Quaker Women Ministers in Nineteenth Century America

QUAKER WOMEN MINISTERS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA By Janis Calvo* In an introductory essay to 7"Ae American Woman: Who Was She? Anne Firor Scott states: Nineteendi century Americans exhibited a good deal of anxiety about the question of 'woman's sphere.' What were the things appropriate for women to do? The most conservative view was that God had created women to take care of men and children and that whenever diey took part in public activities they were being unladylike. Women were seen as gentle, pious, sentimental, emotional—and not very bright.1 Nineteenth century America was not a society that accepted the equality of a woman or offered her many alternatives to the traditionally domestic role. Roles which were defined as "male" were barred against her participation and she was labeled at best an anomaly, at worst an intruder, if she attempted to extend her abilities beyond her biologically assigned calling. As one of the nation's major professional groups the ministry was no exception to this maxim. The Quaker irrinistry, however, was. Unique among their contemporaries, the Society of Friends not only permitted women to participate in the Society's business meetings, but to travel about the country or abroad as fully recognized ministers of the Gospel. Here, placed before the American Quaker woman, was an unparalleled alternative that carried the encouragement of her Society and the sanction of God, an alternative which allowed, indeed demanded, a direct assertion of her influence, her presence upon the "outside" world. This often led to instances of "role strain," discussed by William Goode in his article "A Theory of Role Strain."2 Simultaneous *Janis Calvo is a graduate student in American Civilization at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes, "I am grateful to Dr. Judith Diamondstone for her probing questions and invaluable insights into the Quaker ministry and its relationship to the woman's role in nineteendi century America." 1.Anne Firor Scott, ed., The American Woman: Who Was She? (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice Hall, 1971), p. 5. 2.William Goode. "A Theory of Role Strain," American Sociological Review.Vol. 25 (August, 1960). 75 76QUAKER HISTORY and at times conflicting demands beset the woman minister as she attempted to remain faithful to family as well as religious obligations , and it was her persistent problem to successfully balance both roles. Goode states that the individual, in an attempt to meet the demands of multiple roles, is obliged to "role bargain," or to decide how much energy and resources he is willing to expend on one role at the expense of another. He writes, "The individual's problem is how to make his whole role system manageable, that is how to allocate his energies and skills so as to reduce role strain to some bearable proportions."3 The Quaker minister was able to keep her role tension within bearable proportions because of her self-concept of instrumentality, whereby she perceived herself a submissive instrument in the hands of God, and because of the part-time character of the Quaker ministry which permitted her to segregate her roles of wife/mother and minister, picking up one as she put aside the other. While normally any deviation from the traditional "woman's sphere" brought varying degrees of social disapproval, the Quaker minister was, to an extent, able to absorb the consequent emotional stress, secure in the belief that her work was God's will, and her suffering of his sake. In addition, her acceptance of an alternative to her womanly role did not involve a direct confrontation with the mores of the wider society. So far as she and her Society were concerned, she was merely submitting her will to the Lord's, and what indeed was more consistent with feminine behavior than selfless submission? A potentially political stance on her part was thereby evaded through a religious setting. Indeed, she was recognized by family and fellow Friends as divinely "gifted" and accorded a degree of respectful attention unknown to most women of her generation. Yet this conception of the Quaker woman's potential beyond the twin roles of housewife and mother did not necessarily imply acceptance of the equality of the sexes...