Research project
Women’s Travel Writing and the Political Economy of Material Objects, 1837-1911
Female explorers in the nineteenth century took a particular interest in detailing domestic objects and textiles displayed in homes, bazaars, festivals, and temples across the Middle East and Asia in the nineteenth century, and in pointing out the monetary or aesthetic values placed on those objects in their country of origin. Many critics have taken this interest as a signal that Victorian women had to maintain their place within the ‘domestic sphere’ even while writing in a conventionally ‘masculine’ genre. However, this critical interpretation does not account for the contextualisation of ‘domestic’ descriptions within larger discussions of global trade activity and the cultural, social, and political ramifications of those activities. Placed in context with political economic debates of the same period, women’s comparisons of the British industrial exports and locall