Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French Empire (review)

A glance at the library classification of Civilizing Habits might lead a reader to the wrong conclusion. It is true that the book concentrates on Rose Philippine Duchesne, Emilie de Vialar, and Anne-Marie Javouhey, all female missionaries in the nineteenth century. And yet, this is not simply a book about ‘women missionaries’. Indeed, it is neither hagiography nor biography in the usual sense. While this work might be classified as a women’s history, a history of religion, or a history of empire, all of those classifications are insufficient. In the end, it is some of each of these things, and more. Sarah Curtis examines the lives of Duchesne, Vialar, and Javouhey, all founders of women’s congregations, all remarkable leaders, and all committed Catholics. She does so in order to explore and recast a number of mostly unrecognized problems in nineteenth-century French history. Curtis notes that historians ‘have usually imagined imperial agents as either male and secular — explorers, merchants, soldiers — or, less often, male and clerical’ (p. 3). They rarely recognize the significant work done by women religious. Additionally, while women religious, ‘schooled in habits of self-abnegation and humility’ (p. 3), might have seemed traditional or even reactionary, women’s religious life in France underwent a post-Revolutionary transformation that allowed Duschene, Vialar, Javouhey, and others to carve out a space for activism that could be independent and radical. Accordingly, the lives of these women do more than complicate imperialism and political activism. They point to a fissure at the intersection of religious history and women’s history, where the ‘growing body of historical scholarship on the “feminization of Catholicism” [. . .] sit[s] uneasily in the dominant narratives of modern French and European women’s history, which are primarily concerned with the growth of domesticity, as well as the attempts to resist it’ (p. 8). Three women, all committed to the universal truth of Christianity and obedient to a hierarchical church, fought against patriarchy, promoted French Catholic culture around the globe, and engaged in power struggles to forward their goals. That is not to say that these women had entirely the same agenda or vision of the world. Duchesne endured gruelling conditions on the Missouri frontier in order to convert Protestant children and assimilate black and mixed-race children, but resisted American notions of capitalism, democracy, and individualism. Vialar used her personal wealth in the service of an order that provided medical care and treatment in an attempt to ‘civilize’ North Africans and convert Muslims. Javouhey did not resist egalitarianism like Duchesne and ‘had much in common with the Romantic socialists and utopians of her era’ (p. 178), although her commitment to Catholic dogma led her to underestimate the power of Islam in Africa. Yet, despite the differences in mission field, political beliefs, and philosophy, Curtis finds the overlapping themes of their lives and weaves them together in a way that allows us to see imperialism, women’s activism, and religious belief in a profoundly new way.