Expanding the domestic sphere: mothers who travelled in the eighteenth century
Journal: Studies in Travel Writing
Year: 2015

Travel and motherhood, as they relate to eighteenth-century English values, appear incompatible. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, educational tracts, sermons and conduct manuals constructed English virtues and morals as dependent upon the stability of the domestic realm and motherhood. Maternal figures represented stasis, and mothers who travelled could be accused of moral dubiousness or even maternal neglect or abandonment. However, this article argues that there are women travelle