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

by Peggy Pascoe

In this study of late nineteenth-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.

Genres: History

328 pages, Paperback

First published March 29, 1990

About the author

Peggy Ann Pascoe was an American historian. She was the Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History and Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. She earned a B.A. from Montana State University in 1977, an M.A. from Sarah Lawrence College in 1980, and a Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1986. She was a member of the University of Oregon History Department from 1996 until her death on July 23, 2010.

Reviews

[Lou-Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely brilliant like all her work is, rest in peace peggy pascoe

[Anhhuy Do · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit outdated, but provides interesting insight into the lives of Chinese American women and their lives in mission homes. Especially because the history of Chinese exclusion in the late nineteenth century is dominated by Chinese men, it was refreshing to read about the lives of Chinese women, albeit from the perspective of white missionary women. The comparative method of comparing the mission home experiences of Chinese women with Native American and Mormon women was not quite convincing, but regardless each case illuminates important historical formations of gendered understandings of race or religious denominations.

[Josh Reid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foundational study on women in the American West. I really appreciated the way she focused on both sides -- matrons and residents -- of the rescue home issue. I think this is an interesting book to bring into conversation w/ Jacobs' _White Mother to a Dark Race_.

[Jericho]

almost immediately after finishing this book for my dissertation i decided to defer my dissertation. NOT pascoe’s fault just a funny coincidence

[Stacey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just finished reading and writing my book review for my History of Women in the American West class. The book reveals the struggle for control and power of Victorian era white, middle class, Protestant women. Interestingly enough, they actually had a great deal of power. They controlled men by telling them they were morally inferior. And they controlled women of different ethnicities, classes and faiths by "rescuing" them and putting them in mission homes were they could convert them to be "mini me's".

If this book hadn't been required by my class I never would have read it. It did open my eyes to the fact that we are not so different in our struggles as women today as these women in 1874-1939 were.

[Selena · Rating 3 out of 5]

While not as interesting as What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America, this was an interesting account of the interplay between class, religion and ethnicity among women in the nineteenth and early twentieth-century America as missionaries helped Mormon and Chinese women. This is definitely an aspect of women's history that is new to me.