AS205: Inbetween Peoples

Admittedly, I found Peggy Pascoe’s book, Relations of Rescue, a bit dull, with overall uninteresting case studies. That is, until the final two chapters of her work. Perhaps I was just excited over the dwindling pages, but Pascoe’s discussion of the fall of Victorian Protestant morality in the “Anticlimax” intrigued me. Pascoe states, “For rescue home operations, the most significant of these changes was the shift from a Victorian gender system that idolized female purity, to a modern one that acknowledged female passion…Each harbinger of the new gender system pushed pious Protestant women further from the mainstream of American society. At the same time, the increasing frequency of modern gender arrangements outside rescue homes reinforced residents’ resistance to matrons’ moralism” (Pascoe Pg. 194). So is Pascoe trying to say that society, in general, became less moral? Regarding the book as a whole, I believe that Pascoe falls short in a larger conception of what morality is and who defines it by skipping over the evolving role that secular culture played in the diminishing role of Victorian Protestant morality. Society did not become less moral; there simply was a change in its definition and who yielded the control.
The Victorian female missionaries Pascoe describes for her readers based their authority on the social stereotype that women possessed a higher, if not definitive, sense of morality. In the early twentieth century, however, religion became increasingly secondary to the secularist controls over morals. Following the Industrial Revolution, an influx of immigrants from less religious cultures created a more diversified population that led to a trend of moral evaluation from a secularist viewpoint. The strongholds that religion and the Church once had over society, enforced by missionaries, often the type described by Pascoe, gave way to the opinions and the trends of the time. Being pious was no longer popular. Pascoe ignored an important variable by leaving out the secularist movement from her argument of Victorian Protestant missionary downfall.
Popular American culture, as it waned away from the Church, naturally waxed towards secularism, thus providing a new scope through which morality would be determined. The Victorian missionaries would have been served well had they taken a page from Pope Benedict XVI’s book. In recent years, Catholic missionaries in sub-Saharan Africa were propagating the immorality of condoms and birth control use. However, in sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV/AIDs rate is astronomical. Society became troubled by the Church purporting itself to be a moral beacon, yet engaging a “moral” practice that ultimately leads to death at a genocidal rate. As a response to this outcry, Pope Benedict XVI has allowed the use of condoms when designated to the prevention of HIV/AIDs. Because Pascoe’s Victorian missionaries had a “misunderstanding—if not cavalier rejection—of alternative systems of morality” (Pascoe Pg. 212), like secularism, they, themselves, contributed to their decreasing role as moral arbiters.

            The concept of “female moral authority” was one through which women tried to claim power in patriarchal, Victorian America.  The morality they claimed, they believed, could and should be spread to others in need.  Groups of women set out to inspire their “fallen” sisters in the West by setting up mission homes, bringing with them a strong sense of their own “inherent” purity and piety, along with the teachings of Protestantism.  “Some historians believe that in this period Protestantism was so powerful as to be virtually indistinguishable from Americanism” (197), and from here, the mission home matrons set about making sure that American moral values were spread from coast to coast.  As carriers of the banner of morality, the mission home women seemed to hope that by, focusing on reforming women.  These transformed women, in turn, would take their newly adopted Christian values to inspire the rest of the population, namely, the aggressive men that were the cause of their residency in the mission home.

            A unique aspect of the idealism of the mission home matrons was the fact that they saw “ethnic minority women as natural advocates of purity and piety” (121).  While the rest of the country stood seeped in scientific racism, these women were optimistic that, underneath cultural differences, their foreign sisters were morally good “Christian women waiting to emerge” (122).  Mission home matrons were not completely free of Victorian-era racism, however; while the fallen women were full of hope and possibility, most men they dealt with in these difficult situations were lost causes.  Their cause was one that was by women and for women, depicting their residents as “unfortunate women as innocent victims of predatory men, to resist the tendency to label women as immoral” (121).  The underlying racism prevalent in the Victorian era came out through their negative view of the men they came into contact with.  “The gendered assumptions of Protestant women conditioned them to defend most ethnic minority women but condemn most ethnic minority men” (122).  They made exceptions for “Christian” men as the only acceptable husbands for their residents.

