Document Type
Article
Journal/Book Title/Conference
Decimonónica
Volume
14
Issue
1
Publisher
Decimonónica
Publication Date
2017
First Page
35
Last Page
54
Abstract
In Scripted Geographies, Gayle Nunley argued that nineteenth-century Spanish travel writing has received only the scantest of critical attention (16), with the particular question of women and travel remaining at the outermost reaches of such inquiries, since, “in nineteenth-century Spain, perhaps even more than in some other European nations, international travel remained a predominantly male domain” (21). Historian Eric J. Leed has described the constitutive masculine nature of travel from the earliest epic literary productions to the present era of global tourism, while also acknowledging that the concept of sessility, or a fixed and planted nature, has been so fundamentally woven into our understanding of femininity as to render unimaginable the idea of women and travel (220, 286). Yet, as Sidonie Smith has suggested, in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries,
women’s move to motion gained momentum […] when increasing numbers of Western women participated in the cultural logic of the individualizing journey. Through this participation they could gain a modicum of enabling independence and a form of education outside of official institutions closed to them, as well as exercise some measure of social and socializing influence and authority. (X-XI)
Recommended Citation
Mercer, Leigh, "“A fin de que no se propasen”: Tourism and Women’s Mobility in Nineteenth-Century Barcelona Guidebooks" (2017). Decimonónica. Paper 80.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/decimononica/80