“A Charming Retreat for Jaded Nerves”: Female Travelers, Imperial Cures, and the British Caribbean

In the late 19^th century women from the United States and the U.K. began venturing solo to the Caribbean seeking relaxation, cure, and adventure. Particularly drawn to Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Jamaica, a number of intrepid, if imperialist female travelers wrote about the splendid health benefits of the region. Calling it a “charming retreat for jaded nerves,” nearly all argued that the islands were ideal for escaping the burdens of northern winters, as well as the “pack of troubles” that weighed on women like themselves. Not just the climate, but the flora and fauna, mineral springs, sea/mountain air, and pace of life proffered a perfect retreat from the rigors of life, according to many a female travelloguer. For the next thirty years women who “wintered” in the Caribbean would write about their experience and seek to encourage other similarly situated ladies to travel to the “sunny Caribees.” This paper focuses on several of these women who traveled to the British Caribbean and subsequently represented the islands as a perfect cure for the burdens of modern life. It centers on women like Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Bessie Pullen-Burry, and Mary Eliza Bakewell Gaunt, who traveled extensively and wrote about the wonders of their time recovering from the “rigors of modern life” in the Caribbean. It argues that in finding their “imperial cures” in the Caribbean, these female travel writers also laid the foundations of a modern imaginary of the region as the perfect salve for the overburdened woman.