Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon's Travel Letters
Performative Identity-Formation in Epistolary Narratives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4961100 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Meritxell Simon-Martin, Meritxell Simón‐Martín (0000-0002-9486-3020, Shell (India), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 225-238 |
| Publication date | 2013-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Women s History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0961-2025 • E-ISSN: 1747-583X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09612025.2012.726112 |
| OpenAlex | W1989899389 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon was a mid-nineteenth-century feminist, philanthropist and painter. This article examines Bodichon the female traveller as a way of discussing the process of identity-formation in letter-writing. It proposes reading letters through the lens of Judith Butler's theory of gender (1990). Following her concept of performativity, letter-writing is conceived as a performative act of identity-formation. The article argues that, conditioned by the addressee she wrote to, Bodichon gave written expression to her subjectivity in her travel letters via her epistolary persona. This autobiographical gesture acted as one means through which she constituted her identity as a female traveller. In turn, drawing on Butler's notion of subversive repetition, the article concludes that the resulting multiple epistolary ‘I's Bodichon developed in accordance with each of her addressees permitted her to venture into her subjectivity as a female traveller—ultimately prompting her epistolary challenge of normative codes
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Humanities · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Normative · Performative utterance · Performativity · Persona · Sociology · Subjectivity · Autobiographical and Biographical Writing · Gender Studies · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Travel Writing and Literature
A ‘Position of Peculiar Responsibility’
‘Undoubtedly Love Letters’? Olive Schreiner’s Letters to Karl Pearson
Photographic self-fashioning. The role of photography in community-formation by the skagen painters
Narrative Agency at the Interface of Embodiment and Emotions
Adjusting and fulfilling masculine roles
Privacy, Authorship, and Ownership
| Citations per year | 0.6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |