Protestant Missionary Women's Frontier Sense In China

Protestant missionary movement in China, which lasted for more than a century and leaves a significant mark on Chinese transformation to modernity, has been adequately studied in the field of missionary history. However, missionary women, the majority of the missionary community, are academically neglected for lack of historical records at the patriarchal mission boards. Partly with an academic breakthrough in mind, the dissertation, armed with new historicism, attempts to explore an alternative possibility to study missionary women through their transnational writings. With frontier sense as the dominant topic, my research takes Pearl S. Buck and Alice T. Hobart's abundant writings as a case study to learn more about the missionary women in China.Carried out with a new historicist and postcolonial view, my study is set in a combined theoretical framework of Amy Kaplan's Manifest Domesticity, Edward W. Said's Orientalism, as well as feminist theories of gender and androgyny. Efficient methodological devices like strategic location and strategic formation, which have been well expounded and successfully used by Edward Said, are adopted to illustrate the formation of frontier sense in the process of constant negotiation between missionary women's gender and her national, racial and religious identities. Corresponding to missionary women's historical reality, the dissertation pivots on their gender and advances analytical work along the three dimensions of tension between gender and nation, gender and Christianity, as well as gender and race.Chapter 1 is to find out the logical connection between "Manifest Domesticity" and "Manifest Destiny", thereby to set a theoretical framework and historical context for the following studies. Religious passion and expansionism embedded in "Manifest Destiny" are first discussed to show the political and religious dynamics behind protestant movement in China. Frederick J. Turner's Frontier Thesis is cited and re-interpreted to show the cultural fiber in the concept of "frontier". The most significant part of this chapter is to level the logical opposition between "True Womanhood" and "Manifest Destiny", for while the former confines women to domesticity, the latter sends women far beyond such a confine. The dual referents of "domestic" in imperial expansionism is proved to unite the two into "Manifest Domesticity", which justifies missionary women's domesticity for imperial purpose, while brings no challenge to gender ideology in America.Chapter 2 explores women's sphere of American protestant frontier in China. Transformation of the 4 major parameters of "True Womanhood" like piety, purity, submission and domesticity are fully weighed up to show the complicity between gender and national, Christian and racial identities. Carrie in The Exile is analyzed to showcase cultural strategies of imperial domesticity in China. Cultural and professional androgyny of missionary women in colonial context is also discussed with proper attention to some women's revolt against such imperial alienation of gender. However, frontier sense in the cultural contact zone is proved to help missionary women out of chauvinist outlook and into cultural relativism.Chapter 3 takes into consideration Hobart's double affiliation with American missionary and industrial enterprises in China, so as to learn about frontier individuals in separate gender spheres. Company wives are excluded from market sphere and quite lost in an alien culture, but they have to adhere to the grand narrative of national expansion to survive their disillusionment, while their husbands have to give up their individuality when dehumanizing corporations assumes pioneering subjectivity.Chapter 4 discusses American paternalism to the future of China. Such paternalism is first embodied in Social Gospel promoted by some protestant missionaries and both Buck and Hobart are active advocates of this school. However, the limitation of Social Gospel forces them to think of an alternative way to save China, and they begin to turn their hope to young Chinese who have been educated in America and armed with populism. Dilemma of their paternalism is also outlined when they are faced with Chinese nationalism and revolution.Chapter 5 pays attention to P. S. Buck and A. T. Hobart's frontierization of China in either direct or metaphorical form. The Good Earth is but a metaphor of Jeffersonian frontier and Manchu is a virgin land to be conquered and possessed by America in Hobart's narratives. Frontierization of China is a combination of aesthetic violence and imperial nostalgia.Chapter 6 traces the influence of frontier sense on the representation of Chinese images by missionary women. Their gender identity entitles them to get involved in Chinese domestic life and have an advantage in acquiring expertise of China. P. S. Buck's ethnographical writing style, which authorizes her in the position of China expert, is a proven advantage of missionary women's female existence in the Orient. P. S. Buck's academic effort in translation and interpretation of Chinese novel also helps to update Chinese images among American readership. Hobart can serve as a negative comparison against Buck for her inability to rewrite Chinese stereotypes due to her exclusive concession life.Chapter 7 traces the life and work of returned missionary women in America and shows how years'marginality has sharpened their sight into social evils in both China and America. They begin to preach to American people the long-forgotten American values that legalize American superiority and exceptionalism. P. S. Buck is one who takes advantage of her expertise to break through the barrier between women's sphere and the public and wins for herself the maximum domain of speech and audience, though she never shakes off her orientalist limitation.Research carried out in the above 7 dimensions indicates that frontier to missionary women is both geographical and metaphorical, and their frontier sense emerges from the negotiation process between their gender identity and their national, racial and Christian identities. Each missionary woman endeavors to balance herself in a field of tensions between all her identities, as well as between the sense of achievement and sense of alienation.