Women and the White Man's God: Gender and Race in the Canadian Mission Field (review)

Myra Rutherdale uses the writings of women who worked on northern Anglican missions as the raw data for her research. They are obviously a rich source which provides valuable insights into the lives of married and unmarried women who chose to live in the harsh northern conditions of British Columbia, the Yukon and Northwest Territories. The book is stylishly written drawing the reader into the world of these Christian missionaries.

Each chapter is organized around a theme: how mission women struggled to overcome their subordinate position in the church; the reconceptualizing of racial boundaries in the mission; the mission field as a masculine frontier which might offer women a chance of liberation; missionary women’s feelings of alienation towards their new environment and their nostalgia for the familiar; .the adoption of motherhood roles by missionary women towards Aboriginal women, and the superiority this implied; the meaning of conversion in the mission field. Unfortunately the study, which began as a doctoral dissertation, goes in so many theoretical and conceptual directions that there is a lack of focus, and the analysis suffers as a result. Yet one element that is missing from the analytical tool bag is class which leads to unexamined assumptions about male and female roles in British and southern Canadian society based on middle class gentility — men do the hard physical labor, women do domestic chores —so when women are out hunting or running a mission alone they are deemed to have moved outside prescribed gender roles, as have male missionaries who cook. But were one to compare these missionaries with farmers or manual and domestic workers would these gendered roles be so clearly defined? As with these gendered roles, there are other assumptions underpinning the discussion that need further analysis.

In each chapter Rutherdale selects quotes from her research of women’s writings to illustrate the point she wishes to make. A frustration for the reader is that the women whose writings provided the data for this study never appear as rounded personalities. Selina Bombas, the wife of Bishop Bombas, is frequently quoted. She found Native women dirty and unkempt; there were times when she was lonely and despondent; she found beauty in the northern landscapes, but often felt nostalgia for England; she took on the role of moral guardian of the Aboriginal people. No doubt if one read Bombas’ writings a coherent personality would emerge, but through these selective quotes she seems to be a mass of contradictions and inconsistencies. Rutherdale sometimes passes tough judgments on these women such as their nostalgia for “home” and their attempts to recreate familiar environments both inside and outside the home. These reactions seem rather typical of immigrants, particularly in their first years in a foreign environment. These mission women were not only far from home, but living in difficult circumstances. They seem on the evidence presented to have been very resilient. In Australia and the Pacific many missionaries, and particularly mission wives, became both physically and mentally exhausted and ill to the point that they had to leave. But Rutherdale’s women seem to soldier on through many difficulties.

In the chapter, “Perceptions and Interpretations of the ‘Other.’” Rutherdale sets herself the complex task of analyzing cross-cultural gender relations. She uses Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Jean and John Comaroff to guide her in her analysis, but comes to this discussion with preconceived ideas about colonial relations that are not always supported by the evidence presented. She suggests that the Comaroffs’ “colonization of language” can be ascertained in the assignment of new names to children at baptism because the names were chosen by missionaries. Yet the quote used to illustrate this point, “selecting names that would be acceptable to the mothers [of the children]” suggests that this naming process did occur with input from the people themselves (39). In the same chapter Rutherdale argues that the female missionaries misleadingly presented Aboriginal society as murderous. She quotes from...