The Strenuous Life of Mary Helen Fee: The Construction of National Identity, Gender, and Race in Empire

This paper examines the imperial experiences of Mary Helen Fee, an American woman who went to the Philippines as a government teacher in 1901. Fee was a prolific writer, and her books and articles reveal the ways in which white women in the Philippines were able to use national identity and race to claim masculinist authority over Filipinos. Rather than relying on the rhetoric of domesticity or maternalism, Fee presented herself as a colonial authority, empowered to evaluate and arbitrate Filipino uplift and progress. Her writings also offer insight into the ways in which Filipino students pushed back against American education and fought for the recognition of equality. After leaving the Philippines, Fee went on to serve as a Red Cross volunteer during World War I, and as a teacher in Indian schools in Oregon and California. Fee’s life serves as an excellent micro history to understand the opportunities and mobility that American empire and expansion afforded single white women in the first decades of the twentieth century. Fee’s influence, moreover, extended beyond her own lifetime. Her story and writings were commemorated during the 2001 centennial celebration of American education in the Philippines, revealing the deeply ambivalent legacy of colonial education.