Unpacking The Baggage

This text examines the travel literature of three British women who visited China during the nineteenth century: Isabella Bird, Constance Gordon Cumming and Alicia Little. The text discusses the differences and similarities between these three women, focusing on how they presented their works. As British women travel writers, they carried certain ideas with them before they left about both China and the roles of women. The text examines how these different perspectives manifest themselves in these women's travelogues: Isabella Bird, the professional traveler, Constance Gordon Cumming, the artistic tourist, and Alicia Little, the feminist activist. With their separate goals, differing experiences, and similar backgrounds, they wrote these texts for audiences back home, and both reinforced and informed British opinions of China.