Women are not Conquerers

Women are not conquerors. We have rarely, if ever, been the ones to sail out and explore new lands, claiming and establishing them as our own, spreading our beliefs and practices and… seed. We tend to sit at home, caring for what has been left behind. I say this not to make a statement on gender stereotypes, but rather to make clear the trend for women throughout history.

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When the new world was discovered, women went with their men to seek their fortune in a strange new land. Colonialism and imperialism are implicitly masculine movements—not only colonizing and conquering new lands, but also figuratively conquering women themselves—but how does it play out when women are called upon to be the colonizers? Does feminism play a role in colonialism? In both The Poisonwood Bible and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, women are figured as colonists, though unsuccessful ones. They are not aggressively conquering the new lands they come in contact with, but are rather displaced females who are disoriented and confused by the shift from the values and doctrine of their patriarchal homeland and the things they have learned in the new world. 

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In The Poisonwood Bible, we read scenes where the missionary father of the Price family is lit aflame with the glory of God as he seeks to convert the natives of the Congo to Christianity, but the female members of his family trudge bleakly through the jungle landscape. Their beliefs in Christianity and their allegiance to their father and husband weaken as they are put to conflict and trial in the new land. Eventually, the family ruptures, their faith dashed, their love spoiled, and their dreams broken. 
Alice is a colonist, yet less ostentatiously so. She stumbles upon the new world of Wonderland, a place whose morals, customs, even reality differs much from her own. Though she attempts to find ways to teach the citizens of Wonderland about what, according to her, is actually the way things are and are supposed to be, she butts her head against a frustratingly thick wall of tradition and resolve to have things carry on as they always had. Even though she fights harder to maintain her resolve and sense of reality, Wonderland begins to overtake her and permeate the way she thinks and reacts.

Do these texts make a point that women are not conquerors, but absorbers? Are they saying that women are primarily interested in having empathy for and understanding new people and practices rather than overcoming and replacing them?