Travel Narratives

Since the colonial period, American travel narratives have explored competing ideas of what it means to be a man. Whether taking the form of brief sketches published in newspapers or full-length books, travel narratives have dealt both explicitly and implicitly with issues of manhood. The act of writing about travel has given authors the opportunity to present the varying qualities of masculinity that emerge on personal journeys. Moreover, assumptions about the purpose of travel have been informed by notions of masculinity, underscoring the central importance of gender in the literature of travel.

The travel narrative first emerged in the late eighteenth century as a result of a man's presumed duty to produce knowledge. Men's travel narratives were considered to be both accurate descriptions of the world and evidence of authority in matters of science, geography, politics, and economics. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782) and William Bartram's Travels (1791) are two early examples of American travel narratives that attempted to record, classify, and measure the new nation for European audiences. Through their accounts, Crèvecoeur and Bartram conveyed knowledge of New England and the Southeast, respectively—information considered useful and significant, at least in part, because the traveling writers were men. While women's writings were often devalued as frivolous, men's travel narratives became accepted accounts of America's social and natural features.

[Page 464]The early nineteenth century also saw the rise of travel literature meant to entertain as well as inform. Humorous or dramatic accounts of trips to Europe or throughout the United States may seem to have little to do with notions of masculinity, yet the act of writing such an account was itself an expression of concern about men's social and cultural obligations. Writing about their travels became a primary way for men of privilege in the nineteenth century to make their leisure activities productive. The middle-class work ethic that determined a man's worth also exerted its influence on those who had the means to avoid a life of toil. Upper-class men transformed trips that seemed idle and unmanly into literary output, creating evidence of work by producing something tangible out of their travel experience. In a culture that respected hard work, a man's travel writing gave him license to pursue a life of leisure.

In the nineteenth century, as tourists flooded the new commercial attractions erected in the United States, many domestic travelers sought authenticity and risk beyond the artifice of such crowded sites as New York's Niagara Falls and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. By mid-century, tales of adventurous travel became the most popular type of general reading, partly due to contributions from such established writers as Washington Irving and Mark Twain. Irving's A Tour on the Prairies (1835) chronicled an excursion to the Oklahoma territories, replete with tales of hunting trips and the ruggedly virile life of Native Americans. Similarly, Twain's Roughing It (1872) presented the American West as a lawless land of violence and coarse manners. By journeys' end, both Irving and Twain had adopted a new narrative persona, that of the experienced male traveler, ravaged by the road but stronger for the adventure.

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