Abstract (eng)
In this thesis four women travel writings to Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century are discussed: Anna Hinderer’s Seventeen Years in The Yoruba Country (1877), Mary French-Sheldon’s Sultan to Sultan: Adventures among the Masai and other Tribes of East Africa (1892), Zélie Colvile’s Round the Black Man’s Garden (1893) and Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa (1899). My hypothesis is that those four women share a similar cultural background since they were all females in a society of patriarchal dominance and supposedly have at least partly racist attitudes towards blacks, because they lived at a time of colonial subordination of blacks by whites.
It is analysed whether and to what extent those women are embroiled in racist assumptions current at their time. Moreover, a matter of investigation is how liberally those women deal with subjugated black people; being oppressed and restrained themselves in patriarchal society. Possible differences between their opinions and positions are examined and suggestions for possible reasons for the differences in their attitudes are given.
The selection of these four texts is because of their difference to one another. These female travellers come from different social backgrounds, have different marital statuses, travel because of different motives, and travel in different party formations; either with or without male white company. Furthermore, they differ in the length of the time spent in Africa, they travelled to different areas of the continent and they differ in the way of how they travelled. Africa has been chosen because of its interesting position as being almost completely colonized by Europe and therefore constituting a place of direct encounter between white and black people, producing a clash of cultures and generating prejudices on both sides. This thesis focuses on females, because they are especially interesting in this context, because the patriarchal hierarchy of their time subjugated them just as the white people subjugated the blacks through colonialism. Since those women were subordinated to males in society, it is all the more interesting to analyse how they encountered natives and their cultures; whether they seized the power they suddenly had in Africa or whether they identified with the oppressed. Those women are remarkable, because the restrictions and expectations about Victorian females were rather opposed to their travelling abroad, and nevertheless they could not be deterred from it. How those women coped with the problem of doing what is against the role they were educated to fulfil and whether or how they tried to maintain feminine ideals, even when being abroad, in order to embody ”proper” Victorian women at least to some degree, is discussed in this thesis as well. The time span chosen is explainable through the fact that this was the high-time of African exploration, as well as a time when it was possible for at least some women to abandon their domestic duties and go abroad, let alone publish their own travel accounts.
The thesis is structured in the following way: First an introduction on what travelling was like at the time under analysis and how women were regarded back then is given. Furthermore, it is elaborated on racist theories, their genesis, as well as on their usefulness for legitimatising the colonial enterprise. Subsequently, the four travellers and authors of travel narratives are presented, addressing their biographical development, their travel routes and their reasons for travelling. In the Following, the authors’ perception of the natives is discussed; in what way they internalize racist stereotyping, whether they perceive and present natives as individuals or as a mass, and the personal relationship with the Africans and whether they allow physical contact. Consequently, the authors’ perception of Africa is analysed, as well as several African institutions, practices, beliefs and other aspects of African life, and the white women’s reaction to them. Afterwards, the particularities of the four authors travelling as females of their time is analysed, focusing on how they do or do not maintain their femininity and which particular problems they have to face. Finally, concluding remarks on the results of the thesis are given.