American women's open door to Chinese women: Which way does it open?

Abstract

American missionaries have played a variety of diplomatic and political roles in support of Western imperialism in China. They have promoted and benefitted from Western economic incursions and military protection throughout the Chinese hinterland. Women, who represented almost two-thirds of all American missionaries during the heyday of U.S. influence, 1900–1949, have received only perfunctory attention by missionary studies. This article discusses the methodological obstacles to gender analysis of the American missionary movement in China. It then attempts to overcome such obstacles through a case study of Anna Seward Pruitt. Anna's extensive private correspondence and published articles reveal how her domestic sphere in China was conceived as a strategic component in Protestant evangelism and American imperialism. Through Anna Pruitt's experience, and a unique chronicle of a traditional Chinese woman's response to missionary women, recorded by Anna's daughter, Ida Pruitt, the women's foreign missionary movement's assumptions about Chinese women are critiqued. The weaknesses of Anna's domestic imperialism are uncovered. Her frustrations and losses are seen to give emotional force to her support for Western military intervention in China. Directions for future gender analyses in missionary studies are suggested.