The contextual compass : a literary-historical study of three British women's travel writing on Africa, 1797 – 1934

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Texts by women travellers describing their journeys date back almost as far asthose produced by their male counterparts, yet women's travel writing has onlybecome an area of academic interest during the past ten to fifteen years.Previously, women's travel writing was mostly read for its entertainment valuerather than its academic merit and – as Sara Mills notes in her Discourses ofDifference – appeared almost exclusively in the form of coffee table books orbiographies offering romanticized accounts of heroic, eccentric women whoundertook epic journeys to Africa (4). The growing interest in women's travelwriting as part of colonial discourse coincides with the emergence of genderstudies and related subjects. The emergence of these areas of academic enquirycan be attributed to the systematic dismantling of the patriarchal structures,which previously dominated social and academic domains.The aim of this study is to examine European women's travel writing as asubversive discourse which, while sharing some characteristics with traditionalmale-produced travel texts from the colonial era, was informed by the discursiveconstraints of femininity. These texts thus differ from male-produced texts inthe sense that, because of the different discursive constraints informing women'stravel writing, they offer commentary on aspects of Africa and its peoples whichmen had omitted in their travel accounts. Three specific texts by British womenwho recorded their travels in Africa form the basis of the discussion in thisdissertation: the travel writing of Lady Anne Barnard (South African Cape Colony,1797 – 1801), Mary Kingsley (West Africa: Gabon and the Congo, 1896 – 1900)and Barbara Greene (Liberia, 1935). Since, as Mills argues, 'feminist textualtheory has restricted itself to the analysis of literary texts and has beenconcerned with analysis of the text itself (12), which limits the extent to whichone can provide interesting, discerning, and relevant comment on women'swriting, the readings of these texts are not limited to feminist theory of women'stravel writing.Social expectations until as recently as the early twentieth century locatedwomen firmly in the domestic sphere. It was almost unthinkable for women toundertake travels other than the traditional Grand Tour. To attempt to ventureinto the predominantly male territory of travel writing was to expose oneself toharsh criticism and to risk being labelled as eccentric and unfeminine. Thuswomen had to find a way of making both their travels and writing seemacceptable by social standards, while still presenting as true as possible a pictureof Africa in their writing. These constraints of the discourse of femininity on theirtexts necessarily make women's writing seem concerned almost exclusively withmatters of feminine interest. Mills attributes this to women travel writers''problematic status, caught between the conflicting demands of the discourse offemininity and that of imperialism. (Mills, Discourses of Difference 22)

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University