scholarly journals A nineteenth-century bengali housewife and her Robinson Crusoe days: Travel and intimacy in Kailashbashini Debi’s The diary of a certain housewife

Feminismo/s ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Swati Moitra
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Women's Travel

Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhu’r Diary (The Diary of a Certain Housewife; written between 1847 and 1873, serialised almost a century later in the monthly Basumati in 1952) chronicles her travels along the waterways of eastern Bengal. Her travels are firmly centred around her husband’s work; in his absence, she is Robinson Crusoe, marooned in the hinterlands of Bengal with only her daughter.Bearing in mind the gendered limitations on travel in the nineteenth century for upper-caste Bengali women, this essay investigates Kailashbashini Debi’s narration of her travels and the utopic vision of the modern housewife that Kailashbashini constructs for herself. The essay looks into the audacious nature of Kailashbashini’s effort: to claim a space in public memory alongside her husband. In the process, the essay seeks to address the restructuring of domestic life made possible by the experience of travel, and explore the contours of women’s travel writing in nineteenth-century India

scholarly journals A nineteenth-century bengali housewife and her Robinson Crusoe days: Travel and intimacy in Kailashbashini Debi’s The diary of a certain housewife

Feminismo/s ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Swati Moitra
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
Robinson Crusoe ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Women's Travel

Kailashbashini Debi’s Janaika Grihabadhu’r Diary (The Diary of a Certain Housewife; written between 1847 and 1873, serialised almost a century later in the monthly Basumati in 1952) chronicles her travels along the waterways of eastern Bengal. Her travels are firmly centred around her husband’s work; in his absence, she is Robinson Crusoe, marooned in the hinterlands of Bengal with only her daughter.Bearing in mind the gendered limitations on travel in the nineteenth century for upper-caste Bengali women, this essay investigates Kailashbashini Debi’s narration of her travels and the utopic vision of the modern housewife that Kailashbashini constructs for herself. The essay looks into the audacious nature of Kailashbashini’s effort: to claim a space in public memory alongside her husband. In the process, the essay seeks to address the restructuring of domestic life made possible by the experience of travel, and explore the contours of women’s travel writing in nineteenth-century India

GENDER AND GENRE IN FANNY VAN DE GRIFT STEVENSON’S PERIODICAL WRITING

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Wånggren
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Domestic Life ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Gender And Genre ◽  
Periodical Publishing

Abstract Despite scholarly recovery of many nineteenth-century women writers, especially those publishing mainly in periodicals, the fiction, travel writing and journalism of Fanny Van de Grift Stevenson (1840–1914) are still neglected. Situating Van de Grift Stevenson in the context of late nineteenth-century US periodical culture, this article considers how many of the author’s periodical writings cross not only geographical but also generic boundaries. Van de Grift Stevenson’s periodical publishing appears in a variety of modes and genres, at times with journalistic material entering her fiction, domestic life including recipes inserted in her journalism, and autobiography glimpsed in both fiction and journalism. The article examines this author’s transatlantic periodical writings in the context of gender and genre, noting the ways in which these categories intersect throughout her authorship. Focusing especially on the author’s regional writing as seen in her non-fiction ‘cookbook articles’ Ramblings of a Housewife and the short story ‘The Warlock’s Shadow’, the article argues that Van de Grift Stevenson’s blending of regional and domestic modes of writing presents a specific interrogation of cultural and geographical identities.

Henrietta Liston's Travels

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Travel Writing ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Print Publication ◽  
Women's Travel

The book is the first print publication of Henrietta Liston’s Turkish Journals, a significant yet virtually unknown work of women’s travel writing. It is composed of the full text of the 1812-1814 journal and some further writings, such a significant 1813 letter from Liston to her nephew, Dick Ramage and extracts from other journals, and these are preceded by an extensive critical introduction. The journals reveal that as the wife of the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Liston had privileged access to the Ottoman elite and to the diplomatic corps. They reflect on British-Ottoman relations, combining Orientalist perspectives with a human-centred version of the picturesque. Liston offers astute commentaries on people, places, and events – including a plague-ridden Constantinople, the harem of the Grand Vizier’s deputy, the presentation of ambassadors in the Seraglio and the departure of pilgrims on the hajj. The introduction includes sections on Liston’s life and the diplomatic context of her writings, and the Ottoman social and political context of the period. Liston’s writings are considered in relation to the discourses of travel writing, to British-Ottoman relations, to Orientalism and the picturesque, and to other eighteenth-and nineteenth-century women travellers and their works on the Ottoman Empire. There is also discussion of the manuscripts on which the book is based, and of issues such as their composition, revision, and transcription.

scholarly journals Women’s travel writing in the cyber-world – ecofeminist and difference feminist approaches in travel blogs

Feminismo/s ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Mirja Riggert
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
Gendered Spaces ◽  
Female Role ◽  
Mother Nature ◽  
Female Authority ◽  
Travel Discourse ◽  
Women's Travel

This paper intends to track the development of traditional feminist ideas through the analysis of three contemporary travel blogs. These traditional feminist concepts are to be seen in the construction of a collective female identity that enables transnational and transgenerational solidarity: by receiving and transmitting inspiration, shelter and encouragement among female travellers, the narrators in the blogs create a system of female authority. Within this system, female role models as well as maternal figures become points of reference that help to revalue female attributes. This concept shows allusions to the theory of difference feminism as it is presented in the «symbolic order of the mother» by Luisa Muraro. A similar approach of revaluating femininity happens through the orientation towards ‘Mother Nature’. By staging women’s ability to give birth, cultural ecofeminists like Susan Griffin intend to affirm a close bond between women and nature. This representation of an emphasised femininity becomes a central marker in the narratives of the blogs. While this agenda might be designed to counter gendered spaces and the traditional alienation of women within travel discourse, it is problematised by exclusionary and essentialist definitions of femininity that harden engendered binaries like masculinity/femininity or nature/culture.

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