John Eberhart

23 April 2002

Maiden Voyages

     Since women see the world differently than men in many ways, does the feminine view affect how women writers write about exploration and travel?  In what ways do women write about their journeys that are gender-related?  Are they good differences, or do they produce a female self-consciousness that interferes with the experience?  In this paper, remarks by others who have pondered this question have been combined with an analysis of thirty-six readings by women travelers and explorers.  Based on this evidence, it can be concluded that women writers are not predictably feminine in tone or content, although certain characteristics can be spotted as coming from a woman’s pen.  Chief among those are the tendency toward colorful descriptions of landscapes and locale, and also the “fear of a man’s footsteps” that tend to haunt the solitary female in a male-dominated world.  A similar study by Frederick and McLeod also concludes that women writers are more likely to mention clothing, rape, fear, and the challenge of the “quest” (xv).

     Before the 19^th Century, women were essentially denied access to exploration or travel off the beaten paths.  “Denied the freedom to roam outside of themselves, women turned inward, into their emotions and their private relations” (Morris xv).  This inwardness helped develop keen powers of observation, a skill demonstrated in many travel writings by women discussed below.  Mary Morris states, “Women…move through the world differently than men.  The constraints and perils, the perceptions and complex emotions women journey with are different from those of men” (xvii).  Morris cites the fear of rape particularly, as well as other subtler forms of harassment, and these factors rarely appear in narratives by men (T. E. Lawrence excepted).  Morris concludes that most--not all--male travel writers are more externally-oriented, while women are more introspective.  There is also a special sympathy between fellow women travelers, i.e., “women confide in other women” (xviii).  This ability to communicate is a noticeable difference in women’s writings, i.e., “women have been able to talk to the women of other cultures where men were forbidden to do so.  They observe more closely the rhythm of daily life--birth, marriage, child-rearing, death, and household economy” (Tinling xxv).  Another insight is offered by Catharine R. Stimpson in Women and the Journey: “…women often pay more attention to the process of the journey than men do.”

     Why do women leave home?  The reasons sound very similar to those of men, although the “old male reasons for exploration-- conquest, acquisition of wealth, and imperialism--are out of favor.  [Today’s reasons include] spreading Christianity or technology, studying plants or wildlife, or uncovering the remains of ancient civilizations.  [Some want] to preserve a vanishing culture or protect the world’s environmental balance, [or a few] want the thrill of discovery, or just the fun of being on the open road, [while others want to] test their strength and ability to survive.  Some are motivated to show that a woman can do anything a man can do, or they are simply attracted to the color and excitement of a foreign land” (Tinling xxiii-xxiv). 

     In spite of the success in exploration by women in the 1800s, women explorers were denied admission to the authoritative explorer’s clubs, such as the Royal Geographic Society in England and the Explorers Club in New York.  In the late 1800s, however, these barriers began to fall. 

     As more and more women ventured out into the world and recorded their experiences, women’s travel writing attracted interest and study from a gender perspective.  One recent collection of essays, reviewed by Patricia Cohen, examines travel, western history, and gender themes, such as mobility, departure from civilization, and the frontier.  Cohen finds in these essays that for women, travel is mostly a disruptive experience that nevertheless may present positive opportunities to adjust gender expectations.  While the journeys may involve the expected self-discovery and adventure, some are forced migrations and captivity narratives.  Most of the essays express a sense of liberation, competency, and a new-found strength and fearlessness.  The experience of women in strange places allows gender to be “decontextualized,” and as such, open to negotiation.

     Given unlimited time for research, a broad survey of women’s exploration and travel literature could be surveyed, and a category analysis could be made to characterize what makes these texts distinctly female.  In lieu of that, a smaller collection of women’s exploration and travel narratives was reviewed.  The text was Maiden Voyages, which includes fifty-two 8-10 page excerpts from the writings of women, edited by Mary Morris and Larry O’Connor.  Only the most recent thirty-four excerpts were reviewed in order to stay within the 20^th Century.  The writers ranged from Edith Wharton to Box Car Bertha; a list of the writers is in the appendix.  The writers ranged from what would be called pure travel literature, to journeys into deserts and jungles that involved real hardship and danger. 

     Throughout the readings my bias was to resist categorizing an action or thought as strictly that of a woman’s unless it was clearly something that a man wouldn’t do.  For example, if a woman says that she simply won’t start her journey until she had her morning tea, that was classed as a statement that anyone could say.  After all, many men won’t do anything until they’ve had their morning coffee, so a woman should be allowed the same consideration.

