ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the widely held assumptions about Victorian women's religious texts in order to make a more specific argument about the function of women's devotional texts on the Apocalypse. It examines the writings of women speaking through the Apocalypse to articulate an authoritative, yet "orthodox," Christian female voice. Apocalypse has only become available as a vehicle of social critique when it has been approached as an allegorically unstable document - unstable in the sense that the allegory's meaning needs to be interpreted and reinterpreted in light of present circumstances. Feminist biblical scholars have repeatedly pointed out the misogynist tone of the Apocalypse. Victorian women approaching the Apocalypse from a "female" hermeneutic critique the Church's devaluation of women in three broad ways. These three ways include revising the misogynist tone of the apocalypse; revising cultural valuations of men and masculinity; and revising cultural valuations of women and femininity.
