Title: Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939
Author: Peggy Pascoe
Year of Publication: 1990
Thesis:
White, middle-class, Protestant missionary women attempted to reach outside of the narrow confines of domestic authority prescribed by previous forms of Republican Motherhood. Reforming women whom they considered victims of male lust to their natural state of virtue by creating "rescue homes" in San Francisco, Colorado, Salt Lake City, and Omaha allowed them to test their female moral authority. Changes in funding structures from small collections from women's homes to larger, male controlled donors, and the professionalization of social work as a field contributed to the decline in power for the matrons in charge of these homes. Pascoe argues that it is fundamental to consider how women being "served" by these institutions didn't always conform to the matrons' images of reform and used the services to their advantage, despite the sometimes mismatch between reformers' lack of cultural knowledge about the people they were attempting to rescue and the needs of those being served.
Time: 1874-1939
Geography:
San Francisco (Chinese women sex workers)
Denver (unwed mothers)
Salt Lake City (wives of polygamists)
Omaha (Women from Omaha Reservation)
Organization:
Introduction: The Search for Female Moral Authority
- WMCW draw on 19th-century conception of women to challenge male authority in the West - effective because it didn't ask for equality per se (xviii)
- This approach solidifies gender roles (xix) - ***I would argue also racial and class lines, too
- Revisit this reference on women who sought female authority through men vs. challenging them (xx)
- Can't just pay attention to WMCW but also the folks they are attempting to exert their authority upon (xxi)
ORIGINS AND IDEAS
1. Institutional Origins
- How these rescue homes were established (xxiii)
- Finds roots in early 19th benevolent activity, even though late 19th is the popular (3)
- "piety & purity" the locus of women's power (4)
- Many Protestant evangelical women's orgs pop up after Civil War (6)
- Groups that didn't appear to them to have sexual constraint ("unmarried mothers, Mormons, Indians, and Chinese immigrants") easily become their focus (6)
- Slogan "woman's work for woman" sums up attempt to enter more broadly the public sphere of influence (30)
- Appears to be a definitive shift from WMCPW seeking power in relation to men & seeking their authority over other women (31)
2. The Ideology of Female Moral Authority
SYSTEMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL AND RELATIONS AMONG WOMEN
3. Some Women's Culture and Other Women's Needs: Motivations, Maternalism, and the Language of Gratitude
- Anecdote of Chin Leen, who leaves husband & goes to Chinese Mission Home (73)
- Frank Wong claims kidnapping - gets help from white men (74)
- Residents as "inmates," this is an interesting term (women used this for women in private homes, too) (80)
- Language of gratitude buries differences between women - is this something like respectability politics? (110)
4. Home Mission Women, Race, and Culture: The Case of "Native Helpers"
5. Homes Outside of the Rescue Homes
ANTICLIMAX
6. The Crisis of Victorian Female Moral Authority, 1890-1939
- Women's National Indian Association removes "women" from the title - impetus - attract more members + men & women making a home together idea (1901) (177)
- Expansion: funding, working w/law enforcement, social workers (179)
- Newer leaders change & shift fundraising from women's small contributions to larger donors (from male-led households) - paradoxically reducing women's power
Epilogue: A Legacy to Ponder--Female Moral Authority and Contemporary Women's Culture
- Cultural feminism has served as a powerful call to action (anti-nuclear campaigns, sex work, etc.) (209)
- Problems with "universality of values" (210)
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Keywords:
Female moral authority (vs. the loaded term, "female moral superiority" that, according to Pascoe, connotes more power than white, middle-class Protestant Victorian women had - see quote below from xvii)
egalitarianism
cultural feminism (essentialist-leaning & gender emphasized - "women's values")
modern cultural feminist
Victorian missionary women (sexual purity, Protestantism (xv)
socialist feminism (class emphasized over gender oppression) (xiv)
mid-20th century feminism (eliminate difference) (xiv)
social feminism (a term too limiting - see explanation) (xviii)
social control - misunderstood - it's read back (contemporary example - public school as "social control," doesn't do a good job of class differentiation (especially b/c it mostly didn't connect with race & class), xix-xx
home mission - from missionary work to "home mission" as an ideological pharse around molding all after the model Christian home (6)
Inmates - "The extent of the separation between the rescue homes and the wider community is suggested by the fact that both matrons and residents referred to residents as "inmates." Yet we should not be too quick to assume that if residents were inmates, missionaries were jailers; for Victorians often spoke of the "inmates" of private homes, even their own homes, as well as the inmates of prisons or other institutions.17 At least in part, the harshness of the term reflected the sharp boundaries middle-class Victorians drew around "private" homes to set them off from the "public" world of busi- ness and politics." (80)
Themes:
Critiques:
Questions:
Quotes:
On the argument:
"While their projects took many forms, the most common was the establishment of rescue homes, institutions designed to provide a loving, home- like atmosphere in which unfortunate women rescued from pred- atory men might live under the watchful eyes of white, middle- class Protestant women. Creating a network of rescue homes in western cities, Protestant women carried on what they called "woman's work for woman" for more than fifty years.11 Not until the missionaries' Victorian assumptions could no longer stand (in some cases as late as the 1930s) did the institutions falter." (xvi)
On "female moral superiority":
"The enduring belief that Vic- torian women "cleaned up" the wild West rests on the racist as- sumption that the West only became "civilized" when white women entered it. Furthermore, it encourages disproportionate attention to their activities after they arrived on the scene." (xvii)
On the book's purpose:
"this book focuses on three aspects of the Victorian search for female moral authority in the American West: its ben- efits and liabilities for women's empowerment; its relationship to systems of social control; and its implications for intercultural re- lations among women." (xvii)
On connections between the past and the present:
"I am only too well aware that, in exploring the past to unearth the roots of present dilemmas, I challenge traditional scholars who advocate a kind of pure history purged of its contemporary asso- ciations and understood solely on its own terms. I have come to believe, however, that such a purist stance merely disguises and mystifies our inevitable involvement with the present. For the moment, let me simply say that I understand history as a kind of conversation between the past and the present in which we travel through time to examine the cultural assumptions—and the possibilities—of our own society as well as societies that came before us." (xxiii)
Pitfalls:
"To the extent that focusing on women makes men peripheral to the analysis, it hampers the creation of effective strategies for dislodging the male-dominated power structures that affect most women's lives. This was a problem that Protestant missionary women were unable to solve. Concentrating their efforts on es-tablishing homes for women alone allowed them much-needed and otherwise unavailable space to care for the victims of male abuse. It also allowed them to lose sight of how widespread those abuses were. Unable to exert much control over men outside the rescue homes and increasingly dependent on them for financial and legal help, they exempted "Christian men" from their critiques of male dominance. In the end, home mission matrons watched their charges return to a world outside the homes where male dominance was so ubiquitous that the concept of female moral authority was more an illusion than a reality." (211)
Notes:
This is where "the future is female" comes from (cultural feminism - xiv)
- finds connection between modern cultural feminists and Victorian missionary women in their essentialization of "women's values" (xv)
The language of gratitude idea is really interesting - the language provides the facade that all women are equal, yet it hides the power imbalances (but, only to the people in power) - is this one of the key critiques of respectability politics? (110)