User:Alexhuseman/sandbox

Two months after the birth of her second son, Edward, Dixie left her aristocratic life and children behind her in England and travelled to Patagonia. She felt she was not bound to England by any human link, and thus she wanted to expand her horizons. She debated going to elsewhere, but choose Patagonia because few European men, and no European women, had ever set foot there She was the only female in her traveling party, her brothers Lord Queensberry and Lord James Douglas, her husband Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie, and Julius Beerbohm were her traveling companions. Beerbohm, a family friend, was hired as the group's guide for his previous experience in Patagonia.

Once in Patagonia Dixie paints a picture of the landscape being hostile and made only for those who are strong and able to conquer the land. In her narrative she talks of the one English servant that comes on the expedition being unable to cope with the demands of the expedition.

When Dixie returned to England she wrote the book Across Patagonia (1880) to chronicle her time in Patagonia. In it she never mentions her husband by name or title (simply referring to him as "my husband"), and presents herself as the expedition hero rather than the men being the heroes of the story. In her novel she constantly speaks of times where she outsmarts or outlasts the men or remains their equal. This sense of equality would go on to inspire her later work with the women's suffrage movement. While social issues such as European womens suffrage can be seen in her narrative, she speaks little about the natives of Patagonia. When she does speak of the natives she is often patronizing and speaks of their suffering more than anything else.

Writing

Dixie wrote two books of travel in her lifetime, Across Patagonia (1880) and In the Land of Misfortune (1882). In both books Dixie presents herself as the protagonist of the story. By doing so she defies the male tradition of quoting other travel writers who have visited and written on the area, and creates a unique feminine style of travel writing in the nineteenth century. When discussing the natives in Patagonia she focuses on the women rather than the men or the general society of the natives. Womanly topics such as marriage and household organization are central to her books. However she does not do this make women the subordinates of men, rather her discussion of women gives them more power than the men in Dixie's narrative, a rarity in nineteenth century literature.