ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SELF: WOMEN’S TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IN ELIZABETH GILBERT’S EAT, PRAY, LOVE AND CHERYL STRAYED’S WILD Cover Image

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SELF: WOMEN’S TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IN ELIZABETH GILBERT’S EAT, PRAY, LOVE AND CHERYL STRAYED’S WILD
ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SELF: WOMEN’S TRAVEL EXPERIENCE IN ELIZABETH GILBERT’S EAT, PRAY, LOVE AND CHERYL STRAYED’S WILD

Author(s): Małgorzata Rutkowska
Subject(s): Comparative Study of Literature, Theory of Literature, American Literature
Published by: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II
Keywords: women’s travel; spiritual pilgrimage; travel writing; generic conventions; self-help memoirs; Elizabeth Gilbert; Cheryl Strayed;

Summary/Abstract: This article examines representations of women’s travel experience in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia (2007) and Cheryl Strayed’s Wild. A Journey from Lost to Found (2012). Both authors rely on and, at the same time, subvert generic conventions of masculine and feminine traveling while creating their narrative personas. Alluding to pre-modern cultural meanings of travel and adopting the roles of spiritual pilgrims, the authors renounce their former lives, examine their past mistakes, undergo a transformation and finally regain control of their lives. Paradoxically, though going on a journey is a prerequisite for self-redemption, travel is no longer represented in these texts as an encounter and confrontation with the outer world but rather as a solipsistic practice.

  • Issue Year: 69/2021
  • Issue No: 11
  • Page Range: 99-110
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: English