Missionary Domesticity, Global Reform and 'Woman's Sphere' in Early Nineteenth-Century England

This article explores the significance of 'missionary domesticity' in the writing and philanthropic practice of three prominent evangelical activists of the early to mid-nineteenth century. Mary-Anne Rawson, Ann Taylor Gilbert and Sarah Stickney Ellis were abolitionists, philanthropists, advocates of girls' education, supporters of missions overseas and proponents of 'full and useful lives' for women. They were critics of a range of domestic habits and cultural practices, from women's own ignorance and lack of housewifely and maternal skills, to men's drunkenness and abuse of power, the treatment of women under slavery and the lack of value accorded to them in the 'heathen' world, evident in female infanticide, sati and the seclusion of the zenana. They were also all staunchly anti-feminist. This article argues that evangelical women's lack of concern for the 'woman question' was intimately connected to their 'missionary domesticity', which provided them with an expansive world. Missionary women educated children in political and global concerns. They hosted missionary events and welcomed prominent evangelicals and returned missionaries into their homes. They contributed to a range of missionary projects for both national and global reform. Women's philanthropic activity was neither a marginal activity pursued in their spare time, nor a more liberating alternative to marriage and domesticity. Rather, the concerns of the philanthropic movement and the wider 'missionary public' were integral to the identities and domestic practices of missionary women. Evangelical women developed a missionary domestic practice that would, they believed, usher in a new social and moral order. Missionary domesticity would create new Christian subjects and give shape, through the missionary philanthropic movement, to the wider missionary public and civil society, and ultimately civilise 'heathens' of all nations.