Seeing Mission Work through a Gendered Lens

Abstract

Nellie Arnott, who served as a Congregational mission teacher in the highlands of Angola from 1905–1912, left a rich archival record of her personal experiences, including private diaries and publications for women’s mission magazines. Her writings trace her evolving attitude toward gender roles for missionaries and for Umbundu women whom she taught. Arnott provides a highly personalized and feminized glimpse into a changing central Angola, as Portuguese authority extended into the region. As Arnott left Angola in 1912, her goal was to establish a girls’ boarding school there, but, while home on furlough, she married her long-time fiancé and did not return to Africa. Her candid personal writings allow a window into the development of her own social agency and a glimpse into the lives of Umbundu women (and men) as they negotiated evolving gender roles within an environment shaped by Portuguese political control as well as Congregational mission work.