THE REPRESENTATION OF HUMOUR IN WOMEN’S TRAVEL WRITING

RODRIGUEZ’S THE KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL (2007), GRIMSHAW’S FROM FIJI TO THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS (1907) AND SELECTED HAREM NARRATIVES

Abstract

Travellers are “the cultural other” in diverse destinations, observing the indigenous culture. They share their impressions and experiences by accounts of cross-cultural differences and develop intercultural communication. In some settings, women travellers may be admitted to some spaces that are forbidden to men. Indeed, women’s travel narratives may reinforce the binary opposition between the West and the East, turning their gaze on the Orient as exotic, eccentric and open to be examined. Typically, women writers’ narratives locate their identities through interaction with other cultures. Although women do not claim authoritarian voices, they make use of satire while drawing a line between the host culture that of ‘the other’ and their own. As such humour becomes the means through which the Western women travellers gain an imperial authority over the Orient. This article discusses how women’s travel writing may employ humour as a way of deprecating the indigenous culture and of strengthening imperial authority with a specific focus on Deborah Rodriguez’s The Kabul Beauty School (2007) and Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw’s From Fiji to the Cannibal Islands (1907) and selected harem narratives. The paper concludes that travel writers demonstrate the travelled places as exotic and eccentric that contrast with their own social norms.