A book report on A Voyager Out

A detailed Summary of A book report on A Voyager Out

Frank, Katherine. A Voyager Out: The Life of Mary Kingsley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. 1986

Katherine Frank's novel A Voyager Out tells the life story of Mary Kingsley. She talks of her childhood, her young adult life, and her traveling life. She wanted to tell the world what this woman explorer did for Africa. Mary Kingsley had a famous family, many of whom were writers. Mary herself wrote two books. In her books however, she leaves out a lot about her life. A lot of what Katherine Frank had discovered came from Mary's letters to friends while traveling. Some people who were the recipients of her letters found it odd that she put so much into her correspondences. In one case, she wrote a ten-page letter to a friend. His response to her was that she was wasting many of her good stories that could be published on a letter. Her response was to write him a six-page letter. She loved writing. She also loved her voyages to Africa.

Part of Mary Kingsley's reason for loving her travel abroad came from her childhood life. Mary was born the daughter of a high-class man and his cook. George Kingsley was a writer and came from a family of writers. He did not produce much however. He left a lot of his work

On her journey, Mary brought with her two diaries, one for scientific information, and the other for her own personal thoughts and psychological findings. She did not have a lot of money so she traveled light. Most white people who traveled to Africa brought with them an entire entourage and hired African porters to carry their luggage. Mary did not want to set herself that far apart from the Africans. She traveled by trading goods and this helped her immensely while traveling. She felt that the Africans related better to her as a trader than they would have if she had come in empty handed. When the Africans saw that she had something they wanted, they would welcome her into their home. She lived off of food that the villages provided for her.

Mary did not like being back in England and was excited to be able to return again two years later. She spent the remainder of her time in England preparing for her next voyage. For this next voyage, she had more money available to her because her publisher really wanted her to write about these people. Even though she had the extra money, she decided not to travel any more luxuriously than she had the first time. She felt that traveling as a trader really helped her to connect with the people. She did not want to set herself above the people she was there to get to know. Even though she could afford it, she did not bring tinned food and other travel aids. She thusly decided to travel light. When others heard that she was traveling light they asked her to bring things to their loved ones for them. Mary, the nice woman that she is, could not say no. She ended up having a lot of luggage because of the many care packages she was bringing to various parts of Africa.

While on this first voyage Mary discovered the sickening prejudice of miscegenation. Mary was a strong defender of polygamy as well. Another unusual thing that Mary did was noting in her two books the physical beauty of the African. Because the African wore little or no clothing, it was probably the first time Mary had seen a naked body other than her own. She was probably the first white person many of these Africans had seen so it was a trade off of firsts. Mary had to deal with a lot of new issues in Africa that she had not even dreamt of while she was back in England, but she used this to learn and grow.

Mary did a great deal of thing that should be looked up to and respected. I do respect this woman that I have never had the chance to meet. The things she did were extremely courageous. She put other people's lives ahead of hers. Never once did she stop and say, "This could be dangerous to me." She was always willing to go above and beyond. It gives me a great example of a way to lead a selfless life. I am not saying that I want to go to the extremes that Mary did, but I think that I could definitely learn a lot about helping others by following her lead. We all can. Mary crusaded to help those who did not get help from others. She was a strong woman who did what she believed was right, not what others thought was right. She was a pilgrim of some sorts. She began what others eventually followed. Because of her, many others were willing to help those in need.

Another difficulty I found while reading the book was that most of Mary Kingsley's family was named George, Charles, or Henry. Most of them also had one of those three for middle names as well. The females were named Mary and Charlotte. In order to keep this tradition alive, many of the men married women named Mary or Charlotte. Mary has a cousin Mary, her mother is Mary, and she is Mary. Her Uncle Charles did a lot, but her brother Charley was lazy. While reading I found myself having to reread in order to find out who was being talked about at this time. For a good portion of my reading I was reading about Charley thinking that her uncle was the one being referred to. I had to reread almost an entire chapter

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Approximate Word count = 3761
Approximate Pages = 15 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English