Relations of Rescue The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939

by Pascoe, Peggy

• ISBN13: 9780195060089
• ISBN10: 0195060083
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1990-03-29
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In this study of late nineteeth-century moral reform, Peggy Pascoe examines four specific cases--a home for Chinese prostitutes in San Francisco, California; a home for polygamous Mormon women in Salt Lake City, Utah; a home for unmarried mothers in Denver, Colorado; and a program for American Indians on the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska--to tell the story of the women who established missionary rescue homes for women in the American West. Focusing on two sets of relationships--those between women reformers and their male opponents, and those between women reformers and the various groups of women they sought to shelter--Pascoe traces the gender relations that framed the reformers' search for female moral authority, analyzes the interaction between women reformers and the women who entered the rescue homes, and raises provocative questions about historians' understanding of the dynamics of social feminism, social control, and intercultural relations.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction The Search for Female Moral Authority
Institutional Origins	p. 3
The Ideology of Female Moral Authority, 1874-1900	p. 32
Some Women's Culture and Other Women's Needs: Motivations, Maternalism, and the Language of Gratitude	p. 73
Home Mission Women, Race, and Culture: the Case of """"Native Helpers""""	p. 112
Homes outside the Rescue Homes	p. 146
The Crisis of Victorian Female Moral Authority, 1890-1939	p. 177
Epilogue: A Legacy to Ponder: Female Moral Authority and Contemporary Women's Culture	p. 208
Abbreviations	p. 213
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 269
Index	p. 293
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