Specificity of Authorial Strategy in 19th Century Women’s Travelogues: A Study of E.A. Sverbeeva’s Travel Diary

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the interpretation of the phenomenon of women’s writing and its representation in the genre of travelogue. For the first time, the ‘Diary of E.A. Sverbeeva for 1833’ is studied in the context of the evolution of women’s documentary travelogue in the 19th century, focusing on the issue of authorship. It is established that E.A. Sverbeeva’s travel diary expresses the main tendencies of the evolution of ‘women’s writing’ in the 1830s. It is revealed that Ekaterina Alexandrovna’s diary demonstrates a focus on the self, on modes of self-expression, self-analysis, and self-discovery. At the same time, the self is clearly expressed as a feminine self, which is manifested in the selection of objects from real life for describing the journey and in the ways they are characterized. As an individual authorial strategy, a combination of elements of a personal diary and a travelogue can be identified, while more often female travelers differentiated these types of entries, even designating the fundamental difference between them in the text of the travel diary. The analysis of the biographical basis of the diary and the ways in which the self is expressed in the narrative structure allows for the identification of a combination of different perspectives — that of a society lady, a ‘sensitive heroine,’ a mother, a married woman — reflecting the main tendencies in the development of ‘women’s writing’ in the historical-literary process of the 19th century.