Elizabeth Fry: becoming Religious and Celebrity
Becoming A Religious Woman
Biographies of Elizabeth Fry (neé Gurney) pay little attention to the form and nature of her religion and how it changed over time, although they do considered her religious faith as inextricably linked to her work as a prison reformer and philanthropist. Instead, descriptions of her religious life are limited to a truncated version of her conversion narrative (she became a plain Quaker in 1798) and a brief account of how her vocal ministry, which began in 1809, led to her being acknowledged as a minister by her Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends in 1811 (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry volumn I 185). Demonstrating that she had strong religious beliefs and that these underlay her work in prisons, however, is not sufficient to demonstrate the complexity of religion could play in shaping women’s lives during the late eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century. Elizabeth Fry’s religious identity and position was made, unmade and remade through a process of negotiation and adaptation; she made her own choices and the historical context of religion in her lifetime. It was a relationship not only between herself and her God but also encompassed her friends, family, religious community and eventually the public. Religion not only played a vital role in defining her own interpretation of what it meant to be a woman but also forced those around her to adopt strategies to adjust to, contain, or contest the particular exemplar of gender that Fry modeled. Religion shaped who she was and her position as a woman.
In May 1797, Elizabeth Gurney wrote, "I love to look through Nature up to Nature’s God. I have no more religion than that, and in the little I have I am not the least devotional." (Skidmore 22) This indicates that Unitarian influences still remained present in her thought. However, Elizabeth Gurney did think about being religious as an emotional support system, "it seems so delightful to depend upon a superior power, for all that is good; it is at least always having the bosom of a friend open to us (in imagination), to rest all our cares and sorrows upon." (24)
In 1798, William Savery's visit marked a turning point in Elizabeth Gurney's life. It prompted her to link being religious with being virtuous. She began to think that it would be difficult to live a principled life without religion and that if she did have religion, she would be superior to what she was at present. She increasingly believed that only religion could help her overcome the weaknesses she perceived in her character and become the person she hoped to be. "Religion," she felt, "is far more likely to keep you in the path of virtue than any theoretical plan [...] it acts as a furnace on your character, it refines it, it purifies it; whereas principles of your own making are without kindling to make the fire hot enough to answer its purpose." (31) Self-discipline alone, in Gurney's opinion, would not sufficiently motivate good behaviour, instead, an external discipline, namely, a belief that her actions would be judged by a higher authority, was required.
In the two years following Gurney's decision to become a plain Quaker, she faced another life-altering decision: whether or not to accept a marriage proposal from Joseph Fry. Elizabeth Gurney was aware that while the female ministry was an accepted practice within the Religious Society of Friends, having a family could make traveling more difficult. Elizabeth Gurney only relented after Joseph promised that he would not interfere with her religious calling, and they were married in August 1800 (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry volumn I 102-103). In the coming years, Elizabeth Fry travelled often in the ministry, remained a committed Quaker while forming close associations with many Christians of other denominations. Here, religion played an important role in shaping who Elizabeth Fry was, what she defined as good and how she came to be consumed by a desire to shape her own identity by being and doing good, to the extent that she can defend her religious faith. Thus, Elizabeth Fry's self-efficacy and self-actualization were fulfilled as she was able to deliberately pursuit her own interest outside gender roles.
Becoming A Celebrity
After Elizabeth Fry's works in Newgate Prison became public knowledge, the composition of the Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate broadened and consisted of women from a variety of denominations and of different social ranks. Elizabeth Fry's celebrity established her as a role model to which other women aspired.
In April 1818, Fry wrote that "the prison and myself are become quite a show." (Fry 326) In fact, so many people, including ministers, politicians, philanthropists, diplomats, nobility, men and women of the middle-class, came to watch her readings that tickets had to be issued. These passes were more than mere symbols of Fry's celebrity. They are also physical evidence of the power that celebrity conferred on her.
While Elizabeth Fry learned to use her celebrity to promote prison reform and women’s involvement in the public sphere, celebrity was a still commodity, subject to the whims of the reading public, not all of whom agreed with Fry’s public activities or her views. Elizabeth Fry's celebrity status was also an issue for some within her familial and religious networks. Since Fry was a public figure her private life, her reform activities, and her associations with politicians, royalty, members of the mobility, and part of some of her co-religionists and non-Quakers, became fair game for criticism either because her critics believed she had gone beyond the activities deemed acceptable for a woman, disagreed with her vision for prison reform or violated Quaker principles (receiving wordy praises about herself instead of her God).
