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Janaya Glenn

Claudia Swicegood

ENG-111

6/13/19

Making a Connection: Elizabeth Bisland’s Race Around the World

In “Elizabeth Bisland’s Race Around the World”, Matthew Goodman embarks on a

translation of this woman’s life journey. According to the essay, Elizabeth Bisland, an American

journalist, was involved in the 1889 race around the world versus Nellie Bly. Although she did

not win the race, Bisland was able to advance her writing throughout the trip and after the trip.

According to the author of this essay, Matthew Goodman, Elizabeth Goodman is a writer that

deserves to be remembered better. As we can tell throughout the essay, Goodman is inspired by

this woman and he wants her story to resonate with the audience. This essay is more than just a

review of her life. This essay has the purpose of uplifting Elizabeth Bisland so that she may

inspire others.

He begins the essay with explaining how she got involved with the race and then he

connects that with the rest of her life. As the reader, I did expect to just get a summary of the

major memorable events of her life. The first paragraph hints to this common expectation where

it states that Goodman will be exploring the life of Bisland including the 80-day

circumnavigation of the globe event (par.1). The title of the essay, “Elizabeth Bisland’s Race

Around the World”, even makes the reader assume that this essay is just about the race.

However, Goodman goes beyond the expectation of just restating the facts of her life, he made

this essay more personal. Goodman was able to make the reader connect to Elizabeth Bisland

despite her being alive such a long time ago.

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Goodman utilized this strength of showing that Bisland had a mindset about the social-

gender problems in America that could relate to how people feel today. For example, Goodman

wrote in the essay that Bisland was aware of her feminine beauty, but she realized that “women

have no power in America” (par. 6). Forming a connection with the reader through a character

description is very important in an essay like this. Furthermore, Goodman made a connection

between the race and the rest of Bisland’s life very effectively. He kept this essay ‘short and

sweet’ while also being able to conclude to make a point.

The only weakness that I see present in this essay is the explanation of the purpose of this

essay. In the conclusion, Goodman explains that Bisland deserved to be remembered because of

the social stance that she took and because of her ability to reject a celebrity status (par. 19).

However, inspiring her story may be, there are many other artists/writers who fall into that same

criteria that makes her worthy of being remembered. There should be a better explanation as to

why the author thinks she should be remembered, so that the purpose of this essay could be more

effective. This weakness also effects the title of the essay. The title should hint toward the

purpose of the essay or at the very least the subject. As I stated before, this essay is about more

than her trip around the world, it is a personal review of Bisland’s life.

However, unclear the explanation of the purpose of this essay may be, the actual purpose

is clear. He shoots to explore the life of Elizabeth Bisland and to inspire the reader to use her

story as inspiration. The words that Goodman uses to carry this purpose through uplift the

persona that is Elizabeth Bisland and how the audience connects with her. Goodman

incorporated loaded terms to make his argument and paint a point of view. For example, when

Goodman was describing Bisland he used words like; tall, elegant, creative, beautiful, and

charming (par. 5). This accurate description of Bisland leaves a liking towards her character.
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These words paint a persona that the audience can be familiar with and even look up to. This

connects with the purpose of the essay which was for Goodman to present a woman who

deserves to be better remembered so that the audience has a source of inspiration.

In all, Matthew Goodman went beyond my expectations of how an essay could serve a

purpose to an audience. He took the legacy of Elizabeth Goodman and presented her as someone

that the audience could connect to and it worked. Even though this didn’t seem like it was

initially the purpose of his essay judging from the title, he executed this perfectly.
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Works Cited

“Elizabeth Bisland's Race Around the World.” The Public Domain Review, 16 Oct. 2013,

publicdomainreview.org/2013/10/16/elizabeth-bislands-race-around-the-world/.