     Given this conscious attempt to be more than fair and objective, it was still possible to notice across many of the readings some very clear gender-related themes.  Following are brief mention of those themes, along with related comments from other sources.

·        The first impression is that most of the narratives were not obviously written by a woman.  Observations and descriptions given by the authors in most cases are quite gender-neutral; they could as easily been written by a man, and were filled with vivid local color and authoritative historical and artistic commentary.  Most of the writing is free from gender-related “noise.”  As Robyn Davidson says, “Plenty of women have written in the objective mode, just as plenty of men have used the subjective” (Against 254).

·        Notwithstanding the first point, a sense of vulnerability is frequently noticed in the woman writer, what can be summarized as a “fear of a man’s footsteps.”  The threat is perceived as either sexual in nature, or like robbery, a function of the female’s comparative lack of strength and aggressiveness.  Another often humorous form of vulnerability may be an abnormal fear of snakes, insects, or small rodents.

·        In many cases, where the writer’s experience is more adventure than travel, women find themselves at the mercy of stronger, more experienced men to take care of them and show them the way.  Men are usually the knowledge brokers for survival, the prohibiters of trespassing into areas assumed to be too dangerous for women.  One female desert missionary was convinced that men have higher natural powers of orientation—-a fact not founded in science, but a comment that definitely marks the writer as a woman.

·        Women tend to use more elaborately colorful and meticulous descriptions of the landscape, its lakes, bushes, trees, flowers and scents; a more artistic eye seems to be at work.  For example, a description of mountains: “on my left, brown and indigo and purple and softly mauve, stretching into hyacinth-blue distances” (Morris 255).  (The “hyacinth-blue” may be overkill; this is definitely not Hemingway.)  For the most part, the colorful descriptions are pleasing and effective in giving a richer sense of the environment.  Frederick and McLeod add a race/class twist to this interest in non-human objects: “Many of the white women who have gone to Africa…prefer the plants and animals to the people who live there.  Those who do not despise the Africans just as often infantilize and patronize them (Isak Denison is a notorious example)” (63).  In fairness, it must be recognized that these attitudes are not exclusively female.

·        Extended episodes in the narratives deal with what are obviously women’s issues, like marriage, daughters, women’s roles and status, housewifery, crying while watching a movie, jewelry, roses in the bathroom, gardens, dinnerware, makeup, clothing, etc.  One writer simply longed for the pleasure of talking to another woman.  Would a man ever say anything similar about his gender?  Another writer couldn’t help trying to figure out how a Turkish woman’s elaborate robes might hinder her when carrying a child.  And in a beautiful description of an artist sketching a totem pole in the wilderness, the author concentrates solely on the motif of mother and child images carved into the wood.

·        Women in the field tend to be self-conscious about being there.  Partially because it is strange for them to be there, but mostly because everyone else (usually a man) treats them awkwardly.  One traveler started her journey in Turkey by imagining self-consciously that everyone will see her as a nice foreign lady in a large sun hat.  Missionary women remark that they have become used to being the center of notice in the desert-—they just look so out of place, and people always treat them differently, at least at first.  And no one expects to see a woman on an elephant hunt.  In one episode involving a captured and suffering deer, a woman’s male companions are very surprised to see that she doesn’t react in an overly sentimental way; in other words, she gained notoriety by acting like a man.  As Frederick and McLeod add, “gender is isolated from its (normal) context and thus becomes unusually visible to the traveler herself and others” (1).

·        Women sometimes get special treatment because they are women.  An anthropologist who visited a dangerous renegade tribe of Indians in Canada believed that it was because she was a woman (non-threatening) that she was treated so well.  A traveler in the Rocky Mountains went out of her way to be feminine, as she believed it caused others to treat her in a more gentlemanly and helpful way.  This could be seen as an exclusively female survival skill not available to men.

·        To women writers there is almost always at least one “disapproving male” lingering around to scowl and discourage the ambitious explorer.  Sometimes this is shown only as good-humored banter between a man and a woman (the tenderfoot) during the trip, but the adversarial context is clear: a woman really shouldn’t be here--this is a man’s turf.  Katherine Mansfield says that a woman by herself attracts “an impertinent arrogant and slightly amused attitude,” and that everyone seems to be waiting for the inevitable disaster to befall her.  Frederick and McLeod also add that there are always “highly judgmental spectators along the way” (1).

·        Women unfailingly notice and remark on prostitution.  Whether it’s Box Car Bertha documenting “sex for food” during the American depression, or Maud Parrish describing how women got rich quick in Alaska, selling it for money never gets overlooked.

