Reluctant Prophets: Moral Themes and Exhortations

Abstract

A powerful mode of personal expression came to nineteenth-century women through middle-class Christianity, which sanctified women as domestic saviors, guardians of the home, and moral missionaries who could uplift civilization. Catherine Hall explains that women “were being offered a field where they could be allowed to wield some power and influence within the moral sphere. They could play an important part in the reform of manners and morals” (86). British Victorian women’s periodicals printed scores of articles about this moral mission, informing women readers of the potential for power outside the home through philanthropy and missionary work, and inside the home by modeling humble piety and Christian faith. Poetry in the periodicals articulates the necessary values needed for a woman to realize such potential, and it provides an important portal for examining ideology that invited and enabled feelings of nationalism, social, sexual, and racial superiority, and imperialism. The poetry also reveals the types of conventional feminine sentiments thought to be most influential in woman’s moral mission. Although expectations of feminine propriety may direct a woman’s response, demanding that she express appropriate reluctance to fulfill such a public role with her private feelings, middle-class women generally embraced these opportunities and celebrated their position.