SOURCE: Nnoromele, Salome C. “Gender, Race, and Colonial Discourse in the Travel Writings of Mary Kingsley.” Victorian Newsletter 90 (fall 1996): 1-6.

In the following essay, Nnoromele examines the travel writings of Mary Kingsley to counter the claim made by white feminist scholars that white female travelers in the nineteenth century responded to colonized Others with reciprocity, did not objectify them, treated them with empathy, and lacked many of the imperialist attitudes of their male contemporaries.

Susan L. Blake in an essay on Mary Hall asks: “In the relation of European travelers to empire, what difference does gender make?” Encoded in the question is the belief that women see and interpret the world and experiences differently from men, that “women, colonized themselves by gender, recognize and oppose colonization based on race” (19). Blake compares Mary Hall's A Woman's Trek to Ewart S. Grogan's From Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of...