In 1823, The Freethinking Christians’ Quarterly Register (FCQR), in the first of several attacks on Fry and the Quakers generally, denounced them as "busy, bustling, bountiful ladies, full of pride and piety [...] at the head of [which] stands the celebrated Mrs. Fry; and though one of the sect of Quakers, a sect who affect to disregard the praise of this world, and to do good deeds in private [is] noised abroad in the world, and even the senate resounds with her praises." (156) Two years later, they continued to express their outrage at Fry’s fame, "we feel authorized," they state, "in adducing her example as illustrative of our objections to the […] practices of the whole tribe of pharisaic professors of all sects; who, under the cloak of charity and religion, are but vaunting their own virtues, and promoting their own ends." (225) According to FCQR, Fry was culpable in her celebrity. They point out that it was her brother and brother-in-law, Joseph John Gurney and Thomas Fowell Buxton, who championed Elizabeth Fry's works through their pamphlets. Then, they conclude that, rather than engaging in "silent and unassuming endeavours of virtuous women", Fry was performing a public act of theater (156). The frontispiece engraving of the scene below, FCQR claims, merely reinforces Fry’s exhibitionism and prompted them to commission a facsimile with the satirical caption "An Hour in Newgate, Exhibiting Mrs. Fry and her friends, as published by the Quakers". Fry and her followers, FCQR mockingly adds, should "own themselves indebted to us, for thus contributing in their own way, to extend their celebrity." (238)
Elizabeth Fry was cognizant that her celebrity conflicted with the humbleness required by her faith and opened her up to censure. She confided in her journal that "so much respect paid me by the people in power in the city and also being so publicly brought forward may not prove a temptation lead to something of self exaltation or worldly pride.” (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry volumn I 311) On numerous occasions, she rationalized her frequent contact with the high and mighty with the argument that she brought attention to her charitable work and to the beliefs of the Society of Friends, thus, raising their profile in society. Her hope, she claimed, was not to receive attention purely for attention's sake, but rather as a means to impact the ways in which her peers treated the materially disenfranchised and to affect the conduct and hearts of these individuals.
Public opposition to Fry also came from those who believed her activities were contrary to normative gender roles. The FCQR subscribed to a strict gendered dichotomy between public and private; women should be "gentle, modest, and retiring, […] in that sacred, domestic circle of which she is the solace and the joy", while Fry and her cohort did the very opposite of what (they expect) women should do (158). "Mrs. Fry," the authors disdainfully note, "has a family of nine children, most of them young; and she also has a husband, although no one seems to suspect that there exists in the world such a person as Mister Fry” (their italics) (229). Although some readers appear to have criticized FCQR on the grounds that Fry was a woman and therefore they should not have attacked her, the FCQR responded that Fry had opened herself up to censure because she was "a public character in the strictest sense of the designation […], it was her own act" (227) However, interestingly, Elizabeth Fry initially wished that “[her Newgate visiting] should be [kept secret]” (Memoir of the Life of Elizabeth Fry volume I 286).
Further, the prison inspectors, established in response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Gaols and Other Places of Confinement to which Elizabeth Fry gave evidence in 1835 were more critical of her efforts. In an effort to assert official male authority over the ladies visiting committees, William Crawford and Whitworth Russell, inspectors for England and Wales, characterized her reforms as well-meaning but ineffectual. Although Fry is not named in their report, their target is implied as they reported that reformers who continued to insist on the harmful effects of separate confinement, the usefulness of teaching prisoners to read and learn regular habits, and the practice of treating them with kindness and providing them with the means to improve themselves had, they claimed, transformed prisons from hell-holes that the destitute and degenerate would be eager to avoid into sanctuaries for vagrants and beggars. These criticisms did not deter Elizabeth Fry from continuing to be active in prison reform, however, they resulted in her distress as she wrote, "I find my weak nature and proneness to be so much affected by the opinions of man" (286).
Female celebrity was not a straightforward matter of being in the public eye. It could be used as a tool to overcome opposition to her participation in the realm of public affairs. However, while the celebrity status could open doors for women, it also posed a danger as it opened them up to criticism of both their public and their private actions. But despite the challenges to her public standing, in the end, Fry managed to transcend celebrity rather than attaining fleeting popularity the public’s continued desire to acknowledge her extraordinary efforts.