ABSTRACT
In February, 1835, the Rev. Eleazar W. P. Wells stood before the ladies of the Moral Reform Society of Salem and assured them that they were uniquely qualified to reclaim the fallen of their own sex:
Oh ye sisters to these wicked, these unfortunate members of our family, ye pure unfallen ones, ye at whom they look as the damned look up to the angels of light—Oh go ye like those angels—go in the gentleness, tenderness, delicacy and pity of your natures, and uniting their hearts to yours, draw them away to virtue and beauty.
But the reclamation of prostitutes, this Episcopalian rector continued, was only half the work of moral reform. The reform of immoral society at large must also be undertaken. That great work must entail the reform of male seducers, and these evangelical women were also uniquely positioned to reach them:Man cannot live without you. Where shall he rest his weary, troubled, aching head, but on consoling, cheering woman? Whose approbation, under God, shall stimulate him to virtue? Who will soften and tame his rough and wild nature but woman?… The power, then, is in your hand.… Shut him out from your society, then, if he come not with clean hands.… Shut him out, were he son or brother, till he repent. And you can do it. Your influence is greater than that of man. 1
Three and a half years later, a member of the Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Female Moral Reform Society, echoing the Boston parent society’s new-found confidence, restated Wells’ exaltation of female power and optimism in its results:34It is in the power of woman to exterminate this sin, in a great measure, and I rejoice to see they have commenced, and the detestable crime of seduction is wholly in their power.… Would they but be as zealous in persecuting the licentious man as they are of their own sex, we will presume to predict there will be but few to imitate him, for man cannot endure to be banished from their society. 2
Female moral reform succeeded in these years because rural and urban women by the thousands, and not simply parent society organizers, took up the clergyman’s challenge and echoed this Fitchburg writer’s firm belief that moral reform was women’s work.