Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon's Travel Letters: performative identity-formation in epistolary narratives

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.     

Locality,gender and co-operation in England: a comment on Barbara J. Blaszak

This article is a response to Barbara Blasak's article on the gendered geography of the English Co-operative movement (Women's History Review, 9, pp. 559-584. It argues that Blasak has neglected important secondary sources on regional complexity, the social structure of Co-operative membership and the division of labour within the household. Her explanation for her interesting finding that women found it more difficult to secure election to Co-operative committees in some parts of England than in others needs to be revised in the light of the full array of available published evidence.