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Writing the Journey: June 1999

"Miss Eliza Goes Exploring"


Julia Horne
University of South Wales
j.horne@unsw.edu.au

This paper argues that gender is crucial to an historical definition of exploration and travel, and demonstrates that such travel was not an activity limited to men only, but rather, to 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' of the upper classes.

The paper will focus specifically on the experiences of a young Scottish woman, Miss Eliza Arbuckle (later, Eliza Davies) who accompanied an exploring expedition in the New World in the 1830s, and later published an account about it. The paper sets the experiences of Miss Eliza against a background of other British men and women travellers to show that what people chose to 'explore' or to describe, or how they went about exploring and travelling, was largely a result of generally accepted notions of feminine and masculine behaviour. Equally significant is how exploration and travel helped confirm and construct ladylike and gentlemanly behaviour, and distinguished 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' from other social and economic groups in society.

When looking at women and travel in the first half of the nineteenth century, to presume that it was strange for a woman to set out on tour, that she was ahead of her time because as a woman she was challenging social conventions, ignores more fundamental questions about travel. First, this type of travel, this touring of 'new' lands, although increasingly being undertaken by the upper classes, was really only a possibility for a privileged few (be they men or women). And secondly, these men and women described their experiences as a consequence not only of their class background, but also of their gender.


Julia Horne
University of South Wales
University Oral History Project
UNSW Archives
UNSW
Sydney NSW 2052
AUSTRALIA
Ph 61 2 9385 2908
facs 61 2 9385 1228
j.horne@unsw.edu.au

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Updated May 23, 1999