Elizabeth Pease: One Woman's Vision of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Elizabeth Pease: One Woman's Vision of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights in Nineteenth-Century Britain Karen I. Halbersleben* Tracing the sources of "resonance"—the ability of particular reform movements to engage an individual's emotional allegiance and practical support—becomes particularly compelling as one examines the life and work ofElizabeth Pease, from the North Yorkshire town ofDarlington. ' In many respects, Pease's life was the historian's dream: she lived for nearly the entire 19th century, from 1807 to 1897. Through extensive personal connections—both family and commercial—she was placed at the heart of a reformist network that included not only men and women across the British Isles, but reformers in the United States as well.2 As the privileged daughter of a well-to-do Darlington manufacturer, Pease had freedom of movement and social intercourse which relatively few women of her day enjoyed. She also remained unmarried until the age of 46, thus having relatively more time to pursue her interests without the pressures on time caused by spouse and children. But, above all else, Pease's Quaker beliefs influenced her choices and her conduct. The sources of resonance in the life and work of Elizabeth Pease were rooted in her Quaker insistence on human rights and the equality of all souls. From this source grew her allegiance to Garrisonian antislavery, women's rights, and radical non-resistance. Even after she had formally left the Society of Friends by marrying outside the faith, Pease plumbed the limits of permissible dissent, using her Quaker witness and reform work to express larger dissatisfaction with social evils and unjust laws. Quakerism provided Pease both with the radical diagnosis of the abuses ofpower she saw around her, and with a set of religious solutions to those abuses. For that reason, the reforms to which she devoted much of her life, particularly antislavery and non-resistance, seem best to express her overriding Quaker-inspired concern with the rights ofthe individual in the face of coercive power and her belief that God's goodness could overcome all evil. The sources of resonance proved easy enough to trace in Pease's life. Whatbecomes more frustrating is trying to find the flesh-and-blood woman amidst the records of the seemingly tireless worker for peace and justice. Combining Quaker beliefs with social activism and feminist ideology still *Karen I. Halbersleben is Associate Professor ofHistory and Director ofWomen's Studies at the State University of New York at Oswego. Elizabeth Pease: One Woman's Vision27 leaves us short ofcapturing the essence ofthe woman. Unfortunately, Pease left a lot more evidence documenting the dauntless Quaker reformer than to the woman chafing at life's limitations. Her personal diary, referred to by a nineteenth-century biographer, remains lost, and with it any number of more intimate or unguarded references and observations which would help illuminate the woman. Even without the diary, we can reconstruct much ofher life, drawing on scores ofletters that she wrote or which were written to her over much of the nineteenth century. But even here, the woman behind the pen remains elusive: Pease's letters over the years were informed and interesting, evoking respect and admiration from the reader rather than an intuitive understanding of their writer.3 Throughout her life, Pease's activism expressed Quakerism's staunchly egalitarian theology and its mandate that each believer criticize and challenge unjust forms ofauthority. Quakers, from the time ofGeorge Fox, insisted that all human souls—male and female, rich and poor, black and white—were equal before God and that no hierarchy existed amongst humans based on gender or social status.4 This ongoing concern with individual human equality and dignity led many Quakers into work in a range of nineteenth-century reform movements designed to protect individual life and worth. It encouraged Elizabeth Pease's outrage over the distress of others and facilitated her increasingly radical defense of individual rights. More significantly, Quakerism provided the mechanism to translate that conviction into action. In the Quaker tradition, Pease received an education equal to her brother's and was encouraged to develop personal administrative abilities to assist the Society's ministerial and pastoral outreach. At the age...