Elizabeth Fairburn/Colenso: her times

Abstract

This study seeks to give Elizabeth Fairburn/Colenso, an Evangelical 'helpmeet', whose story has been obscured by the patriarchal discourse of missionisation and colonisation, a place in history: more specifically, a place in nineteenth-century New Zealand pioneering history. Intertwined with this primary agenda is that of examining questions of contemporary femininity and colonial history as illustrated by Elizabeth's life. It was a life governed and informed by the Evangelical ethic of duty but distorted by the allegation of passionlessness; an allegation which served to mask the sexual double standard. Among other debates aired in the thesis are white women's agency as the interface of colonial and missionary campaigns; women's labour as the 'bedrock', the unacknowledged investment of such capitalist enterprises; the apparent contradiction between Evangelicalism's redefinition of women's role as within the private domestic sphere and women's extra-domestic pursuit of good causes such as Temperance and the Abolition of Slavery. These large debates prompt discussion of associated issues. The thesis then not only argues the anomalies of the nineteenth-century ideology of private (female) versus public (male) spheres and that the axes of power-gender, class and ethnicity are historically specific but it also points to the experiential and negotiable aspects of nineteenth-century women's role, albeit within patriarchy.