The Performance of Resistance: Nellie Bly's 'Six Months in Mexico'

Vicki Van Brocklin explores an underread piece by the iconic stunt reporter Nellie Bly, who paved the way for women in the newspaper and magazine world. Because her gender-transgressive performances guaranteed her front pages,... [ view full abstract ]

Vicki Van Brocklin explores an underread piece by the iconic stunt reporter Nellie Bly, who paved the way for women in the newspaper and magazine world. Because her gender-transgressive performances guaranteed her front pages, they deserve a closer examination. Most scholars emphasize Bly’s exposé work, focused on the rights of women and the working classes, or her break-through piece, 1887’s “Ten Days in a Madhouse.” Although New York readers learned of her performative abilities through her sensational journalism, earlier readers in Pennsylvania encountered Bly’s resistant performance of (white) womanhood in her 1886 “Six Months in Mexico.” In this piece, Bly relies less on sensationalism, predominantly deploying familiar tropes from travel writing. Van Brocklin examines the influence of the genre of travel writing, and its attitudes toward racialized bodies, to argue that Bly’s resistant performance of femininity in “Six Months in Mexico” is built on paternalistic representations of Mexico and Mexicans.