Women's History Book Reviews

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Women and the Journey
The Female Travel Experience

Bonnie Frederick & Susan McLeod, editors

These series of essays offer diverse views of a wide variety of women travelers, or of women who experienced significant journeys in ways that differ from those of men’s. Its strength is its global and historic view, however slight. In it find not only a discussion of the paradox of Victorian women’s travel dress, but the use of captive white women in Argentina and Uruguay to heighten colonial and 19th century fear of Indians, the unsung journeys of mostly captive Chinese women brought to the American West, and the study of travel by medieval women in Islamic culture as recorded by Ibn Battuta.

Analysis of the dominate narrative as a way to shape the sense how we, and others, see women’s journeys is another of the book’s emphasis. English women’s 20th century plays are discussed, and, the last section, “Women and Traditions of Narrative,” offers gendered journeys into literature such as the Faerie Queen, Pilgrim’s Progress, D.H. Lawrence’s books, The Handmaid’s Tale, and the tales of Western travelers in the American frontier.