Abstract
Excerpt: With Victorian children's interest in colonial spheres already piqued by the reading of boys'" adventure and exploration stories, (1) there arose "the possibility of reading geography as adventure, geographical narratives as adventure narratives" (Phillips 8). The adventure of imperial geography was packaged in children's primers that inculcated geographical fictions of racial, religious, and national superiority. By turning to the writing of such geography primers, Victorian women became deeply invested in the profession and propagation of imperial doctrines, and in the acclimation of British children, particularly British boys, to their central place in the imperial world. Authors of geography primers produced imperially motivated geographic fictions that taught children to see, as Mary Louise Pratt says, with "imperial eyes," with the custodial vision of divinely appointed stewards. For the young imperialists, and to the "popular mind . . . mapmaking continued to be imbued with all of the scientism and em piricism of the Enlightenment understanding of science: the world can be mapped exactly, the world can be known . . . the map is the world" (Edney 21). In this pedagogy of empire building, plotted in geography primers, women combined imperial writing and cartographic science with the socially acceptable vocation of teaching (2). Yet this pedagogical apologia for their involvement has contributed to a history that glosses, if not marginalizes, their role in the building of empire. The Victorians themselves, according to Graham Dawson's Soldier Heroes, believed that their "national epic ha[d] been predominantly a man's story, and masculine prowess the dominant expression of national character" (13). The proliferation of successful female writers delineating what I am calling the "adventure of geography" calls for a renegotiation of this national myth. The perceived split between women travel writers and male geographers has marginalized or silenced the participation of women geographers whose efforts on behalf of empire call for a renegotiation of such statements as, "There was a gender difference between the narratives: geographical (and exploration) narratives were universally the products of male writers, whereas a significant portion of the travel literature was written by and for women" (Edney 66). By "unmapping" (to borrow a phrase from Richard Phillips) the cultural contention that imperial fictions of adventure and geography were thoroughly masculine in their conception and reception, we can arrive at a more integrated understanding of the formulation of Victorian Britain's actual "national epic."