The English Woman in America by Isabella Bird

The English Woman in America is an older book, first published in 1856. The slow paced memoir details the author’s experiences traveling in North American in the 1850s. Although Isabella Bird seems to be the stereotypical English snob, she does offer insight into what some of the cities of the Canada and the United States of the 1850s looked like.

At the time of publication, English women probably identified quite easily with Bird. She was the daughter of a clergyman and seems to have followed and understood most of the normalities of her society. The things that cast her in bad light today were perfectly normal frames of mind at the time.

Throughout the book I can see clear evidence of her anti-Catholic and anti-Irish point of view. She even bashes the French for introducing Catholicism to the native peoples of Canada. If that weren’t enough to make me dislike her, she also puts on airs, describing the impropriety of the way ‘the help’ in Canada behaves. She relates a story of servant who, after serving the family a meal, sits down to read a book on the family’s sofa. The family reprimands her and she refuses to work for them any longer, saying she will not work for a family that refuses to let a young lady improve her mind. Bird makes light of the fact that many of the servants in Canada see themselves as respectable, or as ‘ladies.’

At one point I really had to laugh at the airs she put on. While on the road from one city to another, she laments at being served mint tea instead of the regular china-leaf variety. In my reading of memoirs I have encountered few more infuriating narrators.

While Isabella Bird was no doubt adventurous, she did not possess the capacity to be opened minded to anyone who was not like herself. In describing the world around her, she sets everyone who is different from her, as below her. Perhaps she did it unintentionally, but she did it all the same.