Mapping the Physical through the Emotional: The Gendered Space of Travel Writing in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild

Abstract

This paper attempts to look at the different perspectives at play in Cheryl Strayed’s travel memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012), to study the language used and the role of gender in her narrative. Wild is a travel memoir of Strayed’s 1,100-mile trek on the Pacific Crest Trail, undertaken alone. The book underlines a redemption quest of the struggling author who turns to nature and embarks on an extremely straining physical challenge in order to rehabilitate her life and deal with the grief of having lost her mother young. Drawing on Leigh Gilmore’s and Suzanne Koven’s feminist memoir criticism, Céline Lefort’s reading of walking as restorative practice, and Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze, the paper analyses how Strayed negotiates gendered anxiety, bodily vulnerability, and sexual agency on the trail. The main concern of this project therefore will be to navigate the importance of Wild in the predominantly male canon and the impact of gender on travel writing, mapping out the necessity and intent it plays in highlighting female agency and encouraging women to traverse alien landscapes.