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 3Terra Incognita The Gendering of Geographic Experience in theWorks of Barbara Hofland, PriscillaWakefield, Mary H. C. Legh, LucyWilson, Mrs. E. Burrows, and Maria Hack “I am only your guide,” replied the mother, laughing.“You may determine our course.” [In response to Henry’s asking where they will “travel” to next.] —Mrs.V. G. Ramsey, Evenings with the Children; or,Travels in South America • InVictorian culture, no image of mother country can fail to be derived in some way from the fecundVictoria herself as the symbolic mother of her domestic and imperial subjects. Despite and because of the historical fact that the management of Britain’sVictorian Empire was in male hands, the sustaining image of control that the culture of Empire constitutes for itself is always female—authoritative, regal, and satisfyingly fertile—which is not surprising if one considers that a metaphor for imperial rule evoking an authoritative father country begetting virile colony sons implies the filial usurpation of patriarchal power. —Deidre David, Rule Britannia The nineteenth-century English public had many opportunities to encounter terra incognita, and not just in gazing at an imperial map. The “unknown territory” that was brought before the viewing public in traveling shows, exhibitions, museums, botanical gardens, and  • terra incognita zoos took many forms.The imperial project also created new opportunities at home in the metropolitan center,opening up unknown territory in new professional fields such as geography primer writing. In professionalizing the transmission of imperial pedagogy, women writers ventured into fresh territory of their own in four ways:by vicariously experiencing a broader world through the eyes of the male travelers whose works they read; by cultivating voices of authority in their writing; by compiling new work for children skimmed from sources in natural history, science, and geography, as well as missionary and travel accounts; and by entering the public marketplace in a professional way. In the face of the unknown, travelers often try to plot new information in familiar terms,relating it to their a priori experience of the world. As shown in the Family of Man and imperial dinner party devices, writers could offer readers ways to plot race, nation, and power onto familiar domestic scenes.This strategy was also employed to mapVictoria’s accession to the throne in 1837, an event that in some ways seemed to open up new territory in which women could exercise imperial authority.To remap Victoria within a recognizable sphere of womanhood, public discourse had to narrate her successful monarchy through the frame of middleclass housewifery.Margaret Homans has traced how this model depicted Victoria,glossing her as“spend[ing] the wealth of her nation in a manner that displayed both its economic prowess and her dependency. . . . And she had to serve as a public, highly visible symbol of national identity and of her nation’s values, just as a middle-class wife might be expected to display her husband’s status.”1 As the wife of the nation,Victoria derived her power from her ability to manage the consumption of domestic resources and to display the products of empire.2 She was also mapped as a maternal symbol, as “the ruler of the ‘heavenly’ motherland.”3 Though middle-class women were likewise urged to model themselves onVictoria and to embody what John Ruskin dubbed“a true queenly power”4 in their small domestic spheres, the queen’s complicated identity as woman, wife, mother, and imperial authority figure did not offer a clear route to follow,and it is a tricky business to ascertain what Victoria’s place on the throne may have meant to nineteenth-century women.What energizing effect did her leadership have on women whose only authority may have been exercised in settling bills with the butcher, mediating children’s quarrels, or making moral pronouncements on the doings of The Gendering of Geographic Experience •  the neighbors? The lenses through which contemporary scholars view Victoria’s authority are considerably different from the ones through which her subjects perceived her.The types of questions we might ask are necessarily implicated in the context of our own time, culture, race, religion, orientation, and experience of gender. Recognizing our complicated relationships to the past, always viewed through the frame of the present , is an important step if we wish to allow Victoria’s contemporaries and predecessors a similarly complex and at times conflicted subjectivity through which to experience her authority and against which, or in harmony with, to map their ideas about women’s roles in social...

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