Letter Writing as Storytelling

Utilising the growing interdisciplinary discourse between literary criticism and historiography, especially prevalent in the multiple genres of life writing, the letters of Martha Murray, the first single missionary in Nyasaland, are read as a story. By communicating using letters in the Mission News Letter, Martha Murray is an example of the powerful role that evangelical spirituality played in this young woman’s life and her readers. In reading these letters as a story, the elements of a narrative are identified, namely a protagonist, setting, plot, and antagonistic forces. The story told by these letters formed the imagination of the readers and informed them on the vocation of women and the realities of missional life. The powerful role of religion in self-identification and agency is affirmed within the bigger narrative of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century South African public.