Female Eyes on Brazil: Maria Graham, 1824

• In Event: Discursos expedicionarios del siglo XIX

Abstract

In 1824 Maria Graham published Journal of a Voyage to Brazil and Residence there, during part of the years 1821, 1822, 1823. Long neglected, this early South American traveler is now receiving attention. Regina Akel’s biography (2009) and Jennifer Poole Howard’s study of Graham in Chile perform close readings of her books for what they reveal of their creator and her authorial self-fashioning. I reverse that lens to ask what Graham tells us of Brazil, how she conveyed that information, and how gender colored her vision. I first situate her trail-blazing volume on Brazil within South American (male) travel literature. Second, I posit that her success as a travel writer was linked to her life-long habit of drawing on the road. While most scholars focus on the literary at the expensive of her pictorial work, I insist that making visual records to accompany the written journal sharpened her powers of observation. Images are integral to text, and should be examined as an ensemble.

Casting her female eyes on Brazil, I argue, Graham created several books in one. Rejecting a single directive, she authored a complex narrative that addressed competing agendas. We identify four principal narrative threads in order to unpack the book’s gendered content and meaning: (1) forging the picturesque through text and image; (2) setting the historical stage; (3) botanizing; and (4) picturing the city and its environs. Deliberately casting these terms as gerunds, I emphasize the active, unstable nature of her process of observation, and her willingness to question and revise.

Author

• Katherine E Manthorne, Graduate Center, City University of New York