Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience ed. by Bonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod (review)

194Rocky Mountain Review arguments that anti-Chomsky linguists will enjoy, and that pro-Chomsky supporters will find challenging. In a thorough and meticulous manner, Ellis uses his assertions to present a convincing argument against Piaget's theory of the way children learn to conceptualize; he also argues against the prevalent belief that ethical and aesthetic statements are complex judgements , and he asserts that assimilation and reorientation create categorizations which are more refined interpretations of our experiences. In his chapter on epistemology and logic, Ellis recommends that productive research could be conducted by comparing the epistemological structure of different languages, particularly in the area of how languages treat abstractions. Language, Thought, and Logic is a powerful and thought-provoking new addition to the field of linguistic theory. Ellis is not a simplistic thinker, and this book is an excellent addition to any class on theoretical linguistics. Because he attacks fundamental historical assumptions about language theory, Ellis uses examples which stretch across various disciplines. These diverse examples are richly rewarding to those interested in philology and language theory, and the resulting book is a valuable contribution to the field of contemporary linguistics. CAROL SCATES New Mexico Highlands University BONNIE FREDERICK and SUSAN H. MCLEOD, eds. Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1993. 238 p. JDonnie Frederick and Susan H. McLeod's collection of scholarship on women's travel, Women and the Journey: The Female Travel Experience, contains eleven essays ranging in topic from the ride of Godiva to the journeys of captives in Argentina and Uruguay. The editors divide these essays into three sections: "Adventure, Class and Clothing;" "Gender, Race, and Class;" and, "Women and Traditions of Narrative." Although each section houses at least one exceptional essay, the third section's discussion of narrative structures emerges as the most thorough and well-conceived grouping. The collection both side-steps the need for a binding thesis by claiming diversity as the overriding experience of women's journey literature, and it remarks upon "gendered meanings" as a shared element of the writings. This structure simultaneously proves the text's strength and its weakness. The fact that some of the essays only loosely reflect upon one another often invites a sense of haphazardness to the overall reading, and yet this exact looseness also frees the reader from a too rigid insistence on likeness, thematics , and a universal community of women's experience. Although the introduction admirably attempts to differentiate, revise, and merge terms Book Reviews195 such as "travel," "journey," and "quest," a furthering of this discussion and its complications throughout the text would have provided a necessary and welcome clarity. The most provocative essays in the collection—Birgitta Maria Ingemanson's "Under Cover: The Paradox of Victorian Women's Travel Costume," Annette White-Parks's "Journey to the Golden Mountain: Chinese Immigrant Women," Marina A. Tolmacheva's "Ibn Battuta on Women's Travel in the Dar al-Islam," and Sheila Ruzycki O'Brien's "Housekeeping in the Western Tradition: Remodeling Tales of Western Travelers"—share an impeccable eye for detail, a particularity of focus, and a profound commitment to educating the reader. Ingemanson undoes a generalizing twentieth-century perception about Victorian women's travel dress by arguing that although "we may find the costume and strident domesticity of Victorian women travelers cumbersome and inappropriate, . . . in the context of vigorous travel, these attributes had a deeper, eminently pragmatic function: as a barrier behind which the women were safe" (12). She persuasively concludes that Victorian and Edwardian women pursued their rigorous indoor dress codes when on the road in order to construct a "life support system" (16). White-Parks concentrates on Sui Sin Far's stories as well as on historic documentation to argue the persistence of Chinese women who resisted the journey "into assimilation by white North America" and who instead chose "to make a turn back into their cultural roots" (108). The significance of White-Parks's essay lies in her ability to shift, even if only for a moment, the historic obsession with southern late nineteenth-century AfricanAmerican slavery to western enslavement of the Chinese woman immigrant . She also insists on a variety of classes and types...