Quaker Women, 1800–1920

This collection investigates the world of nineteenth-century Quaker women, bringing to light the issues and challenges Quaker women experienced and the dynamic ways in which they were active agents of social change, cultural contestation, and gender transgression in the nineteenth century.

New research illuminates the complexities of Quaker testimonies of equality, slavery, and peace and how they were informed by questions of gender, race, ethnicity, and culture. The essays in this volume challenge the view that Quaker women were always treated equally with men and that people of color were welcomed into white Quaker activities. The contributors explore how diverse groups of Quaker women navigated the intersection of their theological positions and social conventions, asking how they challenged and supported traditional ideals of gender, race, and class. In doing so, this volume highlights the complexity of nineteenth-century Quakerism and the ways Quaker women put their faith to both expansive and limiting ends.

Reaching beyond existing national studies focused solely on white American or British Quaker women, this interdisciplinary volume presents the most current research, providing a necessary and foundational resource for scholars, libraries, and universities.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Joan Allen, Richard C. Allen, Stephen W. Angell, Jennifer M. Buck, Nancy Jiwon Cho, Isabelle Cosgrave, Thomas D. Hamm, Julie L. Holcomb, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Linda Palfreeman, Hannah Rumball, and Janet Scott.

“This volume is an engaging overview of the diversity of women's experiences in a pivotal century for the Society of Friends. The essays offer important new insights on how Quaker women navigated competing religious and social expectations.”—Carol Faulkner, Syracuse University

Robynne Rogers Healey is Professor of History and Codirector of the Gender Studies Institute at Trinity Western University. She is the editor of Quakerism in the Atlantic World, 1690–1830, also published by Penn State University Press.

Carole Dale Spencer was Associate Professor of Christian Spirituality at Earlham School of Religion and Adjunct Professor of Spiritual Formation at Portland Seminary of George Fox University. She is the author of Holiness: The Soul of Quakerism; An Historical Analysis of the Theology of Holiness in the Quaker Tradition.

Foreword by Janet Scott

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Robynne Rogers Healey and Carole Dale Spencer

Part 1: Engaging Conflict and Separations

1. Hicksite Women in the Long Nineteenth Century

Thomas D. Hamm

2. Elizabeth Robson, Transatlantic Women Ministers, and the Hicksite-Orthodox Schism

Robynne Rogers Healey

3. Women in the World of George W. Taylor: The Public and Private Worlds of Orthodox Quaker Women

Julie L. Holcomb

Part 2: Engaging Diversity

4. Vocation, Religious Identity, and the Abolitionist Networks of Sarah Mapps Douglass and Sojourner Truth

Stephen W. Angell

5. “She Hath Done What She Could”: The Charitable Antislavery Work of Eleanor Clark of Street

Anna Vaughan Kett

6. Ruth Esther Smith (1870–1947): Foremother to Friends in Central America

Jennifer M. Buck

Part 3: Engaging Sacred and Secular Literature

7. An Unforeseen Consequence of the Orthodox-Hicksite Schism (1827–1828): The Fiction Writing of Amelia Opie, Helen Hunt Jackson, Mary Howitt, and Mary Hallock Foote

Isabelle Cosgrave

8. A Friendly Daughter: Lucy Barton’s (Ex-)Quaker Identity, Cultural Negotiations, and Authorial Inheritance

Nancy Jiwon Cho

9. The “Mystic Sense” of Scripture as Taught by Holiness Quaker Hannah Whitall Smith

Carole Dale Spencer

Part 4: Engaging the Wider Social and Cultural World

10. “Radicalism Within Boundaries”: Excavating the Contribution of Women Quakers to Radical Reform in Britain and Their Transnational Networks in the Nineteenth Century

Joan Allen and Richard C. Allen

11. “We Must Hope That the Moderates with Their Quiet Attire Are the Rising Section”: British Women Friends’ Relinquishment of Plain Dress

Hannah Rumball

12. “The Joy of Doing Right”: The Humanitarian Work of Doctor Hilda Clark During the First World War

Linda Palfreeman

Afterword by Emma Lapsansky-Werner

Selected Bibliography

List of Contributors

Index

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Gender Studies

History

           History of Religion

           Nineteenth-century

Religious Studies & Religion

           History of Religion

           Twentieth-century