Representations of landscape and gender in Lady Anne Barnard's Journal of a month's tour into the interior of Africa

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis will focus on Barnard's representations of gender and landscapeduring her tour into the interior of the South of Africa. Barnard's consciousrepresentation of herself as a woman with many different social roles gives thereader insight into the developing gender roles at the time of an emergingfeminism. On their tour, Barnard reports on four aspects of the interior, namelythe state of cultivation of the land, the type of food and accommodation availablein the interior, the possibilities for hunting and whether the colony will be avaluable acquisition for Britain. Barnard's view of the landscape is representativeof the eighteenth century's preoccupation with control over and classification ofnature. She values order and cleanliness in her vision of a domesticatedlandscape. She appropriates the land in wanting to make it useful and beautifulto the colonisers. However, her representations of the landscape, as well as itsinhabitants, remain ambivalent in terms of the discourse of imperialism becauseshe is unable to adopt an unequivocal colonial voice. Her complex interactionwith the world of colonialism is illustrated by, on the one hand, her adherence tothe desire to classify the inhabitants of the colony according to the eighteenthcentury's fascination with classification and, on the other hand, her recognition ofthe humanity of the individuals with whom she interacts in a move away from thecolonial stance.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University