Female Moral Authority

Female Moral Authority

American women from different backgrounds faced many social problems in the early 90s and this prompted a need to offer rescue services to such women. Pascoe (5) focuses on four cases of women form different cultural backgrounds, faced by different challenges. They include a home for unmarried mothers in Denver, a program focusing on American Indians in Nebraska, a home hosting polygamous Mormon women located in Utah, and a home sheltering Chinese women in San Francisco. The book is mainly about women who established rescue centers for other women in the west of America and their relationship with the women they rescued.

The book’s spotlight is on the relationship between the female rescuers and their male opposers, and the relationship between the rescuers and the women they wanted to rescue. The mission of the rescuers was to establish female moral authority, but this came with numerous challenges. The rescuers are a group of protestant women who embarked on constructing a model female authority. Their decision was guided by the belief that women are moral guardians, and thus, the rescuers mission is to rescue women from male abuse. This answers different questions relating to social feminism, cross-cultural relations, and social control.

The rescuers were mainly disturbed by the masculine authority displayed in west American cities. They thus created a network of rescue homes that were sponsored by missionaries. These homes were free of male authority. The interactions between the missionaries and the rescued women were, however, difficult given that they all came from different cultural backgrounds. This raises the need for cultural assimilation so as to create a friendly environment for mutual understanding.

The author tries to show how the description of women, in different cultures, over the years has served as a limitation to their social roles. This is because women are portrayed as being pious and morality guards, which limits their actions. For example, the matrons at the rescue centers remain unmarried. This deliberate sidelining of men causes men to ignore them and their mission, and this leads to their eventual failure.

The other theme is the role of cultural integration in offering services to people from different social backgrounds. The lack of understanding of the cultural backgrounds was one of the major reasons of the failure of the rescue homes (Pascoe 56). The missionaries, who were predominantly white, approached the operations of homes with the mentality of the role of white people to spread civilization. This led to constant conflicts between the missionaries and the rescued women, and some women eventually opted to leave the rescue homes, leading to their collapse.

The book, however, plays a major role in reducing racial discrimination. This is specifically the highlighting of the story of LaFlesch who was a native who became a convert to Victorian ideologies of morality of Christians. She, therefore, becomes a helper in the centers and an example of how it was possible to transform from premitivity to civilization. This is because she is sponsored through school and becomes the first native female physician. Her ability to learn Victorian Christianity also served to show that natives could also grasp Victorian values in relation to women.

The other issues highlighted are the Victorian lifestyle and its definition of womanhood. The Victorian definition of a woman comes across as restrictive, and this limits the role of women in society. It creates a restriction on how women should conduct themselves and what they can or cannot do (Pascoe 126). This is taught to women with little regard for the cultural background of the women. The writer thus tries to show that in order for the teachings to be appreciated, the rescuers should have understood the cultural backgrounds of women, and assimilated them into the Victorian systems.

The writer focuses on highlighting the importance of cultural assimilation at such centers. This makes the lessons taught acceptable to those being learners. It is important to appreciate other cultures as they also have their positives and negatives, and no culture is superior to the other. The writer also tries to highlight that there are no standard moral rules of code of conduct. This is clearly brought out by the constant conflicts between the matrons and women at the centers because the matrons disregard the women’s cultural backgrounds.

The author accurately brings out the themes in the book, in the form of topics. She focuses on different topics and is very efficient in giving in depth analysis of different topics with clear examples. The book also has notes which are significant in bringing out clarity of the issues being discussed. This makes the book very convincing because the topics are discussed using relevant stories to support different topics. The main sources of information are case studies. The focus on specific topics of discussion and help in comprehending the themes of different topics. The author is also unbiased because she gives fair treatment of the cultural backgrounds of all the women in the case studies.

In conclusion, the book is insightful in Victorian way of life. It gives very deep information regarding the role and definition of women in Victorian teachings. It also delves into the cultural background of the women in the centers, all of whom are from different cultural backgrounds.

Works cited

Pascoe, Peggy. Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1990. Print