Úri hölgyek a vademberek között: Az ausztráliai őslakosok ábrázolása brit telepesnők és utazónők írásaiban a 19. században
The settler woman and the savage: The depiction of Aboriginal people in the personal narratives of British genteel women in colonial Australia

Summary/Abstract: Many British genteel women left for Australia in search of a better and more prosperous life in the nineteenth century. These women often recorded their experiences in their memoirs, recollections and travel books. On the pages of their personal narratives female settlers and visitors recounted the challenges of their colonial enterprise and also made observations about the Aboriginal people. This study seeks to explore colonial gentlewomen’s ways of seeing the indigenous people of Australia. Mainstream arguments concerning racial superiority and social hierarchy determined the way colonial women perceived the Aborigines. Genteel women belonged to that cultured and learned layer of British society that was familiar with these theories. Female colonists’ images of the native people therefore reflected contemporary western ideas. This paper concludes that colonial women’s depiction of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia was not substantially different from their menfolk.

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