·        Women are not at any disadvantage compared to men when it comes to explaining fear, architecture, nature, ambition, culture, self-doubt, heroism, injustice, etc.  In other words, being female does not make the author superficial or unsophisticated.

     Even though the above observations are subjectively selected characteristics from a limited number of readings, there is some value in at least attempting to make a rough judgment as to what one might expect in women’s travel and exploration writing.  Of course there will be exceptions, and this study could go on endlessly. 

     One could apply this background to the reading of a popular modern travel novel, such as, Tracks by Robyn Davidson.  In this narration, our heroine is vividly aware that she is a woman in an aggressive masculine town.  Davidson overtly and clearly remarks on the great fear of women: “It is such a female syndrome, so much the weakness of animals who have always been prey” (30).  The stereotypical male knowledge-broker is there in Kurt, the mean and arrogant camel trainer who berates her.  Many more of the characteristics above can be found in Davidson.

     Of even more interest than Davidson’s similarity to other women writers is how she is different.  Her writing is highly charged with racial sympathies and white guilt.  She is a great animal lover, interested in nurturing her camels, and not at all interested in killing for sport (although she loved expeditions to hunt rabbits and “crick” their necks).  Davidson is also tremendously self-absorbed, melodramatic, sentimental, condescending to fellow travelers (the tourists), and doggedly seeking the status of humorist.  These traits are missing altogether from the surveyed writers, in fact, Davidson is strikingly unlike any of these women.  So, while Davidson deals in some of the categories listed above, she also offers ample room for difference and easily escapes stereotyping.

Conclusion

     In the case of characterizing women’s literature of travel and exploration, a little knowledge is sufficient.  Although several themes or styles of writing can be attributed almost exclusively to women writers, much of it-—probably the best parts--is indistinguishable from a man’s writing.  Certainly a greater focus on women’s issues stands out as a difference worth looking for and preserving.  Uninhibited artistic expression often found in women’s writing is also a good difference.  In the end, the ability to recognize a piece of writing as a traditional expression of a woman’s point of view adds to the enjoyment of reading new and diverse women writers.  Noticing, comparing, and integrating fresh changes in the tradition would be impossible without some awareness of what the traditions are.

Appendix

A listing of women writers reviewed in Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers, Ed. Mary Morris and Larry O’Connor.

Kate Marsden, On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers

Edith Wharton, In Morocco

Willa Cather, Willa Cather in Europe

Vita Sackvill-West, Passenger to Teheran

Alaxandra David-Neel, My Journey to Lhasa

Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa

Box-Car Bertha, Sister of the Road

Kat O’Brien, Farewell to Spain

Maud Parrish, Nine Pounds of Luggage

Vivienne De Watteville, Speak to the Earth

Freya Stark, Winter in Arabia

Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Emily Carr, Klee Wyck

Mildred Cable, The Gobi Desert

Beryl Markham, West with the Night

Ella Maillart, The Cruel Way

Rose Macaulay, The Fabled Shore

Mary McCarthy, Stones of Florence

Margaret Mead, A Way of Seeing

Emily Hahn, Times and Places

M. F. K. Fisher, Long Ago in France

Eleanor Clark, Tamrart: Thirteen Days in the Sahara

Dervla Murphy, Muddling Through in Madagascar

Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Italian Days

Mary Lee Settle, Turkish Reflections

Joan Didion, The White Album

Sarah Hobson, Through Persia in Disguise

Mary Morris, Wall-to-Wall

Christina Dodwell, Travels with Fortune: An African Adventure

Andrea Lee, Russian Journal

Robin Morgan, The Demon Lover

Helen Winternitz, Season of Stones

Gwendolyn MacEwen, Noman’s Land

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Leila Philip, The Road Through Miyama

Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

Works Cited

Cohen, Patricia Cline.  “Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience.”  Western Historical Quarterly  Vol. XXVI, No. 3 (Autumn 1995): 384-385.

Davidson, Robyn.  Tracks.  New York: Vintage, 1995.

---.  “Against Travel Writing.”  Granta 72 (Winter 2000): 247-54.

Frederick, Bonnie, and Susan H. McLeod.  Prologue.  Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience.  Ed. Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod.  Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 1993.  x.

Mansfield, Katherine.  Introduction.  Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience.  Ed. Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod.  Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 1993.  xxii.

Stimpson, Catherine R.  Forward.  Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience.  Ed. Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod.  Pullman, WA: Washington State UP, 1993.  x.

Morris, Mary and Larry O’Connor.  Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers.  New York: Vintage, 1993.

Tinling, Marion.  Women into the Unknown: A Sourcebook on Women Explorers and Travelers.  New York: Greenwood Press, 1989.