Beatrice Harraden’s The Bird On Its Journey

And save the trees

I recently received a 10 volume set of books Stories by English Authors published in 1869 by Charles Scribner’s Sons and I plan to write about some of the stories from the series. The first story is from the book subtitled Germany etc.

The Bird On its Journey was written by Beatrice Harraden, a prominent suffragette and was first published in 1894 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons in a collection of short stories entitled In Varying Moods.

A mysterious young woman appears at an inn in Switzerland. She has no luggage other than a backpack and is travelling alone, which in 1894 is shocking and incomprehensible to the snobbish clientele of the Inn.

The story paints the portrait of a carefree young woman who is free to backpack on her own through Europe, which is not very unusual today.

But in 1894 it was a remarkable vision of possibility for young women in the future. Although we still have a long way to go to achieve sexual equality, this story shows us how of how far we have come.

The story is a bit of a mystery. The clientele at the Inn speculate about this strange young woman. Who is she?

She produces a tuning hammer from her backpack and tunes the piano in the inn, which leads them to assume that she is just a piano tuner when in fact she is much more than that.

Jim McAulay🍁 says:

Humans are the only species who would chop down trees to make paper and then write on the paper “save the trees”.