The figure of the female traveller in Victorian fiction

Abstract

This dissertation examines the figure of the female traveller in Victorian fiction. Using examples of travelling women from canonical novels of the Victorian era, including Charlotte Brontes Villette, William Makepeace Thackerays Vanity Fair, George Eliots Middlemarch, and Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland, this study identifies the gender implications of mobility in Victorian fiction. This study defines the female traveller as a female protagonist or secondary character who undertakes a significant journey that holds importance in the overall narrative and where she steps out of her element in class, geography, or culture. The figure of the travelling woman in Victorian fiction is a signal that the text is doing important ideological work with regard to gender and mobility. The travelling woman disrupts two conventional tropes, masculine mobility and female stasis, and calls for a re-evaluation of the way we see and privilege mobility in the Victorian novel.