Skidmore College Creative Matter History Honors Theses History 2021 "Tropics are Tropics Wherever Found": Performing Empire in the Travel Writings of Mary Kingsley and Mary Gaunt Kate Wilson
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/hist_stu_schol Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Wilson, Kate, ""Tropics are Tropics Wherever Found": Performing Empire in the Travel Writings of Mary Kingsley and Mary Gaunt" (2021). History Honors Theses. 9. https://creativematter.skidmore.edu/hist_stu_schol/9 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the History at Creative Matter. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Creative Matter. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. “Tropics are Tropics Wherever Found”: Performing Empire in the Travel Writings of Mary Kingsley and Mary Gaunt Kate Wilson Dr. Tillman Nechtman Thesis in History Spring 2021 Wilson 2 I. Introduction In 1893, Mary Kingsley decided to visit the tropics. She, at first, did not know exactly where she would travel, but declaring that “topics are tropics wherever found,” she set off for West Africa.1 As she traveled through swamps and forests, Kingsley maintained the persona of a proper Victorian woman, dressed in long skirts and thick petticoats, in order to “support the dignity of a representative of England.”2 As she wrote about her travels, she described her close encounters with leopards, hippos, and crocodiles and her distinctly English means of surviving such encounters.3 About fifteen years later, another writer made a similar decision to visit the tropics.