Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Unbridling the tongues of women
same doctrine which, she said, had made her ‘shrink from bringing children into the
world with so little chance of salvation’, 5 also taught that the deity’s chosen could be
known by their good works, and this undoubtedly fostered the ambitions she had
formed even before she reached South Australia.
The dark night of her soul lightened as she adapted to colonial life and began
to feel more self-sufficient. The Spences had immigrated to a colony which held
religious liberty as one of its founding principles. During the early years of settlement,
as Douglas Pike observed in the study he entitled Paradise of Dissent, the
‘presence … of so many ministers and preachers and so varied a swarm of sects, most
of them with places of worship, created a record surpassing that of New England’s
first decade’. 6 Debate over government funding for church or chapel building, for
salaries for ministers, and for religious instruction in schools, resounded in the columns
of the South Australian press during the 1840s and 1850s. 7 And the 1840s
saw South Australian Presbyterians cautiously arguing the issues which in Scotland
led the Free Church to break away from the Establishment. 8 Yet, despite sectarian
squabbling, rival claimants for the colonists’ souls were often able to co-operate. The
Anglican minister could offer his church to the Scottish Reverend Robert Haining
for the colony’s first service for adherents to the Established Church of Scotland. 9 In
such an environment, the teachings of any one faith could seem more a question of
individual choice than of divine truth. Spence began to doubt herself less and the
faith of her childhood more. In 1850, when she was 25, she told Haining that she
would not take communion any longer because she was not ‘a converted Christian’.
Her announcement surprised the minister less than her continued attendance at
church after making it. She had probably not lost her faith completely, and she may
have needed the social security of belonging to a congregation. But with her faith
suspended, her ambition triumphed over her doubts of her worthiness. In August
1854, John Taylor brought her £30 and the assurance that her first novel was to be
published. 10
Soon afterwards, at a ball, Caroline Emily Clark sought an introduction to Miss
Spence because an uncle in England had written to her ‘that “Clara Morison”, the
new novel, was a capital story of South Australian life’. She was the first stranger to
acknowledge Spence’s achievement; she won her lasting gratitude – for that, and for
the community into which she introduced her. Spence admired Emily Clark and her
literary brother, Howard, and warmed to their mother who was, she thought, like
her own ‘in her sound judgment, accurate observations, and kind heart’. 11
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