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The first indication I had that Pfeiffer might be more interesting than some of the other 19th century women travel writers I've listened to is when she first mentioned being in second class berths on her river steamship as she headed away from her home in Vienna. She was clearly not wealthy, unlike the majority of such writers!
But as I got farther, I was also impressed with Pfeiffer's matter-of-fact approach to describing all she sees and thinks about things. She is not afraid to state her mind, whether it's that she thinks more or less highly of things than the general opinion in Europe at the time. She tells you if a famed sight turns out to be nothing much to look at, and she also tells you if the people of a different race or nationality are actually - gasp - decent people!
Oh, she's still absolutely a white colonialist European about things, but like.....a notable improvement in this respect on other 19th century white women I've read, and I was pleasantly surprised. More often than not she actually seems to judge people and people-groups based on her personal experiences with them rather than solely based on received stereotypes! This should not be as revolutionary as it is.
She is kind of weird about finding it necessary to state the relative beauty of the women at each location she visits, which gets uncomfortable. From her comments about comparing her opinion to that of others, this seems to be something that's, like, a Thing in general amongst European travellers of the era? But that doesn't stop it being weird.
She semi-regularly gives updates about the temperatures she experienced in various locations, which I was fascinated by as it introduced me to a temperature scale I'd never heard of before - the Réaumur scale. The Réaumur scale sets freezing at 0 and the boiling point of water at 80 instead of 100, so it's juuuuuuuust similar enough to Celsius that you think you understand it. Unlike Fahrenheit temps, when it's obviously off enough from what sounds reasonable that I'm reminded I need to translate in my head. But when, for example, she refers to 35 degree weather as hot I'm like, yup, sounds right, hot but manageable. But no, 35 degrees Réaumur is FORTY-FOUR DEGREES Celsius! And the hottest temperature she ever records is 43 Réaumur which is just like....do I even want to know how hot that is?
(My fave fact about the Réaumur scale, learned from further curious googling, is that although its use has fallen by the wayside in almost all respects, it's still used specifically for cheese production in Italy and Switzerland, and candy-making in the Netherlands. Why those things in particular and nothing else??)
At any rate, I was impressed with Pfeiffer's personal qualities of bravery and willingness to endure hardship. Her travels sound honestly exhausting and overwhelming: she regularly has terrible sleeping conditions and little food, her overland journeys by horse or camel keep totally unreasonable hours in order to make the distance necessary, she experiences the abovementioned 43 Réaumur temperature weather, she tours a sometimes totally unreasonable number of things in a single day, and she sometimes cannot speak the language of anyone around her. (She's trilingual! But that only goes so far when all the languages you know are european ones.) I absolutely would not have been able to endure the things she did for the sake of her journey, but she found it worth all the trials.
Pfeiffer set off on the journey detailed in this book in 1842 as as a woman travelling alone. She felt the danger of the situation keenly enough that she was well aware there was a strong likelihood she would die on her travels and never make it home. And she did not have a lot of money, and wasn't upper-class with the privileges that affords either. But she felt strongly enough about her desire to see more of the world that she set off regardless.
This is only the first of several extensive trips Pfeiffer took, and according to the internet she eventually died of malaria contracted while travelling in Madagascar. But while it's a sad way to go, I'm honestly glad that she died of something directly related to her travels - travel seems to have truly been her passion in life, so at least it wasn't something else mundane that took her away from it. She knew from the start that travelling abroad may lead to her death, and she was clearly okay with that.
I'm excited to read more of her travels!
(But also: Does anyone have recommendations of 19th century travelogues written by women of colour? I really enjoy the genre of 19th century women's travelogues, but the colonialist point of view gets exhausting.)
But as I got farther, I was also impressed with Pfeiffer's matter-of-fact approach to describing all she sees and thinks about things. She is not afraid to state her mind, whether it's that she thinks more or less highly of things than the general opinion in Europe at the time. She tells you if a famed sight turns out to be nothing much to look at, and she also tells you if the people of a different race or nationality are actually - gasp - decent people!
Oh, she's still absolutely a white colonialist European about things, but like.....a notable improvement in this respect on other 19th century white women I've read, and I was pleasantly surprised. More often than not she actually seems to judge people and people-groups based on her personal experiences with them rather than solely based on received stereotypes! This should not be as revolutionary as it is.
She is kind of weird about finding it necessary to state the relative beauty of the women at each location she visits, which gets uncomfortable. From her comments about comparing her opinion to that of others, this seems to be something that's, like, a Thing in general amongst European travellers of the era? But that doesn't stop it being weird.
She semi-regularly gives updates about the temperatures she experienced in various locations, which I was fascinated by as it introduced me to a temperature scale I'd never heard of before - the Réaumur scale. The Réaumur scale sets freezing at 0 and the boiling point of water at 80 instead of 100, so it's juuuuuuuust similar enough to Celsius that you think you understand it. Unlike Fahrenheit temps, when it's obviously off enough from what sounds reasonable that I'm reminded I need to translate in my head. But when, for example, she refers to 35 degree weather as hot I'm like, yup, sounds right, hot but manageable. But no, 35 degrees Réaumur is FORTY-FOUR DEGREES Celsius! And the hottest temperature she ever records is 43 Réaumur which is just like....do I even want to know how hot that is?
(My fave fact about the Réaumur scale, learned from further curious googling, is that although its use has fallen by the wayside in almost all respects, it's still used specifically for cheese production in Italy and Switzerland, and candy-making in the Netherlands. Why those things in particular and nothing else??)
At any rate, I was impressed with Pfeiffer's personal qualities of bravery and willingness to endure hardship. Her travels sound honestly exhausting and overwhelming: she regularly has terrible sleeping conditions and little food, her overland journeys by horse or camel keep totally unreasonable hours in order to make the distance necessary, she experiences the abovementioned 43 Réaumur temperature weather, she tours a sometimes totally unreasonable number of things in a single day, and she sometimes cannot speak the language of anyone around her. (She's trilingual! But that only goes so far when all the languages you know are european ones.) I absolutely would not have been able to endure the things she did for the sake of her journey, but she found it worth all the trials.
Pfeiffer set off on the journey detailed in this book in 1842 as as a woman travelling alone. She felt the danger of the situation keenly enough that she was well aware there was a strong likelihood she would die on her travels and never make it home. And she did not have a lot of money, and wasn't upper-class with the privileges that affords either. But she felt strongly enough about her desire to see more of the world that she set off regardless.
This is only the first of several extensive trips Pfeiffer took, and according to the internet she eventually died of malaria contracted while travelling in Madagascar. But while it's a sad way to go, I'm honestly glad that she died of something directly related to her travels - travel seems to have truly been her passion in life, so at least it wasn't something else mundane that took her away from it. She knew from the start that travelling abroad may lead to her death, and she was clearly okay with that.
I'm excited to read more of her travels!
(But also: Does anyone have recommendations of 19th century travelogues written by women of colour? I really enjoy the genre of 19th century women's travelogues, but the colonialist point of view gets exhausting.)
