Until now, the missionary plot in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been seen as marginal and anomalous. Despite women missionaries being ubiquitous in the nineteenth century, they appeared to be absent from nineteenth-century literature. As this book demonstrates, though, the female missionary character and narrative was, in fact, present in a range of writings from missionary newsletters and life writing, to canonical Victorian literature, New Woman fiction and women’s college writing. Nineteenth-century women writers wove the tropes of the female missionary figure and plot into their domestic fiction, and the female missionary themes of religious self-sacrifice and heroism formed the subjectivity of these writers and their characters. Offering an alternative narrative for the development of women writers and early feminism, as well as a new reading of Jane Eyre, this book adds to the debate about whether religious women in the nineteenth century could actually be radical and feminist.
Author(s): Angharad Eyre
Series: The Nineteenth Century Series
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 264
City: New York
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Nineteenth-Century Missionary Women and Mission History
Religion, the Female Missionary and Gender Ideology in Women’s Studies
Examining the Female Missionary Narrative in Life Writing, Archives and Fiction
Themes and Structure
Notes
Prologue: Ann Judson and Harriet Newell: Immortalising the Female Missionary
Introduction
Traditions in Religious Life Writing
Controlling the Female Missionary Subject
Harriet Newell
Ann Judson
Radical Autobiography and the Missionary Heroine
Missionary Marriage
The Public Role of the Female Missionary
Female Missionary Heroism
Conclusion
Notes
Part I: 1830–1870
1 Tales of Female Missionary Sacrifice: Tracts, Collective Biographies and Newsletters
Introduction
Knowles’s Memoir of Ann Judson: Inspiring and Reanimating Missionary Zeal
From Knowles to Clara Balfour: Feminising Ann Judson and the Woman Missionary
Female Missionary Writing 1841–1860: Jemima Thompson and the Wesleyan Ladies’ Committee
Conclusion
Notes
2 Missionary Self-Sacrifice in the Domestic Sphere: The Tracts and Novels of Martha Sherwood, Hesba Stretton and Dinah Craik
Introduction
Martha Sherwood and Hesba Stretton: Missionary Writing and the ‘Holy Child’ Character
From ‘Holy Child’ to Missionary Governess
Dinah Craik’s Governesses and Heroic Missionary Sacrifice
Conclusion
Notes
3 Novel Approaches to Missionary Sacrifice: Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell
Introduction
The Missionary Movement in Brontë’s Life
Reading the Female Missionary Narrative in Brontë’s Novels
Brontë’s Missionary Governess
Subverting the Mid-Century Female Missionary Narrative
Rejecting Self-Sacrifice
Brontë as Female Missionary Writer: Re-Writing Her Life Story
Elizabeth Gaskell and Ellen Nussey’s Collaboration
Narrating Charlotte’s Religious Life
Presenting Charlotte’s Missionary Domesticity
Charlotte as Self-Sacrificing Missionary Martyr
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Self-Sacrificial Heroines
Gaskell’s Mission and Unitarianism
Writing ‘Ruth’ as a Tale of Self-Sacrifice and Social Redemption
Conclusion
Notes
Part II: 1880–1900
4 Missionaries of the New: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner and Margaret Harkness
Introduction
Sarah Grand and the New Woman Missionary
Missionary Self-Fashioning
Grand’s Inspirational New Woman Missionary
Grand’s New Woman Missionary Narrative and The Heavenly Twins
Olive Schreiner: Mission and Sacrifice
Schreiner’s Self-Sacrificial Feminist Missionaries
The Heroic Self-Sacrificial New Woman Missionary in The Story of an African Farm
Margaret Harkness, New Woman Missionaries and the Salvation Army
Harkness’s Philosophy and the New Woman Missionary
In Darkest London: Salvation Army Lasses and New Woman Missionaries
Conclusion
Notes
5 Women, Religion and Power: University Women’s Missionary Writing
Introduction
Constance Maynard and the Missionary College Principal
Religious and Educational Experiences
Personal Writings and Missionary Identity
Maynard’s Missionary Practice
Maynard’s Missionary Correspondence
Missionary Culture and the Women’s Colleges
Religious and Missionary Collegiality
College Newsletters and Collegiate Missionary Activity
College Missionaries in the Field
Conclusion
Notes
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
