Cultural Baggage: Autobiographical Writings by Wanda Rutkiewicz and Arlene Blum
The article aims to compare and contrast two autobiographical stories, Wanda Rutkiewicz's Na jednej linie [On One Rope] (1986), co-authored with Ewa Matuszewska, and Arlene Blum's Breaking Trail, published in 2005. Unfolding the experiences of the female mountaineers from two different cul...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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University of Zadar
2020-04-01
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| Series: | [sic] |
| Online Access: | http://www.sic-journal.org/ArticleView.aspx?aid=601 |
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| Summary: | The article aims to compare and contrast two autobiographical stories, Wanda Rutkiewicz's Na jednej linie [On One Rope] (1986), co-authored with Ewa Matuszewska, and Arlene Blum's Breaking Trail, published in 2005. Unfolding the experiences of the female mountaineers from two different cultural backgrounds, it analyzes how their mutual encounters are narrated by Blum, the American icon of climbing, and by Rutkiewicz, the first Polish high-altitude mountaineer to scale Mount Everest. The article also examines the personal narratives by applying to the text analysis Edward Hall's division into high-context and low-context cultures and Geert Hofstede's cultural individualism-collectivism dimension.Keywords: autobiography, Blum, Hall, Hofstede, mountain, RutkiewiczA computer engineer by profession, Wanda Rutkiewicz (1943–1992) made history when she became the first Polish high-altitude mountaineer and the first European woman to scale Mount Everest. Thus, it is not surprising that upon her return from the international expedition to the top of the world, Aleksander Lwow divided Polish alpinism into three categories: "1. men's alpinism, 2. women's alpinism, 3. Wanda Rutkiewicz" (McDonald 66), which stresses her outstanding achievements as well as her individual style of climbing that some have severely criticized. Despite male alpinists' disbelief that women could climb McKinley, in 1970, scientist and mountaineer Arlene Blum (b. 1945) co-led the Denali Damsels group, the first team of women that successfully reached the highest peak in North America. In addition, partially inspired by Rutkiewicz, whom she had met on the slope of Noshaq, Blum led the 1978 American Women's Himalayan Expedition, which succeeded in summiting Annapurna I, "a difficult mountain to see up close, much less climb" (Rak 109). The influential figures in women's mountaineering, both Himalayan climbers have written intriguing personal narratives of their on-the-edge lives. Living in a satellite country of the Soviet Union, Rutkiewicz co-authored Na jednej linie (On One Rope) with Ewa Matuszewska and published the book in 1986, whereas Blum, working mainly in the 20th-century superpower, released Breaking Trail in 2005. The article aims to compare and contrast the two stories that unfold the experiences of the female mountaineers from two different cultural backgrounds by applying to the text analysis Edward Hall's division into high-context and low-context cultures and Geert Hofstede's cultural individualism-collectivism dimension in order to check if the autobiographies may serve as the exemplifications of Hall’s and Hofstede's concepts. |
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| ISSN: | 1847-7755 |