“Excuse what difficiencies you will find:” Methodist Women and Public Space in John Wesley’s Arminian Magazine

Abstract

Through examining conversion narratives by Methodist laywomen published in John Wesley’s Arminian Magazine I argue that these women use the conventions of narrative to reform their subjectivities post-conversion and break down binaries between public/private, internal piety/external action, rich/poor. The entry of these women’s stories into print provides a glimpse of how spiritual experience authorized women’s entry into a developing evangelical public sphere and resisted the developing narrative of domestic piety. By focusing on ordinary laywomen we can understand how Methodism worked to redefine the relationship between gender, religion, and subjectivity during the long eighteenth century.

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