Traveling with Her Mother’s Tastes: The Negotiation of Gender, Race, and Location in “Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands”Posted in Articles, Literary/Artistic Criticism, Media Archive, Women on 2012-04-12 21:08Z by Steven |
Signs
Volume 26, Number 4, Globalization and Gender (Summer, 2001)
pages 949-981
Sandra Gunning, Professor of English, Afroamerican and African Studies and Women’s Studies
University of Michigan
The autobiography Wonderful Adventuers of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands ([1857] 1984) by) Jamaican mixed-race “Creole” Mary Jane Grant Seacole (1805-81) reveals a great deal about the complex interplay in the nineteenth century between gendered mobility, black diaspora identity, colonial power, and transnational circularity. As a black entrepreneur and “doctress” who ran combination lodging houses and taverns in the Caribbean and Central America, Seacole relocated midcareer to Turkey during the Crimean War (1854-56) to service the needs of English soldiers on the battlefield. After losing her business when the war ended sooner than expected, she settled in England and attempted to recover from bankruptcy…