Th e Transnational Rural in Alicia Little’s My Diary in a Chinese Farm 151
his family contribute to a messy rural landscape, which is full of unlikely objects
and chaos. In the aforementioned robbery Little loses some domestic goods.
Th ese goods include watches, a compass, eyeglasses, spoons, forks, bed sheets, a
tablecloth and some European clothes. Little comments on the robbery:
We are beginning to wonder whether worrying the people round so much on the plea
of our stolen goods is not in order to make them object to our going on building on
the land we have rented near here ... [Th e robbery] seems too elaborate a plot. But
that they should utilize the theft to make us disliked in the neighborhood would only
be natural. We hear no more of having our money returned us for the piece of land
we rented last year, and have not so far been allowed to build upon, nor of our being
allowed to go on building, and the three months we were to spend at this farm in
order to accustom the people to us et cetera, are nearly up.^34Little’s anxieties about the Chinese authorities were undoubtedly infl uenced by
the many late-century rebellions against foreigners throughout Chongqing.^35
Being born in Madeira and raised in England, Little settled as a middle-class
woman in England and was heavily infl uenced by Victorian values. Subsequently,
she was caught, along with other women of the fi n de siècle, between respect for high
Victorian domestic ideals and attraction to new possibilities for self-realization.
Her early works refl ect an irresolvable contention between her advocacy of women’s
independence on the one hand and a defense of marriage and maternal instinct on
the other.^36Shanyn Fiske suggests that Little writes with the benefi t of those with little
knowledge of her country, and that she downplays her authority. Little stresses
that her book does not ‘aim at being a storehouse of learning and a book of ref-
erence for all time, but rather at giving a picture, for those who know nothing
of [China]’.^37 Little is a homebody limiting herself to her Englishness. Aft er the
robbery, she fi nds much diffi culty in living in the farm without the goods that
she has brought to China. She says,
I have never now any notion what o’clock it is without a watch, and our supply of
Table cloths also seems sadly short. And through last year travelling to Th ibet I did
my hair for three months without a looking glass, yet I am vexed to miss the con-
venient Hand glass out of my travelling bag ... Without something of the kind it is
incredible how we could have slept through so much rummaging of two baskets, and
a cupboard, also a drawer, and a box opened. Th e latter had one of my slippers stuck
in it to make it shut noiselessly.^38Little is a font of Victorian stability and domestic adventures in the heart of the
foreign. She provides an imaginary home space in her dwelling abroad:
I was shut up in the one Farm house sittingroom, so I started a Diary for much the
same reason probably, that I have oft en observed people do so on a Sea Voyage. Th ey