ABSTRACT
The contact between white women and their west African counterparts created the possibility of totally unequal and dependent relationships in which British women helped to define and describe the conditions under which west African women lived, as well as the nature of those women themselves. Gender also propitiated access to west African women for other women travellers, especially those like Kingsley and Larymore who took an interest in their west African counterparts. Many indigenous customs within west African societies were used by Europeans to portray African women as oppressed and downtrodden, particularly polygamy, human sacrifice, and the violence perpetrated by secret societies. The reverence in nineteenth-century Britain for the virtuous wife meant that polygamy was perceived as an immoral means of maintaining the subservience of African women. Women of west Africa were not only perceived to be downtrodden in the minds of many Victorians, they were also considered the victims of cruel and barbarous practices.
