Early Nineteenth-Century Man’s Sphere The complexity of nineteenth-century gender roles
is further illustrated in the early history of Middlebury College.
Prior to the Civil War, as David Stameshkin observes, religious
devotion was central to the everyday experience and occupational
aspirations of the men who attended Middlebury. The pious tone of
the Philadelphian Society, a student debating society, reflects
the broader commitment to Christian piety in the early nineteenth-century
College. Many early Middlebury graduates became ministers, and some,
like Pliny Fisk, sought to realize the masculine ideal of the Christian
Soldier by becoming foreign missionaries. Evangelical Christianity
thus remained the province of early nineteenth-century men as well
as women. Missionary work was a mixed-sex affair, and the diary
of Mary Elizabeth Allen Martin exemplifies the roles that women
played alongside men in missionary work.
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