The Glamour of Exotica and Erotica: The Travel Writing of Isabella Stewart Gardner
Abstract
This article explores the travel writing of Isabella Stewart
Gardner (1840–1924), a Boston socialite who, over the course of
nearly thirty years (1867–1895), toured the world and documented
her trips through journals, albums and extensive correspondence with
confidants such as novelist Henry James. It argues that because of its
transgressive elements, specifically its depiction of nineteenth-century
taboos such as the exotic, erotic and macabre, Gardner’s travel writing
provides significant, yet complex, insight into the art collector’s life,
even though like her museum, it is carefully curated. Moreover, this
article underscores how, on one hand, such travel writing served as a
counternarrative to rigid Victorian social and cultural codes, while on
the other, it provided women like Gardner with a problematic discursive
space to negotiate orientalist and imperialist authority and power.
Keywords
Isabella Stewart Gardner, Nineteenth Century, Travel Writing, Counternarrative, Neurasthenia, United States
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