Isabella Lucy's Journey In The Raven, By Isabella Bird

In the nineteenth and twentieth century, as Europe started to conquer the world, many places became “safe” to the females to travel, inspiring many female traveler writers at this time period. On October 15, 1831, at Borough Bridge Hall, the little baby girl Isabella Lucy, named after her two grandmothers, was born (Stoddart 8). Little did the family knew this girl would someday travel around the world, visit Korea, and write about her journeys. As a female traveler writer, Isabella Bird presents her journey in Korea as an opportunity for discovery, examining her journey carefully and writing everything as true as it is in an opened mind.

Isabella Bird seemed destined to travel, even as a woman in the nineteenth century, everything around her, her family and her health, prepared her for her journey of traveling the world later on. Bird’s father would train her to remember what she saw while they rode horses together when she was young. She recalled, “If we rode,

Bird had a bad impression on her first visit to Korea, she wrote to Mr. Murray that, “Korea took less hold on me than any country I ever traveled in. It is monotonous in every way, and the Koreans seem the dregs of a race—indolent, cunning, limp, and unmanly” (Stoddart 276). However, as Bird continued to visit Korea several times, she realized she could not stop herself but to fall in love with the nature of Korea and the people there, “The scenery varied hourly, and after the first days became not only beautiful, but in places magnificent and full of surprises” (Stoddart 279). Even though Bird became disappointed in her first visit to Korea, she did not seal herself in the bubble and stopped exploring the country; instead, she continued to discover the inner beauty of