"A Voyage of Discovery": Reimagining the Walking Woman through Nineteenth-Century Diaries. Issue 4 (2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bredar, Trish
• Is Part Of: Victorian literature and culture. Volume 50:Issue 4(2022)
• Page Start: 609
• Page End: 638
• Publication Date: 2022
• Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Arts, Victorian -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Civilization -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; 820.8
• DOI: 10.1017/S106015032100019X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1060-1503

Abstract

Abstract : This article uses a corpus of manuscript diaries to illuminate the practices and meanings of everyday mobility that shaped the lives of nineteenth-century Englishwomen. The female pedestrian has typically been characterized by scholars as a marginal or transgressive figure whose movements are interpreted through comparison to a masculine peripatetic tradition. "A Voyage of Discovery" seeks to broaden our understanding of what it meant to move through the world as a woman in the nineteenth century. Drawing from the narrated experiences of a broad range of little-known diarists, this article outlines a paradigm of "everyday adventure" to describe walking's status as an unremarkable act that nevertheless creates the potential for event and variety. In so doing, it expands on feminist concepts of the everyday, elaborates on the under-theorized relationship between walking and the body, and reassesses the boundaries of socially acceptable mobility.