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Can Women Be Missionaries? Envisioning Female Agency in the Early Nineteenth-Century British Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Clare Midgley
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , April 2006 , pp. 335 - 358
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

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References

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2 Cunningham, Valentine, “‘God and Nature Intended You For a Missionary Wife’: Mary Hill, Jane Eyre, and Other Missionary Women in the 1840s,” in Women and Missions, Past and Present: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions, ed. Bowie, Fiona, Kirkwood, Deborah, and Ardener, Shirley (Oxford, 1993), 85–108Google Scholar, quotes on 89, 97.

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11 The respective dates at which the major English missionary societies made a formal decision to directly recruit women were as follows: Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in 1858, Baptist Missionary Society in 1866, London Missionary Society in 1875, and Church Missionary Society in 1887. In Scotland the United Presbyterian Church made the move in 1881. For specific societies, see The Women's Auxilary of the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, The Story of the Women's Auxiliary, 1858–1922 (London, 1923)Google Scholar; Stanley, Brian, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792–1992 (Edinburgh, 1992), 228–32Google Scholar; Lovett, Richard, The History of the London Missionary Society, 1795–1895 (London, 1899), 714–16Google Scholar; Is It Nothing to You? A Record of the Work among Women in Connection with the London Missionary Society (London, 1899)Google Scholar; Macdonald, Lesley A. Orr, A Unique and Glorious Mission: Women and Presbyterianism in Scotland, 1830–1930 (Edinburgh, 2000), 115Google Scholar. For the Church Missionary Society and a general overview of the developments, see Maughan, Steven S., “Regions Beyond and the National Church: Domestic Support for the Foreign Missions of the Church of England in the High Imperial Age, 1870–1914” (PhD thesis, Harvard University, 1995), 259–327Google Scholar.

12 Founding constitution of the Baptist Missionary Society as quoted in Stanley, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 233.

13 Murray, Jocelyn, “Gender Attitudes and the Contribution of Women to Evangelism and Ministry in the Nineteenth Century,” in Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal: Evangelicals and Society in Britain, 1780–1980, ed. Wolffe, John (London, 1995), 97–116Google Scholar; Valence, Deborah M., Prophetic Sons and Daughters (Princeton, NJ, 1985)Google Scholar; Dews, D. Colin, “Ann Carr and the Female Revivalists of Leeds,” in Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760–1930, ed. Malmgreen, Gail (London, 1986), 68–87Google Scholar; Anderson, Olive, “Women Preachers in Mid-Victorian Britain: Some Reflexions on Feminism, Popular Religion, and Social Change,” Historical Journal 12, no. 3 (1969): 467–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kenzle, Beverly Mayne and Walker, Pamela J., eds., Women Preachers and Prophets through Two Millennia of Christianity (Berkeley, 1998), esp. preface and chap. 15Google Scholar.

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16 Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 124–25.

17 For a summary of these early developments, see Midgley, Clare, “Female Emancipation in an Imperial Frame: English Women and the Campaign against Sati (Widow Burning) in India, 1813–30,” Women's History Review 9, no. 1 (2000): 95–121CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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19 Noel (1799–1873) was a clergyman in the Church of England until 1848, when he became a Baptist minister. He was an influential reformist Whig who opposed the Corn Laws and led pan-evangelical initiatives to evangelize the urban poor. See Carter, Grayson's entry on Noel in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

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21 This breakaway group was called the Female Society of the Free Church of Scotland for Promoting Christian Education of the Females in India. Swan, Annie S., Seed Time and Harvest: The Story of the Hundred Years’ Work of the Women's Foreign Mission of the Church of Scotland (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Eighth Annual Report of the Scottish Ladies’ Association for the Advancement of Female Education in India, under the Superintendence of the General Assembly's Committee on Foreign Missions (Edinburgh, 1846)Google Scholar; Rev.Duff, Alexander, More Fruits from India (Edinburgh, ca. 1848)Google Scholar; The Eastern Females’ Friend, n.s., 3 (July 1857): 34.

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25 Peterson, “Feeling and Claims of Little People.”

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29 Judson, Ann H., An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire, 2nd ed. (London, 1827)Google Scholar; Knowles, James D., Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson, Wife of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, Missionary to Burmah, 9th ed. (London, 1838), 34, 35Google Scholar.

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37 Rev.Middleditch, T., The Youthful Female Missionary: A Memoir of Mary Ann Hutchins, Wife of the Reverend John Hutchins, Baptist Missionary, Savanna-la-Mar, Jamaica; And Daughter of the Reverend T. Middleditch, of Ipswich; Compiled Chiefly from Her Own Correspondence, 2nd ed. (London, 1840), 63, 69–72Google Scholar. See also Hall, “Missionary Stories,” 205–54.

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39 Memoirs of Female Labourers in the Missionary Cause (Bath, 1839), 25–26Google Scholar. Catherine Hall discusses a rather similar account relating to a woman who married a missionary to Jamaica—see Hall, “Missionary Stories,” 223.

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44 Thompson, Memoirs, xxvi.

45 Brontë, Jane Eyre, 434.

46 Luke, Early Years, 116.

47 Brontë, Jane Eyre, 477.

48 Luke, Early Years, 85, 108, 114–23.

49 Thompson, Memoirs, xxv–xxvi.

50 Entry for Mrs. Jemima Luke, Dictionary of National Biography Supplement, 1901–1911, vol. 2; Luke, Early Years, 148–50.

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54 Amanda Vickery has suggested that such prescriptive tracts can be read not as evidence of the constriction of women's lives but as a defensive reaction against women's public activities: Vickery, Amanda, “From Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History,” Historical Journal 36, no. 2 (1993): 383–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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56 Ibid.

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60 Midgley, “Female Emancipation in an Imperial Frame.”

61 “Appeal.” The text of this appeal was also published as app. B to the History of the Society for Promoting Female Education, where its author is named as the Reverend Baptist W. Noel (see 266–75).

62 Thompson, Memoirs, xv, lxxviii.

63 British and Foreign School Society, “Appeal in Behalf of Native Females,” Missionary Register, 1820, 434.

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65 Ibid., 13.

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72 See the entry on Tonna by Lenard, Mary in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

73 , C.E., “China, India, and the East,” Christian Lady's Magazine 3 (1835): 540–42Google Scholar, quote on 542.

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76 Ibid., 242.

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78 Thompson, Memoirs, ix; History of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East, 1; Female Agency among the Heathen, as Recorded in the “History and Correspondence of the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East” (London, 1850)Google Scholar; The Female Missionary Intelligencer and Record of the Proceedings of the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in China, Africa, and the East (1854), see esp. 1:108, 186, 188.

79 The Female Missionary Intelligencer 2 (1855), 49–50Google Scholar.

80 The English Woman's Journal, the earliest English feminist journal linked to the Langham Place Circle, which began publication in 1858, makes no reference to the work of British Protestant missionary women (although it does include information on Christian educational work by a Catholic woman in the French colony of Algeria).

81 For the classic discussion of early “imperial feminism,” see Burton, Antoinette, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1994)Google Scholar.

82 Morgan, Women, Religion, and Feminism in Britain; deVries, “Rediscovering Christianity after the Postmodern Turn.”