Mary Kingsley - Return To England

Return To England

When she returned home in November 1895, Kingsley was greeted by journalists who were eager to interview her. The reports that were drummed up about her voyage however were most upsetting to Kingsley, as the papers portrayed her as a "New Woman," an image which she did not embrace. Kingsley distanced herself from any feminist movement claims, arguing that women's suffrage was "a minor question; while there was a most vital section of men disenfranchised women could wait". Her consistent lack of identification with women's rights movements may result from a number of causes, such as the attempt to ensure that her work was received more favorably; in fact, some insist this may be a direct reference to her belief in the importance of securing rights of British traders in West Africa.

Over the next three years, she toured the country giving lectures about life in Africa to a wide array of audiences. She was the first woman to address the Liverpool and Manchester chambers of commerce.

Mary Kingsley upset the Church of England when she criticised missionaries for attempting to convert the people of Africa and corrupt their religion. In this regard, she discussed many aspects of African life that were shocking to English people, including polygamy, which, she argued was practiced out of necessity. After living with the African people, Kingsley became directly aware how their societies functioned and how prohibiting customs such as polygamy would be detrimental to their way of life. She knew that the typical African wives had too many tasks to manage alone. Missionaries in Africa often required converted men to abandon all but one of their wives, leaving the other women and children without the support of a husband - and thus creating immense social and economic problems.

Kingsley's beliefs about cultural and economic imperialism are complex and still widely debated by scholars today. Though, on the one hand, she regarded African people and cultures as those who needed protection and preservation, she also believed in the necessity of British economic and technological influence and indirect rule, insisting that there was some work in West Africa that had to be completed by white men. Nevertheless, the ways in which her beliefs were perceived within various sectors of Western European society - be they traders or imperialists, women's rights activists, or others - impacted common perceptions of "the African" of the time.