Love and sacrifice in Louisa Baker’s fiction

Abstract

Paper given at Religious History Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (RHAANZ) Conference.

Louisa Alice Baker, the pioneering New Zealand woman novelist, authored seventeen books between 1894 and 1913. While most of her fiction was set in the New Zealand she lived in from the ages of 7 to 38, all of her novels were published in Britain and America. Baker's works gained popularity in these regions due to their colonial settings and her exploration of marriage and morality, drawing comparisons with acclaimed authors like Olive Schreiner and Sarah Grand. The use of the pseudonym "Alien" suggests a deep sense of dislocation from her New Zealand home and conveys a moral message challenging patriarchal hierarchies. Interestingly, Baker's novel "Not in Fellowship" features the term 'alien' in the context of a Calvinist church service, where those 'not in fellowship' are asked to sit 'behind the board.' The heroine in this narrative is profoundly affected by the imposed sense of "alienship," evoking emotions of harshness and suggesting pitiful restrictions in contrast to individual charity.