Lucie Azema, Donne in viaggio, 2022

Women’s journeys have always been resisted, made invisible, ridiculed, forbidden. For centuries, setting off on an adventure has been a privilege reserved for men: while Ulysses travels the world and performs great feats, Penelope remains motionless and endures the wait. Lucie Azema rethinks the experience of travel from a feminist perspective, deconstructing the male narrative of exploration as the conquest of bodies and eroticised places. Through the stories of female travellers of the past snatched from oblivion, the author shows how travelling for women today is still a difficult but increasingly necessary act. From Alexandra David-Néel to Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Azema traces a veritable itinerary of emancipation around a decisive rite: that of the journey as a discovery of self and one’s own freedom.