The Picturesque and the Beastly: Wales and the Absence of Welsh in the Journals of Lady’s Companions Eliza and Millicent Bant (1806, 1808)
by Kathryn Walchester
Abstract
[...] The journals written by lady’s companions, Eliza and Millicent Bant, in 1806 and 1808 respectively, present a complicated view, one in which multifarious and often negative versions of Wales compete, but overall where linguistic otherness is not evident. [...] The Bant sisters’ lack of comprehension and their representation of its linguistic otherness is, I suggest, instead played out through a representation of Wales as complex, multifarious and impossible to comprehend. Wales is simultaneously “beastly” and “picturesque”, a place of industry and nature, beauty and squalor.