109.
[24] Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books edition,
1979), 6.
[25] Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge,
1994); Laclau, "Populist Rupture and Discourse"; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
"Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, Eds.,
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1994); Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds (London: Methuen,
1987); Slavoj Zizek, "Beyond Discourse-Analysis," in Ernesto Laclau, New
Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London, New York: Verso, 1991), 252.
[26] Homi K. Bhabha, "The Other Question: Stereotype, discrimination and the
discourse of colonialism," in The Location of Culture, 70.
[27] For example, Lila Abu-Lughod, "Can There Be A Feminist Ethnography?" Women
and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 5(1): 7-27 (1990); Judith Butler,
Bodies That Matter (New York and London: Routledge, 1993); Samir Dayal, "The
Subaltern Does Not Speak: Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! as a Postcolonial Text,"
Genders 14 (Fall 1992): 16-32; Chandra Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist
Scholarship and Colonial Discourses," Feminist Review 30 (Autumn 1988: 61-88);
Jennifer Robinson, "White Women Researching/Representing `Others': From
Antiapartheid to Postcolonialism?" in Alison Blunt and Gillian Rose, eds.
Writing Women and Space: Colonial and Postcolonial Geographies (New York and
London: The Guilford Press, 1994); Winifred Woodhull, Transfigurations of the
Maghreb: Feminism, Decolonization and Literatures (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press)
[28] Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak," 91.
[29] Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the
Colonial Contest (New York and London: Routledge, 1995); Mary Louise Pratt,
Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992);
Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Text
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); David Spurr, The Rhetoric of
Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial
Administration (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1993); Vron Ware,
Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History (London and New York, Verso,
1992).
[30] Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, 25.
[31] "Spiritual Growth of Our Work," Woman's Missionary Advocate, September
1884, 9.
[32] McClintock, Imperial Leather, 34-36.
[33] "Contrasts in Zenana Teaching," Heathen Woman's Friend, April 1872, 265.
[34] Spurr, 71.
[35] Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale; Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire.
[36] "Woman's work for women....," Woman's Missionary Advocate, January 1885,
12.
[37] Anne Firor Scott, "Women, Religion and Social Change in the South,
1830-1930," in Religion and the Solid South, Ed. Samuel S. Hill, Jr. (Nashville
and New York: Abingdon Press, 1972), 106; Hill, 48.
[38] Specific years studied were 1869 (May-December), 1870-1872, 1879,
1889-1893 of Heathen Woman's Friend, and January 1880 - September 1886 of
Woman's Missionary Advocate. These years were randomly selected to present a
sample of ideas and themes from a 26-year period.
[39] "Is Thine Heart Right?" Woman's Missionary Advocate, November 1885 7;
"Ephphatha," Woman's Missionary Advocate, June 1885, 8.
[40] "President's Address," Woman's Missionary Advocate, July 1886, 4; "Seventh
Annual Meeting...," Woman's Missionary Advocate, July 1885, 4.
[41] "Another Cycle Completed," Woman's Missionary Advocate, June 1886, 9.
[42] Among numerous other works exploring the same theme, Turner authored an
essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," and a book, The
Frontier in American History, describing his vision of the frontier. For a
discussion of this thesis, see David Noble, The End of American History
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
[43] "Lord, Increase Our Faith," Woman's Missionary Advocate, April 1886, 9.
[44] Bennett, 296.
[45] McClintock's study focuses on British advertisements, which may explain
its absence in U.S. women's discourse. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 207-231.
[46] See, for example, "Show me the path os life," Woman's Missionary Advocate,
January 1884, 8; "China Mission," Woman's Missionary Advocate, December 1884, 2;
"Thoughts on our mission work," Woman's Missionary Advocate, January 1885, 11.
[47] "Report from Elsie Maude Sites," Heathen Woman's Friend, March 1889, 250.
[48] "The value of the zenana paper," Heathen Woman's Friend, March 1889,
238-239.
[49] For example, "Foot Binding -- Its Origin and End," Woman's Missionary
Advocate, August 1880, 6-7; "The Outlook for 1882," Woman's Missionary Advocate,
January 1882, 8; "China Mission," Woman's Missionary Advocate, August 1883, 2;
"Thoughts on Our Mission Work," Woman's Missionary Advocate, January 1885,
10-12; "Report from Elsie Maude Sites," Heathen Woman's Friend, March 1889, 250;
"Personal Mention," Heathen Woman's Friend, September 1889, 67.
[50] "China Mission," Woman's Missionary Advocate, August 1883, 2.
[51] "Are we fully Christianized?" Heathen Woman's Friend, October 1869, 37.
[52] "Woman in India," Heathen Woman's Friend, July 1869, 9.
[53] "To the Young Ladies...," Heathen Woman's Friend, May 1870; "Woman in
India," Heathen Woman's Friend, August 1869, 18-19.
[54] "China Mission," Woman's Missionary Advocate, December 1884, 2.
[55] "Representative Indian Women," Heathen Woman's Friend, November 1870, 52.
[56] "Another Zenana Convert," Heathen Woman's Friend, May 1871, 122; "A Day in
the Zenana," Heathen Woman's Friend, August 1870, 14.
[57] "Progress of Female Education in India," Heathen Woman's Friend, April
1870, 85.
[58] "Seventh Annual Meeting...," Woman's Missionary Advocate, July 1885, 3.
[59] "Seventh Annual Meeting...," Woman's Missionary Advocate, July 1885, 3;
"Her Perfect Work," Woman's Missionary Advocate, September 1886, 8.
[60] "Facts for Christian Women," Heathen Woman's Friend, July 1869, 11.
[61] "On Morality and China," Heathen Woman's Friend, May 1869, 6.
[62] "Is Thine Heart Right?" Woman's Missionary Advocate, November 1885, 7; see
also, "Message to Girls," Woman's Missionary Advocate, April 1884, 9-10.
[63] "Reprint of Baccalaureate Address...," Woman's Missionary Advocate,
October 1880, 9.
[64] "Missionary Workers," Woman's Missionary Advocate, March 1884, 8-9.
[65] See note #1; the scholarship on female sexuality and gender roles is
described in John D'Emilio and Estelle Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of
Sexuality in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), xii-xiii.
[66] Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in
Victorian America (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 176.
[67] Rev. J. Walton, "Facts for Christian Women," Heathen Woman's Friend, July
1869, 11.
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