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This chapter takes up the question of why the increasingly public role of the Orthodox Church has been accompanied by public dissatisfaction, and in particular why the church's efforts to serve its followers and other constituents through charitable projects have generated such resounding public criticism. Through a study that compares the types of services provided by Orthodox communities with the perspectives of ordinary Russians, the chapter suggests that the central issue is not one of theological or liturgical differences, but rather a conflict over the nature of religious communities as social institutions and the ethics of compassion and benevolence associated with these communities.

This chapter takes up the problems of emulation and exemplification in the reform of character by examining Jane Addams's critique and rearticulation of the character-forming effects of the class contact experienced in traditional charity work. In challenging the gendered assumptions of women's work as philanthropic “stewards of character” and exemplars of middle-class character, Addams was able to capitalize on the power of the charity relation as a scene of interclass and interethnic contact while also extricating it from its emulatory function of character building and from the assimilationist practices of “Americanization” being enacted on Native American reservations, boarding schools, and in the overseas territories of the United States after the Spanish–American War. Addams also stages her critique, forwarded in such works as Democracy and Social Ethics, through a complex refiguring of the literary dimension of her own autobiographical character in Twenty Years at Hull-House. In striking a performative middle ground between an understanding of character as either social inscription or radical self-determination, Addams makes a counterhierarchical notion of interclass and interethnic identification essential to a “Progressive” realization of a pluralist, democratic civic sphere.

This chapter examines people's ideas about good parenting by focusing on how those who do not have children plan for parenthood by creating a stable environment for their future children. The people of Spey Bay shared the sense that future generations will inherit the environments that they create. This is encapsulated, in a practical sense, by their assumption that parental responsibility begins with planning and creating a “stable environment” for children to be born into. This chapter considers the plans for future parenthood of those staff members who did not have children, both of which can be seen as forms of ethical labor. It also analyzes the connection between career aspirations and planning for parenthood by tracing the relationship between the professional and parental ethics of the people with no children who live and work in Spey Bay. Finally, it discusses charity work alongside women's aspirations for future motherhood.

This chapter examines those early French women’s journals that promote a domestic or family-oriented figuration of femininity, providing information on the necessary skills to engage successfully in marriage and/or motherhood, or on more practical aspects relating to ‘good housekeeping’ generally. The chapter traces changes to the legal and social positions on marriage and motherhood during this period, changes which help account for the more ‘modern’ post-revolutionary emphasis on women’s emotional fulfilment put forward in contemporary journals such as the remarkably radical Courier de l’hymen ou journal des dames (1791) – a journal which also provides the first ‘problem page’ in French women’s magazines. This chapter suggests that the journals examined here have much in common with contemporary women’s magazines generally, whether by their inclusion of a recipe rubric or dressmaking patterns - as is the case with the remaining two domestic journals, Le Journal des femmes (1832-37) and Le Conseiller des dames (1847-92), which point up French women’s growing association with the domestic realm and their role as family educator. These journals provide cookery tips and recipes, advice on childcare, information on making clothes, general practical shortcuts relating to domestic science, as well as the usual staple selection of fictional excerpts.

This chapter discusses Katherine Anne Egerton Warburton or Kate Warburton, or “Mother Kate”, as she was known for her entire adult life. Kate was only eighteen when she was received as a novice by the Sisters of St. Margaret's, East Grinstead, and eventually began her career as a nun. She became involved in charity work, managed an orphanage, nursed sick people, and offered children's after-school classes. Her and her colleagues' efforts and services helped overcome the local population's distrust of their elaborate and very nun-like habit. Warburton enjoyed depicting her poor children and adults in religious publications. She also wrote about church affairs and church festivals. She published two books of memoirs, one of which is discussed in this chapter. The selection provided in this chapter focuses on the Epiphany, particularly on the feast which took in Walthamstow, a new industrial suburb on London's eastern edge.