Secret Journeys ― The Trope of Women's Travel in American Literature

Through canvassing women's travel as portrayed in American literature from the 17th century to the present, Wesley (English, Hartwick College, NY) demonstrates that women have shared in that gendered metaphor for freedom and progress, though covertly in earlier eras. The author develops a feminist narrative theory of female capability to replace the stale model of female victimization by analyzing women's travel as contravention of values ("the not unfeared, half-welcome guest" of Greenleaf's 1866 poem Snow- Bound); alternative journeys (from the first US women's travel book published in 1682, to works by Cather and Wharton); transience as social reconstruction; and transformative journeys modern, postmodern, and biblical. Name index only. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Marilyn C. Wesley is Assistant Professor of English at Hartwick College. She is also the author of Refusal and Transgression in Joyce Carol Oates’ Fiction.