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The Allure of the Nile: Jane Franklin’s Voyage to the Second Cataract, 1834
Author(s) -
Russell Penny
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
gender and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-0424
pISSN - 0953-5233
DOI - 10.1111/1468-0424.00056
Subject(s) - admiration , negotiation , criticism , object (grammar) , psychoanalysis , set (abstract data type) , aesthetics , sociology , history , psychology , literature , art , philosophy , social science , linguistics , computer science , programming language
When Jane, Lady Franklin, set off on a voyage up the Nile as far as the Second Cataract, she abandoned many of the prescriptions of genteel feminine behaviour. Yet she dreaded social condemnation, and shrank from being thought ‘masculine’. Her diary of the voyage represents her complex negotiation of two alternative identities, as authoritative, imperialist traveller and as self‐conscious, vulnerable lady. These identities were irreconcilable, and the possibility of an alternative was constantly defeated both by Jane Franklin’s cultural prejudices and by her debilitating awareness of herself as object, susceptible to criticism and dependent on admiration.