Women Travellers

This is a picture of our lovely city taken from a window in the Vancouver museum. Yesterday, we went on a field trip to the museum from the Nature Park. I hadn't thought about why we would do this before we went. The museums and parks in the Greater Vancouver area rely heavily on the work done by volunteers and this meeting was about volunteers getting together. It was a nice idea.

The first exhibition that we saw was about women travellers. As far as I could make out, this was based on the work of the person who was giving the talk and who had researched and written a book on the subject. I'm sure she was a good writer, but she wasn't an inspiring speaker. She told us that the majority of women travellers during the nineteenth century were British. The reason she gave for this was that Britain was a small island and people were perhaps driven to leave.

Later, I suggested to her that it was more to do with imperialism and that because Britain had gone out and set up stall in so many other countries, perhaps people felt comfortable out there in the world. She said that that might be true were these parts of the British Empire that the women were travelling to, but they were going to other places. Yes, said I, but my point was that ....

Lori's thought was that British education and news reporting had always been more outward looking. The author seemed to be stuck on the idea that Britain was an overcrowded island. I pointed out that nowadays, it is Australians who seem to globe-hop the most, they seem to need walkabout. Brits generally do it because they have a specific reason. She was still smiling at us, but her smile now looked more like a petrified rictus.

It was interesting however and there was a lot of knowledge gained from these women travellers, for example observations about natural history and anthropology. The author became very excited as we came to a particular part of the exhibit because only women could see the heron. This puzzled me, but I was willing to believe that the heron was a sacred bird that only women were allowed to gaze on in certain societies. Perhaps the heron represented secret women's things.

The room that the women travellers went into to view the heron was most luxurious, baroque carvings, intricate metalwork and rich silk hangings, beautiful colours.
Ok, so eventually I worked out that she wasn't talking about a heron, but the harem. We tend to pronounce this 'hareem' I suppose she was saying 'herum'. Yeah, see, I can understand that being able to go into the harem was interesting, but frankly, I thought the sacred heron had more going for it.

To what extent am I a woman traveller? Not very much I don't think, not in the way that we were thinking about them yesterday. I'm not a pioneer. And it occupies me very greatly that to some extent I have let those women down. Not just the travellers, but the women who fought for our rights. My mother's generation did not have the opportunities we have today, when they married they didn't even have the right to work. I know there is still a long, long way to go until we achieve true equality and achieve it the world over.

I had worked hard to build my career. Out of all my children, I think that Austen got the worst deal and the best deal. When he was young I was working in poorly paid jobs, studying at the same time. But he didn't have to share my time with anyone for a long time, and he had a close relationship with my parents.

By the time I had the others, I had my Bachelor's degree so I was able to go into teaching and earn more. When I left England, I was head of Department with a Master's degree. And I have chosen a course that was not a choice for my mother's generation, it was what they were stuck with. But it is a gamble, I have taken a risk and it wasn't forced on me as it was on them. If I fail, I've not just lost status and earnings, I've let them down and that more than anything else, bothers me.