Isabella Bird letter Essay Example

new places. However, Bird writes a whole paragraph to convey her negative attitude to these places which is quite striking and powerful, especially so without any contrasting, positive comments of the place itself.

For example, when Bird uses the superlative in ‘This is an awful country, the worst I have been in’ it emphasises how ‘awful’ a place she really thinks it is. This is extended as she uses repetition of the pre-modifier ‘awful’ throughout the letter. Furthermore, as an explorer she would have probably visited many places prior to this, dramatizing the use of this superlative. Lastly she uses hyperbole in this paragraph such as ‘rotten to the core’ and ‘eaten up by abominable vices’ to finalise her thoughts of the place and really emphasise the negativity she sees of it.

This also conveys her style as a very dramatic narrator. Bird, however, does convey a positive attitude to the cultural traditions in Morocco. For example, when she talks about being at some of the ‘grand sights’ she mentions being in ‘Moorish disguise, pure white and veiled. ’ This shows that she is very respectful of the religious influence and culture of the area she’s in and that she adopts their dress style (code) to show that.

However, there are some aspects of the culture that she does see negatively. For example when talking about the ‘oppression and cruelty’ she sees there. She uses the pre-modifier ‘hellish’ to describe it. While in current day speech this word may not be seen as very powerful, of the time, when religion had much greater an influence and more followers, it was a very harsh word used scarcely.

The idea

of various modes of transport that she has used on her trip are also spoken about by Bird in this letter.She discusses them not with great detail but enough for her friend, the audience, to see that she looks down on the primitive transportation methods, such as the ‘barb’, whom she describes with the pre-modifier as magnificent but also says it is a ‘terror’ to her, and then follows on with the exclamative ‘I have to carry a light ladder for getting on and off! ’ which conveys her shock and could-be horror at the transport method. Furthermore, Bird uses reference to time when saying ‘travelling six hours daily’, another complaint.Bird also discusses the idea of the geography of the area in her letter to convey how little infrastructure, such as roads, there were. ‘A rolling stone or slip would mean destruction’ conveys the danger of riding on such a terrain that hasn’t been built on and is very dry.

Whilst talking about the weather, Bird manages to adopt the complaining tone again as she had done with the transport. For example, she mentions the ‘storm of wind and rain’ and the ‘slush’ it created, following on with the first person in ‘I thought I should die there. This shows that she sees the main effect of the stormy rain as only being on her, how dangerous and ‘awful’ it was for her. The mention of death here further conveys her style as a very dramatic narrator.

The last aspect of her trip that Bird discusses in the letter is visiting the Sultan. This can be seen as defying gender conventions of the time as she

is enthusiastic as getting across to her friend in the exclamative ‘Today I had an interview with the Sultan, the first European woman to see the Emperor of Morocco! The enthusiasm she conveys here is understandable, she is a trend setter and role model for women of the time. Furthermore this shows the research and knowledge Bird holds as she knew no female had before seen the Moroccon Emperor before her, further emphasising her occupation as an explorer. The structure of the text conveys the choppy, journal type fashion in which it was written with each paragraph discussing the next aspect or place that Bird had seen or visited.

Bird successfully presents her attitude to the cultural traditions and to the places themselves and also effectively informs her audience, a friend, of the geography and transportation modes in Morocco. Lastly, her friend who is the intended audience of this letter would probably have been able to tell that one of the most important aspects of the trip to Bird conveyed in the letter is of her visit, as the first woman, to the Moroccan Emperor. This Bird achieves through it including it in her letter at the very end, as though it is a final reflection on the trip.