Colonial Discourse in Women’s Travelogue: The Original Letters from India by Eliza Fay

Abstract

This article analyses The Original Letters from India by Eliza Fay (1817) and points out specific characteristics of women’s travelogue in the context of the British colonial discourse. The author also gives a general overview of the characteristics of the British colonial travelogue: ethnocentricity and dichotomy ‘we/others’; the specific temporal modes (the mode of extratemporaneity and the retrospective mode); aestheticisation of the landscape as a strategy of ‘mastering’ it; the two main narrator types (‘manners and customs’ and ‘sentimental’); and a special accent placed on the dangers and adventures of travel. Since women tended to adopt a more individualised approach to local cultures and local people, it led Sara Mills, Marie-Louise Pratt, Cora Kaplan, and other researchers to emphasise the ambivalent nature of women’s travel writing, namely that women not only reproduced the colonial discourse but also undermined it. The analysis of Fay’s Letters, however, has shown that although her writing has certain gender specific features, she follows the mainstream discursive strategies and established colonial stereotypes. Eliza Fay treated colonies as an opportunity for vertical mobility, her letters serving as a constituent element of the role of a lady traveller that she was so desperate to play. Thus, the educational background and class position had a great impact on whether the woman traveller chose to follow the general trends or not, which can be demonstrated by comparing the letters by Eliza Fay and Lady Mary Wortley Montegu.

Keywords

• британский колониальный травелог
• колониальный дискурс
• Британская империя
• женщины-путешественницы
• колониальная литература
• гендерные различия.