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Religious Experience and the New Woman: The Life of Lily Dougall Theresa Jamieson, University of Hull Joanna Dean’s Religious Experience and the New Woman: The Life of Lily Dougall, though ostensibly a biography of this late-nineteenth century novelist and religious essayist, is a decisively contextualized study of Dougall’s concept of experiential faith which demonstrates the extent to which this was ‘a response to the cultural need of a particular place and time’ (p.6). By charting the development of Dougall’s understanding of religious experience through the turbulence of the modernist challenge to ecclesiastical authority, and in the course of a distinctly transatlantic life, Dean examines the ways in which Dougall’s status as a New Woman influenced her conception of the role of religion in a rapidly changing modern world. For Dean, any approach to the intellectual life and influence of Lily Dougall must take as its ‘central context’ the issue of gender (p.8). As such, her study does, to a certain extent, make reparation for what she sees as the ‘erasure of the feminized spiritual’ from the historical record (p.10). However, Dean is careful to point out that the book is in no way a ‘celebration’ of such spirituality but rather an examination of the ‘crippling effects’ of an approach to religion which paradoxically offers, on one hand, a ‘voice’ to its adherents while, with the other, enveloping them in ‘silence’ (p.11). The book’s central focus is therefore upon Dougall’s struggle to achieve a balance between intellectual freedom and religious faith, and to find a suitable narrative voice through which to express her theological ideas, at a time when her desire for religious reform posed a threat to the distinctly masculine authority of the Church. Framed by an illuminating introduction and conclusion, the body of the work is divided into three sections which follow chronologically Dougall’s religious maturation and the evolution of her intellectual thought. Part one considers the influence of the evangelism of Dougall’s Canadian childhood upon her personal approach to experiential faith, her departure from the faith of her parents, and her quest for intellectual independence. Part two focuses primarily upon Dougall’s creative work, using her published novels as a medium through which to substantiate the trajectory of her literary and theological thought and to foreground her lifestyle as a central influence upon her literary output. Part three moves into the twentieth century and to a consideration of Dougall’s theological writings, her involvement and influence within the Anglican modernist movement, and her legacy to religious reform. The book’s first section is very much a ‘coming of age’ story which provides the groundwork and a solid point of reference for much of the proceeding analysis (p.15). Dean presents Dougall as a vivacious and imaginative child, plagued by ill health brought on by ‘the emotional demands of [an] invalid mother and an overbearing father’ (p.24). However, though Dougall would eventually rebel against the prescriptive faith of her evangelical family, Dean is careful to emphasize that it was from her father that Dougall inherited her impulse toward religious liberalism and free thought. Similarly, Dougall’s forays into the ‘feminized interiority’ of the holiness tradition are foregrounded in these initial pages (p.33). Holiness offered women an avenue for the assertion of the self through acquiescence to God’s power and was enthusiastically embraced by many in Dougall’s social circle. The potential of holiness for feminism, according to Dean, lay in the contemporary belief that it ‘posed a threat to male authority’ (p.30). However, despite Dougall’s feminist leanings, holiness was a practice which her lively, intellectual mind could never fully embrace. And yet, Dean ventures, it was, like so many aspects of her youthful experience, ‘a legacy that framed Lily Dougall’s life, even as she tore herself away from it’ (p.33). A particular highlight of this book is the inclusion of a pertinent selection of extracts from Dougall’s letters to friends and family. In the first section, letters to her older siblings are testament to the affectionate and supportive family relationships which Dougall enjoyed with their recipients, and provide not only a record of the nature of her religious maturation but, having become increasingly independent from her family, some indication of the extent to which she felt able to share the fruits of her autonomous thought. Other extracts position Dougall within a network of close female friends, the maintenance of which was, Dean writes, characteristic of a woman who ‘was known to have “a genius for friendship”’ (p.69). More importantly, the inclusion of these early letters enables Dean to trace the development of Dougall’s ‘community of women’ friends which became a central aspect of her adult life and had a direct influence upon her fiction, theology and religious experience (p.65). Dean concludes the first part of her study with a consideration of the gendering of nineteenth century narratives of religious doubt. As Dougall matured her religious scepticism