ABSTRACT
The exemplary life of Adele Marion Fielde came to a gracious close more than eighty years ago, and we are now able to appreciate the entire range of her endeavors, knowing with a kind of certainty the outcome of each chapter of the narrative. The completeness, the finality, is a haunting and poignant lesson for us all. Truly, her pilgrimage was a fit subject for a heroic chronicle. From meager beginnings she astonishes us by her intellectual growth, her fine intelligence and her prodigious energy. The making of a reformer can be traced in the experiences of her life, for she quickly perceived that there was little difference between the egregious exploitation of black people and the oppression of women – denial of education and rights, both in China and in her own country. Above all, this indomitable woman was possessed of a moral certitude, a knowledge of what was right and what was wrong, that was the fuel for her mighty engine. When she perceived suffering and injustice, wherever she was on this globe, she entered the battle unconditionally, with her acts and her words. As a single woman in a man’s world she strove mightily, and achieved so much as a teacher, an evangelizer in foreign lands, a social activist, scientist, lexicographer, writer, and lecturer.
