THE SIX LIVES OF ALEXINE TINNE: GENDER SHIFTS IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD, 1835-1915
Abstract
This work is the first to examine the life and legacy of Dutchwoman Alexine Tinne as an example of the cultural and gender shifts taking place in the Atlantic world in the long nineteenth century. Based on primary research in both England and Tinne’s native home of The Netherlands, this work not only updates her biography, but brings her story into the field of transatlantic history. In tracing the life of this one woman one can see how roles for women expanded and how new opportunities for women, especially travel, came about in the Victorian period. Tinne serves as a perfect vehicle to trace the social changes occurring for women in this era because contemporaries saw her as a product of her elite upbringing, a symbol of eighteenth-century elitism, but by the end of the nineteenth century Tinne writers remade her as an abolitionist saving slave children across Africa. Through new research into the transatlantic legacy of Tinne, incorporating newspapers, magazine articles, and especially the book The Heroine of the White Nile; Or, What a Woman Did and Dared. A Sketch of the Remarkable Travels and Experiences of Miss Alexandrine Tinne by Professor William Wells (1871) this work establishes the six lives of Alexine Tinne – traveler, tourist, explorer, imperial mother, New Woman, and historical construct. Through an examination of these six lives, all constructed through the lenses of race, class, and gender, one can see the evolution of women’s roles in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This work serves as an entry point into the discussion of writing women’s histories, their biographies, and about rehabilitating images lost or changed over time. It is a work in transatlantic history, women’s and gender studies, exploration and discovery, intercultural transfer, and the importance of memory and perception on the craft of the historian.