ABSTRACT
In Mary Kingsley’s account of her journey to West Africa in 18934, she describes travelling unaccompanied by European companions throughout the West African area, by boat and on foot, but accompanied by a group of Fan tribesmen, who were reputed to be cannibals. British and French trading involvement in West Africa meant that the narrator was able to stay with westerners and in Fan villages, and she was able to fund the journey by trading with the Fans she met. She collected large quantities of fish and beetles as specimens and in so doing found herself in many difficult and dangerous situations. Despite the serious nature of the journey (she discovered a new species of fish and described in some detail the fetish customs of the region), she terms it a ‘lark’, which is indicative of the textual and social constraints on women writers which leads to such self-deprecating ‘feminine’ statements. However, at the same time, the text works against some of the traditional ‘feminine’ discursive characteristics, for she does not include what she calls her ‘bush journal’: ‘I am not bent on discoursing on my psychological state, but on the state of things in general in West Africa’ (Kingsley, 1965:101). And despite containing a strong critique of the exploitative nature of the colonial relation, which would seem to qualify the text as an example of ‘going native’, this critique is merely aimed at improving rather then dismantling colonialism. The book has been accepted as one of the classic ‘eccentric’ women travellers’ texts, both by conventional critics and by feminists, albeit for very different reasons: the former finding it humorous and a ‘good read’, and feminists finding it an interesting representation of a determined and self-reliant female. Both readings are partial; the text aligns itself both with colonialism and femininity at the same
time as it undermines each alignment. In this chapter, I aim to explore some of the complexities of this position.1