grew correspondingly, and in this final chapter – ‘Gendering the Crisis of Faith’ – Dean represents Dougall’s struggle to situate her own doubts within a predominantly masculine narrative and thus prepares the ground for the analysis of Dougall’s creative work which follows. One of the great strengths of this book is the skill with which Dean melds biography with literary and cultural criticism to produce a thorough and fluid study, which clearly illustrates the extent to which, for Dougall, theology, lifestyle and literature were inextricably entwined and correspondingly influential. This is perhaps most apparent in the book’s central section, in which Dean’s analysis of Dougall’s fiction is offered alongside an insightful interpretation of the ways in which Dougall’s personal experience and relationships were vital elements in the creation of her fictions. It is here that the importance of the ideal of fellowship in Dougall’s life really emerges, as Dean explores the ways in which the emotional and practical support of Dougall’s network of female friends compensated for the kind of intellectual validation which was missing in her early years. At the centre of this consideration of fellowship lies Dougall’s relationship with her lifelong companion Sophie Earp – an ‘ambiguous relationship’ which Dean, significantly, does not see the ‘need to classify’ (p.72). She, suggests, however, that the nature of the relationship and the extent of Dougall’s regard for her wider circle of friends is expressed in her fiction through the apparent ‘strength and beauty of the leading women characters’, though she is careful to indicate that, while these female characters are certainly not without passion, ‘these descriptions are not erotic’ (p.74). Rather, Dougall’s narratives are characterized by a sense of ‘coercive heterosexuality’ which often ends in marriage and the independent woman’s capitulation to her ‘womanly duty’ (p.74; 80). Dean sees such endings as ‘concessions to popular taste’ which accurately represent Dougall as a popular writer of melodramatic plots for the literary marketplace (p.81). They also obscure the real impulse of Dougall’s writing, enabling her to raise metaphysical questions in appropriate forms by disguising ‘theology as female foolishness’ (p.11). As such, Dean argues, the message of Dougall’s novels was necessarily compromised. Her struggle to balance the impetus for theological exploration with the need for a suitably feminine expression resulted in ‘a distorted theological discourse’ which conceals rather than reveals and must, therefore be read with attention to ‘things not said’ (p.12). Moving onto a discussion of Dougall’s theological works in part three, Dean evaluates the impact of Dougall’s deep seated and persistent feelings of intellectual inadequacy upon her works of non-fiction. Where her playful and melodramatic approach to fiction had delighted her middle-class readers and allowed Dougall an avenue – albeit one littered with creative compromise – for the expression of her religious concerns, the same ‘light literary voice’ all but ‘crippled’ her early religious essays (p.12). According to Dean this hesitant and distinctly feminine voice ‘was a sign of Lily Dougall’s own sense of intellectual unworthiness’, and an example of the ‘subtle current of self-deprecation running through [her] work’ (p.12). However, though Dougall would be plagued by such feelings throughout her life, Dean emphasizes that it was, once again, through fellowship and collaboration that she would develop a suitable expression for her theological concerns. This final part of Dean’s study moves into the twentieth century and presents us with a mature Dougall, increasingly involved in collectives such as the Anglican Modernist movement and the Student Christian Movement, working towards religious and social reform, and developing interests in philosophy and the new science of psychology. Having published her first full length work of theology, Pro Christo et Ecclesia (1900), to great success – a work which was lauded for its ‘“masculine” command of theology’ (p.105) – Dougall finally found the greatest intellectual fulfilment as the founder of the Cumnor Group, a fellowship of intellectuals which, Dean writes, allowed Lily the freedom to explore her ideas within a supportive collective of academics and to publish ‘with the authority of their credentials and titles’ (p.150). In Religious Experience and the New Woman: The Life of Lily Dougall, Joanna Dean has produced an insightful study which, through an examination of one woman’s understanding of religious experience, addresses some of the most significant challenges to ecclesiastical authority at the turn of the century, and the sometimes precarious roles of women within such movements. Dean’s narrative, though chronological, is at times repetitive, but this can be attributed to the thematic overlap between the various sections of the book. Overall, this is a well structured and deftly handled study, rich in content and strongly contextualized, which will be of particular interest to scholars concerned with religious influence in the works of New Women writers.
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