Worthy Objects

This paper analyses Elizabeth Henrietta Macquarie's little-known 1809 account of her sea voyage to New South Wales, restoring her sea journal to the canon of travel writing. In recent analyses, nineteenth-century travel writing has been shorn of its pretence of disinterestedness, exposing the multiple and various connections between travel writing and imperial ideology, and between travel writing and a partial and deeply motivated language of aesthetics. The paper explores Macquarie's travel writing along these twin axes. This paper argues that the sense of self exposed in Macquarie's sea journal can not be dissociated from her place as a member of the British Protestant elite. Proceeding by way of a close reading of three moments of viewing recorded in the sea journal, the essay asks what formations of class, gender and subjectivity each scene of viewing encloses. The paper concludes by considering a countervailing textual impulse evident towards the end of her sea journal, linking the breakdown in Macquarie's textual command with her imminent arrival at her new colonial home.