ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the external signification of the traveling body to exploring internal spaces of the somatic system which, in illness, influence the mind and the imagination. It examines three modernist works, each increasingly experimental, depicting illness as a byproduct of travel. Through the portrayals of these illnesses, these writers use the female body as a text on which to move beyond the usual boundaries of fiction or, to borrow Rachel DuPlessis's words, to "write beyond the ending" of the Victorian novel. In The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf, Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys, and Hermione by H. D. the young female protagonists, all reserved and inexperienced, still seeking expression as adults, succumb to illnesses which allow for the release of a new kind of art, new modernist language. In Rachel's excursion into her own imagination, illness has become a place; just as Woolf discusses in her essay, Rachel has found the "undiscovered countries" of illness, complete with landscapes.
