White Women in Darkest Africa: Marginals as Observers in No-Woman's Land

bibliographic database
Line

Periodical article

Title:	White Women in Darkest Africa: Marginals as Observers in No-Woman's Land
Author:	Tiryakian, Edward A.
Year:	1993
Periodical:	Civilisations
Volume:	41
Issue:	1-2
Pages:	209-238
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Gabon Cameroon Malawi Mozambique Nigeria Subsaharan Africa
Subjects:	colonialism white women travel Historical/Biographical
About persons:	Mary Henrietta Kingsley (British)(1862-1900) Helen Caddick (British)(1844-1926)
External link:	https://journals.openedition.org/civilisations/1706
Abstract:	The imagery and role of women in the construction and evolution of modern colonial Africa has had scant rigorous attention. This article shows how the African setting, in the formative years of colonization, manifested itself in the perception of Mary Kingsley, Raymonde Bonnetain, Helen Caddick and Mary Gaunt, four white women travellers in Africa. The women who went to Africa as observers before World War I were not motivated either to uphold or expose colonialism. Being marginals in European society, they were perhaps in a better situation to observe and report on features of colonial society, myths as well as reality, that are not found in other accounts. Notes, ref., sum. in French.