            As the American population adjusted to the diverse cultural groups entering the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, they found new ways to differentiate between themselves and immigrant or minority groups.  The Victorian social and cultural hierarchy was influential, often using “science” as evidence for their discrimination.  Mission home matrons, while at first condescendingly offering to “save” fallen women through conversion to Protestantism, soon learned to appreciate the cultural differences of their residents.  Some, such as Sara Kinney of the Connecticut Indian Association and Donaldina Cameron of the Chinese Mission Home, came to embrace the culture they had dedicated their lives to serving.  As Victorian ideals wore off as the years progressed, mission home women began to see the importance of the residents’ keeping ties with their home culture.  This, however, led to an “in-betweenness” of identity, both of themselves and from an outside point of view.  After their experience with the mission home, were the women truly American, and did they really want to be identified as such?

The very essence of the home mission workers’ attempts at social reform was steeped in the Victorian concept of female moral authority and the values of female piety and purity. Much of the success of home mission workers in instilling these values in the lives of the residents of rescue homes is owed to the efforts of the native helpers, described by Pascoe as individuals who “… wrapped themselves in the mantle of female moral authority and dedicated themselves to implanting the values of Victorian women’s culture in their own communities” (Pascoe 113). The native helper aimed to instill a belief in and appreciation of female moral authority into females of her own culture with the goal of promoting the values of female purity and piety. The success of the native helper, however, diminished with the shift from Victorianism to modernism. Pascoe writes that “In the transition [from Victorianism to modernism], the Victorian female values of piety and purity were discredited; without them, the search for female moral authority could not survive” (Pascoe 198). With the elimination of the source of power that is female moral authority, native helpers lost the tool with which they were able to recruit members for the residence homes. Without the aid of native helpers to create a critical cultural link between the mission homes and the women they sought to help, mission homes were unable to recruit new residents and continue their existence.

The most significant alteration in the view of the female resulting from the rise of modernism is derived from what Pascoe refers to as “… the transformation of the Victorian gender system…” (Pascoe 192). This transformation redefines the woman as not essentially pure, but rather as essentially passionate. Pascoe writes of the change as one “… from a Victorian gender system that idolized female purity, to a modern one that acknowledged female passion” (Pascoe 192). By changing the role of the female from the pure woman to the passionate woman, society endowed the female with emotions which were never before allowed to be publicly displayed. The appearance of feminine emotions changed the role of the female in society as women were allowed to date and engage in marriages based on sexual passion rather than female moral authority. Although modernity did lead to what the Denver Cottage Home referred to as ‘emancipation of womanhood from many slavish traditions’ (Pascoe 195), home mission women saw the rejection of female purity as the breakdown of the role of the female in society. With the diminishment of society’s idealization of female purity, female moral authority lost its effectiveness in guiding the actions of women. Without the veil of purity, the woman lost her place in society as the voice of morality and became the type of woman that the mission homes had long been seeking to save. Unfortunately, unable to call on the power of female moral authority, the native helpers lost their ability to gain new residents for the mission homes.

With the decline in the belief of female purity and the resulting ineffectiveness of female authority associated with the rise in modernism, the role of the native helper was rendered useless. The very people who had, in the past, been able to gain new residents for the mission homes lost the power of female moral authority with which they could inspire their fellow woman. With the loss of effectiveness of female moral authority, native helpers had little with which to influence fellow members of their culture to join rescue homes and take up the values of female piety and purity. Without a means to guide other women in overcoming the prejudices of society by upholding the values of female purity and piety, the native helper became ineffective and unnecessary in the continuation of the existence of mission homes.

The native helpers had a critical role in the recruitment of residents to mission homes. The role of the native helper was to provide the crucial link between cultures that enabled residents to relate to the Victorian ideals of female purity and piety. Pascoe writes that the role of the native helpers was “… to weld the ideology of female moral authority onto their own distinct cultures” (Pascoe 131); to do so required the use of female moral authority, yet this critical concept was brought down with the rise of modernism. With the defeat of female moral authority, native helpers lost the means with which they were successfully able to recruit new mission home members. Ultimately, the loss of power of the native helpers resulted in the end of mission homes, for the native helpers provided the essential link between the new world and the old, one that was necessary to recruit new rescue home residents and continue the effectiveness of mission homes.