Book
Marlene Epp. Mennonite Women in Canada: A History. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2008.
Reviewer
Brian Froese, Assistant Professor of History, Canadian Mennonite University, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Marlene Epp has written a history of Canadian Mennonite women over the course of the past three centuries, ending in 1980. This refreshing work orients Canadian Mennonite historiography towards questions of gender in a fashion that, while grounded in extensive research into primary and archival sources, is nonetheless an effective synthesis of a complex subject.
As such, it is neither a theological treatment of “power” or “gender” nor an over-specialized monograph, but rather a straightforward, brilliantly researched, and well-argued history of a topic gaining in coverage that now has its own attempt at a survey. Having set a high standard for Canadian Mennonite women’s studies in her earlier book, Women Without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War (2000), Epp continues her masterful command of the field with this volume.
The author divides the book into five chapters, arranged thematically, each of which opens with an historical vignette clarifying the theme and interpretive methodology to follow. The chapters are organized around themes of immigration as pioneers, refugees and transnationals; family life as wives and mothers; religious life as preachers, prophets, and missionaries; worldly life as citizens, nonresisters and nonconformists; and, finally, living in a material world of quilts, canned goods, and the written word.
Throughout the book, Epp provides an even-handed account of Mennonite women’s life based on her extensive research bringing to light women’s experiences, often in their own words.
Epp introduces the volume with a helpful historiographical survey of the topic, in addition to making clear her own social location and how she will be working not so much with theology as with history. On this point, she summarizes how religion cannot be ignored when working with an ethno-religious group.
Interestingly, she adds the caveat when discussing the influence of Harold S. Bender’s essay “The Anabaptist Vision” that we must remember that it is not directly connected to women’s experience, dealing as it does with American Mennonites joining the military during World War II (13). While that is an obvious point to make, Epp is quite strong when explicating her methodology and her hopes for the book, which is designed both to inform and inspire students while learning of historical Mennonite women’s experiences to envision also relationships and institutions not given to gender inequality or discrimination (18-19).
While Epp’s well-articulated hope for this volume might indicate a polemic in the making, she has written an exceptionally well-researched book and a well-reasoned interpretation. Throughout she demonstrates that Canadian Mennonite women were never without history, that they were always engaged in their communities, both religious and in the wider world, all the while exercising historical agency.
The chapters progress fluidly as she defines women’s experience by roles imposed and roles taken on. Her work on the conundrum of nonconformity and non-resistance in Mennonite women’s experiences is especially significant as it exposes, perhaps counter-intuitively for some, how a theology of peace can become a seedbed of inequality (chapter 4).
Ultimately, Epp has done an important service by broadening Canadian Mennonite historiography and treatment of gender beyond localized studies to a national treatment that simultaneously brings to light a plethora of primary and archival sources. She balances historical detail with broader interpretations with seeming ease and in persuasive prose. Throughout she presents the experiences of women as diverse, heterodox, and embodying myriad perspectives, actions, and responses to their varied contexts.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in, or taking university courses involving, questions of church and society, gender, and the Canadian experiences of immigration and assimilation. This is a rich resource useful for undergraduates, graduates, and teachers alike. The book’s scope and self-imposed limits are reasonable and effective, and this reader looks forward to when a similar study can be written of the 1980s and 1990s.