Ironies of Emancipation: Changing Configurations of ‘Women's Work’ in the ‘Mission of Sisterhood’ to Indian Women

Abstract

On her arrival in Travancore in 1819 Mrs Mault, as wife of the new missionary, immediately set about establishing a school for convert girls and a ‘lace industry’ to employ convert women. Her actions reflect that pattern of activism and organization historians of gender and imperialism have identified as the ‘mission of domesticity’ conducted by European and North American Christian missionary women to their non-Christian ‘sisters’ in the colonial empires being established by their respective nation-states throughout the nineteenth century. Mrs Mault was herself among the first generation of missionary women to pioneer this specifically female branch of colonizing endeavour, designed to ‘emancipate’ Indian women in terms of the norms of metropolitan ideologies of femininity and womanhood. Drawing on a case study of the London Missionary Society's activities in South Travancore, South India during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I argue that this ‘mission of domesticity’ was not a straightforward transfer of conventions of marriage and motherhood to the colonial context. On the contrary, the project was from the start caught in a complex and contradictory web of agency and discourse which ‘remade’ not only convert women but missionary women as well. Central to this process of refiguring femininity on the imperial fulcrum were changes to the meanings of ‘work’ in relation to both ‘home’ and womanhood, articulated through a religious idiom and framework of action. The consequences of these processes, the article argues, were somewhat contrary. On the one hand, the Indian Christian woman is reconstructed as a wife, mother and worker, while on the other, the missionary women are bifurcated: the missionary wife increasingly viewed as an amateur appendage to her husband, firmly secured in the domestic sphere, while the single woman attains a new status as a professional worker.

‘Happy is the bride the rain falls on’:1 climate, health and ‘the woman question’ in nineteenth‐century missionary documentation

“…The study of gender in British missionary activities is now part of an emerging body of work that further explores this relationship between women and Empire (Semple 2004). For example, various authors have highlighted the role of British missionary wives and women as ‘actors’ within the metropolitan gender order (Haggis 1998b), addressing their role in the so‐called ‘white women's burden’ to bring civilization to her ‘fallen’ sisters in the darker colonial spaces (Haggis 2000). Other investigations have explored British missionary women's entry into the paid workforce as a reflection of increasing female professionalization ‘at home’ in the later nineteenth century (see Callaway 1987; Hunt 1990; Haggis 1998a 2000; Semple 2004).…”

“…For example, various authors have highlighted the role of British missionary wives and women as ‘actors’ within the metropolitan gender order (Haggis 1998b), addressing their role in the so‐called ‘white women's burden’ to bring civilization to her ‘fallen’ sisters in the darker colonial spaces (Haggis 2000). Other investigations have explored British missionary women's entry into the paid workforce as a reflection of increasing female professionalization ‘at home’ in the later nineteenth century (see Callaway 1987; Hunt 1990; Haggis 1998a 2000; Semple 2004). Less attention, however, has been paid to the way in which missionary wives and women may have contributed to the collection and dissemination of geographical knowledge of imperial spaces in the nineteenth century.…”

“…Reflecting the increasing involvement of women in religious philanthropy in Britain in the early nineteenth century, missionary wives stationed overseas with their spouses were effectively charged with promoting all matters of a moral and spiritual nature (Davidoff and Hall 1987, 117). They provided a ‘mission of domesticity’ (Haggis 2000, 110), fulfilling the traditional roles as ‘providers of conjugal comfort and as homemakers’ (Kirkwood 1993, 25). They served as models of female behaviour and, with their husbands (and children), demonstrated the merits and virtues of monogamous lifestyles.…”

“…Although the role of the general mission worker survived into the twentieth century, increasing emphasis began to be placed on recruiting women with specific skills in nursing, medicine and teaching for work in the more specialized institutions that had begun to emerge in the missionary fields (Swaisland 1993, 83). In as much, the lady missionary was ‘herself a symbol of emancipation in terms of British imperial feminism’ (Haggis 2000). Interestingly, however, with the progressive professionalization of the female missionary and the identification of missionary work as a legitimate and distinct category of female employment came a relegation of the missionary wife to ‘part time amateur’ (Haggis 2000, 111).…”

Archives of memory and memories of archive: CMS women’s letters and diaries 1823–35

“…100 Thus the home was a site of struggle over the re-formation of Nga Puhi women as well as resistance to the ameliorative impulses of the missionary agenda. Within the spatial boundaries of the mission home, Marianne and Jane shared a consensus about family, marriage and Christianity that positioned Pakeha (white) women in a superior role to Nga Puhi women and men.…”