The Rachel's Adventure: Biblical Women's Missionary Work in Ilana Pardes's Chapter 5

     One of the key arguments which caught my attention in Prof. Ilana Pardes's chapter 5 "Rachel's Inconsolable Cry," is the concept of the Biblical Rachel as a missionary figure setting out for an adventure in context of a missionary work. Pardes presents key points from Sarah Grimke, one of the first organizers of women rights convention in NY in 1848, who argued that the sphere of women as a misconception of the Scriptures. Pardes presents Grimke's quote of the famous line from Genesis "Men and women were CREATED EQUAL" they are both moral and accountable beings, and whatever is right for man, is right for woman," in as one of Grimke's textual proofs for this misconception since clearly women are not treated equal for example within the clergy.  

     Further on Pardes argues that missionary work became in 19^th century "a way for women 'to have an adventure in a good cause…" So, in this context is it possible that Melville's Rachel in Moby Dick has been voyaging for the sake of a religious adventure? Can the missing children mentioned in the finishing line of the novel be suggesting a messianic quest of the ship Rachel, Rachel being finally an actual representation of Biblical women in MD. By quest I mean in terms of searching new believers to be converted. If this is valid, still a key question should be I believe, converted into what? As discussed in class today, it is not conclusive in MD what religion is mostly pursued.   

     If the ship is the alternative for Melville to suggest women's inequality, omitting actual women from his narrative as women are omitted from clergy still during his own time,  than I would also re-think his choice to leave his narrator Ishmael an as the orphan who was picked up by the Rachel. In class I suggested Ishmael seemed passively picked up or picked out like a prophet, perhaps like Moses for example, not out of his own choice, but out of a higher power's choice. Now however, I would add to this concept that if the messianic woman (i.e. the Biblical representation of the adventurous religious woman), if he is an orphan, does this suggest he remains an atheist, meaning an unbeliever, free from all religious context. For me now, unlike the previous concept of an orphan in terms of lack of loss of parents (emphasis on loss of a mother), this may explain now why we have been finding this hard to define which religious stream's context most fits. Perhaps Ishmael's openness to Queequeg's barbaric Pagan's beliefs for example (as I myself have previously considered) were not suggested in order to present openness and respect for the other belief, but in fact represent the loss of faith completely.

     So does this means that in the end Ishamel has turned into a representation of a new kind of Atheism? And the Rachel ship into the early feminist clergy women, in a new quest of their own to find ne children of their church, along with their own equality?