Women Travel Writers :: Gender Femininity Literature Essays

Women Travel Writers After my own presentation, I wanted to barb a little deeper and see how women travel writers were representing temperament in the eighteenth century. I wondered if the womens descriptions differed far from the men that I studied in my presentation. I want to focus on Dorothy Wordsworth (Williams sister), Ann Radcliffe and Helen Maria Williams. Im curious to know if they were unrighteous of over-representing women in landscape and record scenes. At the very end, Ill put in my two cents about the gendering of Nature. First of all, Dorothy Wordsworth traveled with her brother a mound in the early 1800s during this time she kept a journal and wrote, in rich details, about the landscape. Although she wrote predominately with a picturesque tone, she made an effort to gestate attention to the sharp, jarring contrasts in nature, like crags, rough edges, and precipices. William Snyders essay bring Natures Other Natures Landscape in Womens Writing, 1770-1830 suggests that it was Dorothys intention to use the paradoxes in nature to focus on Natures contrast. Snyders source for his theory comes from his close readings of Dorothys journals he explains that her terminology and vocabulary are picturesque, but that she presents Nature in need of assistance (146). Snyder infers that for Dorothy, maternal care flows out from the human heart, not to it from above or beyond (146). Snyder comments that Dorothy made a point of highlighting the irregularities in nature and draws her inspiration on the irony of ordered chaos. Snyder concludes that Dorothy likens Nature to a dress-maker, the distaff as pattern-maker (148). He suggests that she places emphasis on what the hands, not the breasts, do (148). Snyder in addition points out that Dorothy usually referred to Nature with the impersonal pronoun it, and not with she or her (147) Snyder believes that Dorothy by design overlooks possibilities for maternal symbolism or personification (147). Dorothy do es not view maternality with natality and bounty, but with protection and intimacy (148). However, she does use the feminine pronoun in just about of her works, but Snyder explains that she, the metaphoric woman, is a craftsperson, not a mother (147). regrettably Snyders argument does not convince me how can Nature be a pattern-maker while being in need of care? I value the image of pattern-maker indicates originality and creativity, Nature as innovative and refreshing, not Nature in need of help, as Snyder indicates early in his argument.