ABSTRACT
During the nineteenth century many British women travelled to South Africa, writing letters, journals and travelogues about their experiences for a ‘home’ audience. These women were mostly middleclass-the wives or daughters of missionaries, soldiers, colonial officials-brought to South Africa in the wake of imperial expansion in the region. Their narratives focused on the difficulties of reproducing middle-class homes in an alien environment, where the amenities of ‘civilized’ society were often sorely lacking.1 Discourses of domesticity characterized most female travel writing of the era and reflected the gender constraints of Victorian society, notably the way in which middle-class women’s lives and writings were circumscribed and defined by the ‘women’s sphere’ of home and hearth.2 As women’s opportunities widened, and empire was ‘made safe’ for British womanhood through conquest and settlement, it became increasingly possible for women to travel independently to South Africa, as scientists, philanthropists, nurses-or tourists with a ‘sense of adventure’.3 The plethora of women’s travelogues during the last quarter of the century indicated the extent to which women had entered the male-dominated field of published travel writing, while their style and content reflected the changing roles and growing independence of British women beyond the confines of the domestic sphere.
