The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
The Death of Christian Britain
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— Women in Discourse and Narrative 1800–1950 —<br />
tance who led her to a City Mission run by Sister Faith who persuaded<br />
Lucy that her skills as a doctor should be combined with mission work ‘in<br />
the East’. Lucy hesitated for long, but was convinced when Sister Faith<br />
told her on her deathbed: ‘Ask them – those women over there – to accept<br />
the Lord Jesus Christ as their own personal Saviour. Tell them – how much<br />
He means, especially to us women.’ 88 It was not merely new jobs for women<br />
to which the evangelical discourse on female religiosity had to adapt. In<br />
‘Red Emily and Her Changed Creed’ <strong>of</strong> 1937, Emily was described as ‘an<br />
incorrigible rebel’ at the age <strong>of</strong> fourteen, and at sixteen was sent to be<br />
trained as a domestic servant on a farm where she stole and was forced to<br />
leave. ‘That was the beginning <strong>of</strong> her career as a revolutionary’, and Emily<br />
joined a band <strong>of</strong> disaffected young communists in the Midlands, reading<br />
Marx on economics and urging violent overthrow <strong>of</strong> capitalism, and<br />
becoming a street-corner orator. But she happened upon a late-night gospel<br />
meeting, attracted by the oratory, and heard the message within it and came<br />
forward to be saved, whereupon she became a happy and contented<br />
domestic servant. 89<br />
In these and other ways, the evangelical narrative responded to changes<br />
in the wider discourse on women’s economic and social lives, and thereby<br />
sustained core characteristics <strong>of</strong> female piety and femininity. This could be<br />
seen in stories for the very young girl. <strong>The</strong> Good Way and Daybreak <strong>of</strong><br />
the Edwardian period (both priced at a penny-ha’penny) contained stories<br />
and homilies with simple messages imparting a notion <strong>of</strong> good behaviour<br />
in young children: ‘Mamma, I wish I might always dress in white . . .<br />
Because, Mamma, the angels dress in white, and I want to be like them.’<br />
Mamma: ‘white is the emblem <strong>of</strong> purity, and that is the reason it is spoken<br />
<strong>of</strong> as the raiment <strong>of</strong> heaven.’ 90 Stories for young girls tended to be less<br />
melodramatic than for teenage females, but they utilised a whole range <strong>of</strong><br />
‘feminine’ contexts to explore simple moral issues <strong>of</strong> goodness, meekness,<br />
obedience and self-discipline: contexts like gardening, pretty clothes and<br />
household duties. 91 <strong>The</strong> almost constant concern with girls’ clothes, with<br />
the prettiness <strong>of</strong> ‘Sunday best’ dresses especially, symbolised the way in<br />
which female religiosity and femininity were closely allied in discourse. As<br />
the next section contends, the sites for these discourses were also closely<br />
allied.<br />
EVANGELICAL NARRATIVES IN THE<br />
SECULAR WOMEN’S PRESS<br />
From the 1830s, the massive popular press <strong>of</strong> weekly and monthly magazines<br />
absorbed the evangelical narrative structure into a ‘secular’ context.<br />
<strong>The</strong> connection was so close that it is almost inappropriate to speak<br />
<strong>of</strong> separate ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ popular magazines until at least the<br />
79